July 13th is Embrace Your Geekness Day. According to HolidayInsights.com, this holiday was created and copyrighted by Wellcat Holidays, who proclaimed that “You’re a geek, and this is the day to roar!”
Geeks are largely defined as “an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity,” according to Merriam-Webster. Over time, this has expanded beyond just computers and technology to include enthusiasts of genre fiction, such as fantasy, science fiction, and superheroes, as well as people who enjoy playing computer and tabletop games, particularly roleplaying games.
I’m a huge geek. I love science fiction, especially Star Trek, as evidenced by the pictures of me on the bridge of the Enterprise at Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas, bedecked in a “Monster Maroon” uniform from the 1980s films (That’s not to say that I don’t also love Star Wars; I grew up with both and have never understood the division between some camps of the franchises’ fans). I love comic books and superheroes to the point that I write superhero prose books, and made several issues of my own comic book about those same heroes.
I love reading news about advances in science and technology, especially when it relates to continued human spaceflight. When I was in high school, I even collected a series of trading cards that featured not baseball players, but astronauts. When I studied History at Cal State Fullerton, rather than write my papers on the same events that I’m sure hundreds of other students have written about, I chose instead to write papers with titles like Four-Color Jihad: Fredric Wertham and the Anti-Comics Crusade, and Romance and Kryptonite: The Portrayal of Lois Lane in the 1950s. The fact that I was able to name-drop Galactus in an academic paper was a point of geeky pride.
Being a geek is a huge part of who I am. I embrace it proudly.
What are some geeky things that you enjoy?