Not really sure how interesting this is, or even how necessary given that much of the story of my life is sprinkled throughout the various things you'll read 'round here, but objectively speaking, and all egotism aside, I've actually had a pretty interesting run thus far, so let's get at 'er.
One of the first things that I'll tell anyone that I meet is that I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. That's technically a lie, though: I was actually born in Nashville but raised, for 19 years, about 25 miles northeast between two small towns, Gallatin and Hendersonville, in unincorporated Sumner County. Nobody knows where the flip that is, though, so I just say Nashville, but I do always say it: I'm fiercely proud of my home and my heritage. Not in a shitty way! I'm fully aware of how Southern pride is often interpreted, but it just ain't like that.
Meanwhile, my tendency to omit the fact that I'm from Sumner Co. and not Nashville is to gloss over one of the most critical influences on the person I've become: growing up in the country (or close to it) versus growing up in the city has a tremendous impact on how you see and interact with the world, and in some cases in ways that stick with you your entire life. Your formative experiences are drastically different, your tastes, your aspirations and fears and nature of the relationships you form, all of them are colored in some way by the kind of place you grow up in. Having moved across the country to Fort Collins, Colorado when I was 19 - a very, very different place from my home in Tennessee - today I count myself so damn lucky to have been born in a place where ancient, untouched woodlands, crisscrossed every which way by rivers and creeks, were literally my back yard, where light pollution was nonexistent and the stars shone so brightly on cloudless nights that you could , where the wonder and mystery of nature