About · Gwynne Michele

About Me

Hi, I'm Gwynne Michele, and I hate writing about pages. Always have. Even way back in the Geocities days. Yes, I'm old enough that I was on Geocities. I'm old enough that I learned how to code in BASIC in elementary school in the 80s. But no matter how "old" I get, writing about myself is still weird.

First and Foremost, I am Gwynne, a Queer Heretic Nun and Contemplative Sorceress, and The Curious Hermit.

Let's take those one-by-one

I am Queer

Queer because my sexuality is weird and fluid and doesn't fit well into the rigid boxes that people tend to prefer. Queer is shorthand for "definitely not straight, but also, what I am varies by life stage." I was horny and poly in my 20s, horny and mostly monogamous in my 30s, and in my 40s, I'm still horny, but take care of all that solo cuz I am tired of people.

I am a Heretic

Heretic as in the original sense of hairetikos from the Greek meaning "able to choose" and "factious/causing division". Not for the sake of it, but because without heretics, hierarchy solidifies into tyranny. I question everything. Sometimes, my questioning leads me to conclude that traditional or consensus conclusions are correct. Other times, my questioning leads me to conclude those conclusions are full of shit. I am not just religiously heretical, but politically as well. While most of my beliefs about what policies we should aim for politically align with the far left, I question the tactics of the current manifestations of American leftism and if they're actually going to lead to change, or if it's just a bunch of blowhards bitching without actually taking any action.

I am a Nun

Where queer is a statement about my sexual and gender identity and heretic is a statement about my intellectual stance, nun is about my personal lifestyle identity. I live a monastic lifestyle. I spend a great deal of time engaging in spiritual practices that originated in religious traditions. I seek "union with the divine," thouh my personal definition of "divine" is RADICALLY different from what is stated in the theology of most religions.

I am Contemplative

A good portion of those spiritual practices are contemplative techniques. Not just thinking about stuff, but deliberately altering the mind to think about stuff in different ways. This might involve various forms of meditation, deep reading, deep writing, or even getting really stoned and seeing how it loosens up the mind.

I am a Sorceress

This one is maybe one of the harder bits to explain. I don't believe in supernatural magic. I don't believe in the supernatural at all. I'm not certain in that belief, but that's the philosopher and discordian in me - certainty is a trap. I do not see any evidence for supernatural intervention in the world. I think magic is weirder than that. I think magic resides in humans being able to reshape their minds in a way that reality responds to them. But I also don't try to hard to explain it because I've found when I try too hard to lock down what "magic" is, the magic stops working. I play with belief free of certainty and see where it leads. So far, it's led me to a billionaire helping me buy my house and an in-the-works life-changing sort of thing that I can't really talk about, yet, but will when it's all resolved.

I am Curious

Insatiably Curious. I want to know everything. I know that's not actually possible, though I'll die trying. I let my curiosity run where it wants to, pointing in useful directions when I can, but enjoying the random unplanned tangents because somehow, those random tangents always end up being useful to know years after learning them. Curisosity is my primary spiritual devotion. I spend my days studying. I went back to college a couple years ago to finish a philosophy degree I started and paused two decades ago. I do DIY self-study sidequests frequently - learning Chinese in 2023, learning how to code now. I learn for the sake of learning and because ongoing learning is proven to help reduce cognitive decline while aging and I've got a family history of dementia.

I am a Hermit

Not a fan of people. In person anyway. Love humanity. I think we're pretty cool. But humans are also exhausting and I prefer solitude. Always have. Even when I lived with other people, I preferred to stay in my room and chat with my online friends because IRL people never really see me, just what I can do for them. They mostly all think I'm just a weird hermit, and I'm cool with that. I'm autistic and don't really have that hardwired social need most people do, so it's not a sad thing to spend all my time alone. When I'm around other people, even when I'm having a good time, I'm still thinking about how I'd rather be home focused on my current hyperfixation, cuz really, that's just what my brain is wired for.

About This Site

What you'll find here.

Links to my content on other platforms.
My project portolio of in progress and complete coding and data analysis projects.
A blog. Old school. No fancy commenting (yet), basic JavaScript to handle adding posts to the blog page.
Whatever else I feel like putting up here.

The goal of this site.

The point of this site is to give me a centralized place for my stuff on the web independent of any particular platform. All the content is created offsite - I'm writing this in VSCode and pushing it to GitHub, where it's deployed to GitHub pages with a custom domain. Easy if you know how to use VSCode, write HTML/CSS, and how to push stuff to GitHub.

I'm not here to prove anything. I just want to have my content somewhere that it doesn't matter if I get banned or the service goes down. I can upload this to Neocities or a private hosting service or even build my own in-home server and host it there. If Facebook bans me? All my content there is lost. I do regular backups of my Facebook, but that's a LOT of data to sort through if I get banned or the site goes down or becomes so toxic even I can't tolerate it anymore. With this site? If GitHub decides to stop doing pages, I can put it elsewhere with ease because the content is stored on my computer and backed up in multiple places. And if none of that works? Well, then the world and/or my life is so fucked that it won't matter.

What sort of projects you'll find here.

I am learning to code. Because I want to build data analysis skills and also I want to build some games. I also am really enjoying building little apps that replace subscription services and free services that gatekeep your personal data. Right now, that is mostly code-based projects, but future plans when the budget opens up for it a bit is to start building some personal electronics - right now, getting my activity data from my smartwatch is an absolute pain in the ass, for example, so I wanna build and code my own. But I gotta build my coding skill first.

I'm also a fiber artist. I work mostly in thread - crocheting and tatting lace doilies. I occasionally use yarn, mosty if I'm knitting, but I like the detailed intricacy I can get with thread in crochet and tatting is a practice in patience. So as I continue to add to this site, you might see the occasionally fiber art project here and there - like the giant 48" doily I'm finishing up that's taken me months to work on in size 20 cotton crochet thread.

And I'm a writer. So I'll write blog posts. No clue what those will be. Mix of essays, ponderings, musings, and random babbles. I've blogged on and off for years - even got sponsors way back in the 00s before the FCC crackdown on sponsored posting. That was a wild, wild time. Might write a post about it someday...