MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

I was one of those weird mopey middle schoolers who got hooked up with a dialup BBS account at just the right moment. Graduated to livejournal in college when it was still something new and exciting, and then to MetaFilter when it was obvious that the excitement was over.

"Nebulawindphone" is from a line in a poem that I wrote my boyfriend when I was 17.

Right now I'm finishing graduate school in linguistics, getting the hell out of academia, and trying to figure out what comes next.

I closed this account for a while. I was gearing myself up to finally confront the fact that I was trans and needed to transition — and I guess part of gearing myself up was doing a big frantic spring cleaning on my online presence. Now things have mostly settled down again, so why not reopen it? It's a little awkward that my comment history is full of stuff about How I As A Man Feel About This Issue, but in a weird way I also kind of like it.

(I also posted for a while as "Now there are two. There are two _____," and then as "this is a thing." Closed both of those after squabbles over transphobia on the site. For a while I'd sworn I would never come back... but things seem to be going better? Don't prove me wrong here, guys.)