About Float Gently

I'm a writer that did not write anything vaguely like poetry until recently, when it started pouring out of me in dark, angsty waves of word-vomit. Evidently, my brain decided to react to my father's illness and eventual death by becoming a hormonal teenager with a creative bent, so my writing is not great, but I hope you enjoy it regardless.

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I grew up in a relatively large city in a time before payphones became obsolete, and sometime in my thirties, exported myself to the weird world of coastal Florida. I care nothing of my own pronouns, so I leave my perceived gender up to you, dear reader. More to the point, I'm happy to let you choose to build me in your head how you would a poorly-defined main character in a novel - I'd love to hear what I turn out to be in your imagination.

 

My writing style is chaotic and unorthodox, and since I began this thing during a rather difficult period of my life, it's also quite dark and sometimes tackles difficult or socially-taboo subjects. As a blanket trigger-warning, some of the topics may include content like violence, sex, gender issues, death, politics, uncouth language, crassness, and anything else that may arise. Therefore, float gently through my content, and float off if it's too tough to handle, no worries. I try to tag things appropriately, but have never been good at that, historically. 

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My interests include (but are not limited to) history, nature, music, geography (and geopolitics), power dynamics of social systems, computer geekery, D&D, music (so good I named it twice), and knowing where my towel is. My literary heroes include (but are not limited to, and each has their own problematic aspects), Terry Pratchett (GNU), Jack Kerouac, e.e. cummings, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Hunter S. Thompson, Craig Alanson, Shiva Honey, Anthony Bourdain, and Kurt Vonnegut. I've tried to read Nietzsche and Ayn Rand several times (and have indeed completed their respective best-known works over the many attempts) but have never been able to sit down and finish them all in one go without wanting to throw the books into a fire.

 

I have been vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore and wouldn't recommend veganism to anyone unless they were willing to read up on how to do it properly. I've done several things professionally, from food & bev, retail, and clerical up to a specific STEM field (which left me with some very specific areas of geekery). I'm smart in some areas, incredibly lacking in intelligence in other areas, and do not care which end of the spectrum you pin me down as. I consider myself a humanist at best, spiritually-speaking, but also capable of ambivalence, and believe some aspects of several different religions, but the core beliefs are that everyone is human and imperfect, that everything is impermanent, that whatever floats your boat is fine with me so long as it doesn't attempt to capsize mine, and that one should always strive for balance.

 

I also believe that one should be willing to put their body, money, time and effort where their mouth is: if you say you believe in something, back it up. I do not have the time for people that are dishonest, that cannot change their beliefs when presented with better information and time to think, or that believe someone's worth less than themselves because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, monetary worth, profession, or because of where they were born. I believe that love is more complex, more prevalent, and more simple than people give it credit for, and that family is chosen more than it is given. 

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​If any of this interests you, or if you'd like to suggest something for me to write about, or even if you want to put something up here yourself, feel free to send a message to contact@floatgently.com