Prompted by Kasia (via Robert), I realized that I don’t have any sort of “about me” info here. Guess it’s time to rectify that, huh?
The basics
Michael David Hanscom, nicknamed “Woody” (or “Wüdi”, or many variations of either of those). Resident of Seattle, Washington, USA, since June of 2001, after living the majority of my life prior to that in Anchorage, Alaska.
A long-time Mac fanatic, I’ve been through seven or eight different types of Macintosh computer over the years, and currently have four lying around my apartment in various states (only two of which are actually mine, and only one of those is actually functional).
Off-work time is spent either here at my computers, or wandering around Seattle. I can often be found at the goth/industrial club The Vogue on Saturday nights. I’ll be easy to find if you stop by — I’m the one dressed in black.
There’s the basics, at least. Still curious? Anxious for more? Glutton for punishment?
More details
Born May 3^rd^, 1973, at 5:01pm in Indianapolis, Indiana (just in case anyone wants to do a star chart). The first two years of my life were spent bouncing around the Lower 48, until the Air Force decided to exile my father to the frozen wasteland of Fairbanks, Alaska. My brother Kevin was born three years and one day after I was, on May 4^th^, 1976, and not too long after that the military took some small amount of pity on us and relocated us to the not-quite-as-frozen wasteland of Anchorage, Alaska.
While I’m sure my parents would find plenty of quite valid reasons to disagree with me on this, I find most of my life prior to graduation from High School rather unworthy of recounting. Being of above-average intelligence, and correspondingly below-average in social skills, I spent many of my early years as the sterotypical “geek”. Constantly losing myself either in books, computers, or my own too-vivid imagination, the day-to-day perils of the real world intruded into my private little bubble far too infrequently. Friends were few and far between, though the friendships I did form in those years have been lasting — for example, exhibit A: Royce Williams.
Some time after I graduated high school, I had something of a moment of clarity and realized that not only did I have a personality, but it was actually a fairly personable one! The next decade was something of a rollercoaster, as I came out of my shell and attempted to pack all the social experiences and experimenting that I had missed in the prior years into as little time as possible. Some of those experiments worked better than others, but overall, I think I came out fairly healthy in the long run.
Much of my social experimenting came about, initially, thanks to my little brother. Having come from an extremely musical family, I was somewhat fascinated with DJ’ing. My brother’s alternative high school was in need of a DJ for a school dance, and with a recommendation from him, they gave me a chance. I packed up my home stereo, hauled it into their cafeteria, and spent a highly enjoyable evening “ghetto DJing” — no mixing, nothing fancy, not even able to fade between tracks, just switching from “input A” to “input B” when it was time to switch songs.
I loved every minute of it. Apparently they did too, as they asked me back, not only the next time, but for the majority of the dances for the next two years, until Kevin graduated.
From there, I talked my way into a gig at one dance club, then another, then another, eventually spending roughly eight years as something of a “personality” in Anchorage (more details can be found on my DJ Wüdi page).
Along with DJ’ing, my circles of friends and acquaintences grew nearly exponentially. Close friends were still fairly rare, but I stopped being afraid to meet and talk to new people. I moved out of my parent’s house when I was 18, have been on my own since then, and until I moved to Seattle, always had anywhere from one to three official roommates — unofficial roommates sometimes hit the double digits, especially during the height of my DJ days!
Some of the less sucessful social experiments included a two-year stint experimenting with illegal hallucinogens. The three “big” drugs in Alaska have traditionally been pot, mushrooms, and acid (though I understand that’s recently been supplanted by ecstacy). Every time I tried pot it bored me (I got hungry, stupid, and wanted to take a nap), two of the three times I tried mushrooms I just got snippy and went to sleep it off — but for one reason or another, I found a friend in acid. I spent about two years dropping acid on a semi-regular basis, until I eventually got tired of it and, after a weekend that included one day of acid and one day of mushrooms, I quit, and have now been clean for, oh, I’m not even sure — five years? Six?
In retrospect, while much of that period was a lot of fun, and I can’t say that I regret doing it, I am glad that it’s over and done with. The real world is quite entertaining and bizarre enough on its own, without anything else in my system making it even wierder.
As the years in Anchorage wore on, I became more and more dissatisfied. The drive to get out and live somewhere else got stronger and stronger, until I finally decided that I’d had more than enough, and in the spring of 2001 finally started making arrangements to leave state. I trashed, gave away, or sold off most of my belongings, bought my ticket, said my goodbyes, and moved down here to Seattle. Since then, I’ve been working on establishing myself here — first making sure I was settled and wasn’t going to have to slink back to Anchorage with my tail between my legs, then starting to explore more of the town and see what I could find. Coming up on my 2-year anniversary of having escaped Alaska, I’m quite happy I did. It’s a very different world out here — but I’m glad this is where I am.
And now? Life goes on…
