How I Ended Up a Hockey Fan and How It Doesn’t Feel That Different

Yep. That’s me. The one in the backward hat taking this photo. I’m sure you’re wondering how I got there…which is the Washington Capitals Stanley Cup Parade and Rally weeks ago and why it’s taken me so long to write this blog.

Why it’s taken so long to write this is the easy answer, so I’ll start there. I’ve been struggling to put into words exactly what I wanted this blog post to really say. I knew it should be something about how I’ve been in many fandoms and how they all feel somewhat similar, but that’s as far as I originally got. As for how I found myself at the parade, well, it’s a funny story really.

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Coming Full Circle, Or How 28 Feels Really Similar To 13

This blog post was originally written as part of a series for The Welders. It was posted to their blog on July 25, 2017. 

I am 28 years old. I graduated from high school ten years ago, graduated from undergraduate six years ago, and graduated from graduate school four years ago. When I was 11 back in 2000, I had a love for all things anime and Japanese. It was the thing to be into for me and my group of friends. We weren’t the most popular kids in school. No, we were the kids who were spending our weekends at the mall buying model Gundams, figuring out how to convince our parents to make us Sailor Scout costumes, finding new music genres in J-Pop and J-Rock, and reading and writing fan fiction on the internet back when you had to label things “lemon” to indicate explicit content.

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