My early interests (1992-2012)

Hey, how's it going? I thought today it would be sort of fun to go through the interests that I've had over the years and maybe get to know a little bit more about me and the things that were formative in my interests and things I got into. Here is this interest timeline that I developed several years ago. I don't remember when exactly. And what's interesting about it is it covers the first 20 years And it occurred to me that I'm in my 30s now. After 2012, a lot of the interests that I have had have not shifted very much. A lot of the formative things I got into during those first 20 years have stuck with me since. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to kind of go through this, starting with my birth year, '92, and walk through them. So I'd say the first thing in the most formative years of my life was drawing. Ever since I was about 3 years old, I would sketch, I would draw things every single day. They weren't particularly great, especially when I was younger, but then eventually I sort of developed an interest in drawing cartoons or trying to do something with realism where I draw from a POV. I just love drawing. I would fill sketchbooks, I would draw, and I'd use markers and all kinds of things. I loved that. I also loved pogo sticks, I loved Legos, and I loved Beanie Babies. A lot. My brother and I would play with these all the time. And then somewhere around the formation into the entertainment epoch was my first experience with Christianity and being exposed to the ideas of Jesus Christ. And of course, it was very primitive understanding back then, but through the things like VeggieTales, that really helped, uh, me understand what the Bible stories were about, what the Bible's about. That was very key, uh, in my formative years. Also things like, to broadly talk about the entertainment I was exposed to early on, the Pixar Disney films, but in particular Toy Story came out around '95 and that made a huge impact on me. I loved that movie. And then of course the first Nintendo console I ever owned was a Nintendo Entertainment System and played Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers, um, played that with my dad, played that with my brother. And just really, really enjoyed it. That obviously was profoundly impactful on me. And then we get into the early 2000s. At this point, this was probably the peak of my athletic interests, probably. But we got a trampoline that my grandparents got us. I got a bike for Christmas. We were pretty in deep in swimming lessons, and we loved squirt guns and just water fighting during summers. And rock climbing was a big interest of mine, indoor rock climbing in particular, but I did some outdoor rock climbing as well. I really enjoyed those things. I also was pretty active in gymnastics, a gymnastics class, and obviously PE and swimming as well. So that was what I would call the sort of experiential childhood-esque part. Then the next one is immersion. This is when I got into a lot of the things that would stick with me for life. Uh, the Nintendo 64 was— we kind of started really playing that more late '90s, early 2000s, and that was sort of like the pinnacle of entertainment for my brother and I. We loved the N64. We played so many games on it. Some of my favorite games are on that console. That's around the same time Bionicle came out in 2001, a little bit after. And man, did we get into Bionicle. We got into the lore, we had the comics, we had the games. Of course we had the figures and the toys, um, and just my brother and I loved it. Star Wars as well. We started getting a lot more into Star Wars after Episode I came out. Um, enjoyed the originals as well, but of course all the new Star Wars films were still coming out, and II and III, and man, we love those. Pokémon was a big deal also around this time, and also the first time I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was around this time, and, uh, immediately loved it. And now we're moving on to the latter bit of that section, is the preference era, is what I'm sort of calling it, where I started developing more tastes and I had particular— I had particular things that, you know, preferences that I developed. And Smash Bros. Melee was my favorite game at this point, and in 2002 or so, 2003, and I just I remember looking forward to the game coming out, and I've talked ad nauseam about my connection to that game. And if you're a subscriber to this channel, you probably know how much the game means to me. It still means a lot to me. I love the game. Um, Game Boy Advance was a big deal around this time. We played a lot of that. I like started watching TV shows like Sonic X. Mountain Dew Code Red is on here just because it's a drink that I liked as a kid. I particularly like the Code Red flavor. And then the sketchbook right above it, I would fill sketchbooks of video game ideas and like I'd sketch out the menus and the COVID artwork and the characters and the all kinds of things, screen— in-game screenshots and what boss fights would look like or whatever, to a bunch of theoretical imaginative sequels to games I already loved, which I might share more about in the future because there's a lot in there that would be fun to kind of do a walkthrough video of and And yeah, we'll see. We'll get there. It was somewhere in here. It's probably in another room. I got just stacks of sketchbooks full of little ideas and drawings and things. And then of course at the top here is this day camp. We would go camping, do day camp as well. And had so much fun doing that. So I put that in sort of the preference era. The next era is the era of expression where I started doing more theater and drama. I also made my first website in 2006. I just fell in love with Weird Al music. I just loved— I thought he was hilarious. I love the variety of music he covered. And Nightwish, the first, uh, I don't know about first, but a band that has significantly influenced the music that I love today, the symphonic power metal progressive metal genre. It's really started around 2006-ish, 2008-ish, around there. 2008 is what I would deem the social epoch. That's where I really branched out a bit more. And my friend circle was growing a bit more. I was doing more traveling. I got to go to Great Britain and Germany and lots of great places pretty early on. My family liked to travel around there. And that was an awesome opportunity. And then I really got into massive— I MMORPGs like RuneScape. I, that's when I made a Facebook account for the first time and was adding friends on there and figuring that part out. And then what's funny is the Zune product by Microsoft, the tagline was "Welcome to the social." The idea was like the social music listening experience that was very ahead of its time. It had music subscription services. You could see what your friends were listening to. You could share songs with each other. It was really great. I loved it. I loved the brand. I loved everything about it. It's also when I got my first cell phone was in 2008. It was, uh, it was a little after the iPhone came out, but that's far before smartphones were the standard. So I had a really cool Pantech Matrix phone, which is pictured here. And then 2010 was really big. That's what I'd mark as like the technology era. I was already sort of interested in technology around 2006, 2008, but it really hit, you know, full force in 2010 when I really got into computers. The first computer that I bought for myself that wasn't a hand-me-down from my parents or something was in 2010. I made a Twitter account— actually made a Twitter account 2009, and then I made another one in 2010. And then Windows Phone 7— I cannot tell you how big of a deal that was for me. It was basically the spiritual successor to Zune in a phone form, and I immediately started using that, and that really got me interested in user interface design. It got me interested in user experience design as well, and just everything to do with like this new metro-inspired era that Microsoft was up to. And that leads us to 2012, when I really started, started finding my vocation in marketing and really digital communication, things like that. So I just got super into LinkedIn, learning about how search engine optimization worked, a little bit more on the web development side. That's when I purchased davidvkimble.com. And then was really into the Microsoft ecosystem at the time. What they were doing, their vision was so promising. Now of course it didn't end up working out entirely the way that I would have expected or wanted, but the good news is I got a lot of experience from it and I met a lot of great Microsoft employees and other fans that— and really started that community building around that time. Also, the Christian apologetics book is there because I was really interested in these ideas of defending my faith and this idea of debate and, you know, what epistemology is the best and what can stand the best against scrutiny, those sorts of things. And I would categorize that roughly as my young adult era. And now we're, you know, 2022 beyond, 2025 now, 10 years, well beyond 10 years after that. And I'm looking at this and obviously there are things that I I'm not interested anymore. Like, I don't know when I was playing with Beanie Babies last, although I still do have my first Beanie Baby somewhere in here that hopefully my son will play with, or my daughter. And, uh, you know, a lot of these things I still love. Uh, you know, a lot of them are, especially the, the early half, are oriented toward kids, but I still have like a bunch of Bionicle figures over there. I still like the original Star Wars movies. Um, I think Pokémon's a great franchise. I My N64 is right over there in that little section. So, you know, a lot of these things have stuck with me and I feel I still have a lot of connections to them. I'm going to show my kids VeggieTales. I'm going to, you know, take them on a trampoline someday. And when they get older, you know, we'll have to figure out this screen thing. What, at what level do I let my children experience screen time and how do we control that, put limits on it. These are all things I've got to think about. And, uh, but the— but growing up in this particular era and being exposed to these things, it's been fascinating to see how it shaped me. And of course, now when it comes to interest, sure, I have— I'm interested in being a good husband for my wife, or being a good father, and being a good spiritual leader. And, uh, I'm, you know, I sort of have a growing interest in politics and things. Sociology. But somewhere along the line, I can trace it back to one of these things that really kickstarted the interest most— mostly, I'd say. And who knows, maybe next year or a couple months, I'll spawn a completely unrelated, crazy interest in something, and it'll look very different from all these things. But for now, I think this is a good— this is a really good picture of it. One thing I find interesting is during this era when I was getting super into Microsoft stuff, that's also when I started doing more YouTube stuff. So 2015, 2012, 2013, 14, 15, I was doing— I started my channel more Microsoft related, and then soon after that I got into sort of Project M modding. And so 2015, 2016, 2017, I did more of that, and then 2019, 2020 I went back to making Melee content. So a lot of you are familiar with that aspect of me. But like everyone else, turns out, humans are multifaceted, they have a lot of varying interests and things of that nature. So this gives you a little picture into some of the, you know, formative interests that made me who I am today. So anyway, this was a fun exercise. I don't know exactly what the impetus for this video was. It just seemed like a fun idea. I would love to hear from you guys if you relate to any of these things, if this timeline even looks anything like yours. I know a lot of you are younger than me, so maybe your, your formative years start in 2006 or, you know, 2010 or something like that. I'd love to hear from you what, what things from your childhood do you feel like you still hold on to today that as a young adult or what have you? And what do you return back to? Even though it was intended for kids or something like that? Or what interest early on do you look back on and say, that led me to this other thing that I love today? I would love to hear all your stories and all your anecdotes and examples. Thank you for watching.