ITSJMIKEE | ABOUT ME.

Alright, yup, it is happening. I have been told numerous times by numerous people that I should get this out there. I never knew how to, and I was always afraid of what people would say, what they would think, what they would do, casting my pearls among swine and so on. Welp... I never thought I'd do something like this, but hey, here we are. That little crab in its hermit shell? Yeah, he's slithering his way out. That said, LOCK IN, ladies and gents, it is about to get real, y'all. Your boy, the yapper, the EPIC destroyer of short conversations (like dude, c'mon now), fueled by Jesus (heck yeah man), caffeine, survivor of Xbox Live lobbies, and late-night existential thoughts is here! JIFF BAM BOOM! < What even is that? lol. Welcome, welcome, WELCOME guys! Alright lol... calm down dude, like fr.

Hi, I'm Jmike. I'm 31 years old, a 90s baby, married, blessed with three beautiful children, and HUGE on God. So, uh, I'll tell you a "little" about me. Yap yap session incoming...

I LOVE talking about Godly things, spending quality time with family, discussing deep and controversial things so I can learn and understand, socializing, forming connections, making friends, gaming, modding games, most anything from the 70s to the early 2000s, listening to weird music, streaming, and cooking, grilling, baking pizzas, and so on. You can even find some of that weird music in my personal music player here on the website lol.

Me as a person, you will soon find out that I am VERY outgoing and... just flat out weird (as you guys totally can't tell already) LOL. To be fair, a lot of us are weird in our own way, I guess. We all got our own weird things. But! While I am still 31 years of age, I am very much a child at heart. Unlike most adults my age, who drink, smoke, curse, smoke "married iguanas," and so on, WE AIN'T BOUT THAT LIFE, KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN'?! WE GOODIE TWO-SHOES, Y'ALL! My philosophy on all that is, why drink alcohol when you can drink Kool-Aid and be cool like the KOOL-AID MAN, "OH YEAH!" Why curse when you can say, "AYE, WHA DA POOT MAN!" Why smoke when you can inhale the clean, beautiful, blessed air God gave us?!

But yeahhh, for me, the reason I am a child at heart is because of the innocence of it all. I feel like as we get older, we lose bits of ourselves. Like... we have been programmed to think that as we get older, we are "sculpting" ourselves, "molding" ourselves to become "THAT sculpture." To me, I feel like we just become dull, lifeless statues. I feel like as kids, we already WERE the sculpted piece: creative, innovative, and full of wonder. Society failed us. It is backwards. So that is why I am a kiddie at heart, and I am proud to be that way. Bringing back the kiddies at heart, one human at a time, yessirrr!

Anyways, I'm going to put this out there... I am very much broken. I am still, in many ways, struggling. But by the grace of God, I know I will be healed, and I am finally healing. Every day, I give it my all. I know for most people, that may look like nothing, but it is everything I have. I rest on that because I know God knows my heart, and I know my heart. I know I give everything I have, and my goal every day is to be better.

Self-improvement is something I have always taken seriously. I aim to be the best version I can possibly be for my wife, kids, and parents. There is nothing I want more than the best for them, to see them happy, and to see them smile. Their happiness is everything to me.

Growing up was very difficult for me. It always felt like one thing after another, yk? I had a VERY hard time adjusting and processing it. To be honest, I never really adjusted or processed it. I just... kept going until one day, it ALL caught up to me. Boy, did it hit me like a train. Besides God, one of the few things that got me through all those hard times was gaming. I LOVE gaming, nostalgia, smells, colors, and tastes. These memories are a HUGE part of who I am.

Back then, I played all kinds of games: classic Mario games on Atari, NES, and SNES; Pokemon on Game Boy; Street Fighter on Sega Saturn; Mortal Kombat on PlayStation; Super Mario 64; Mario Kart 64; GoldenEye 007; Banjo-Kazooie; Super Smash Bros.; The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; MediEvil; Pokemon and Kirby on Game Boy Advance; Super Smash Bros. Melee; Super Monkey Ball 2; Luigi's Mansion; Mario Kart: Double Dash!!; Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door; Mario Superstar Baseball; New Super Mario Bros. Wii; Death Jr.; Need for Speed: Underground Rivals; Monster Hunter Freedom Unite; and Twisted Metal: Head-On on PSP, just to list a few LOL.

I remember we had this flat, compact, square-looking platform that the big fat monitor sat on, and I would wonder, "What the heck is this thing? How does it even work?" I always thought it was sort of magic. It just blew me away. It was the Windows 95 computer lol. The classic Win98 boot sound, cursors, wallpapers, screensavers, all of it. I would sit there for hours playing with customization, default games like Pinball and Minesweeper, Kid Pix, Doom 95, and classic Flash games like Territory War Online and Raft Wars. Then came Windows 98, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

I remember those hot, humid, sunny days, sitting outside on the front porch getting BLISTERED by the hot concrete while making chalk drawings, running around outside playing cops and robbers, messing with sticks and mud, and building little dirt towers like they were castles. Swimming in the backyard pool, hearing the mower running, smelling fresh-cut grass, weed whacker gas, and whatever smoky goodness my dad had going on the grill. Playing with the water hose, running around in the rain, getting dirty, not caring about time, just being a kid. Those days felt simple, colorful, and alive.

As I got older, I had a real Halo 3 phase. MAN, what a time. That was a golden era for me. For the OGs out there, y'all know the hype and grind for Recon armor was real, whew LOL. That game is near and dear to my heart because I was going through another rough patch, and Halo 3 helped me get through it.

In the middle of all that, I had one pal in life who was always good to me, besides the fact that she would sneak behind my back to steal my food. What the poot, man! That was my dog Kacey, my lifelong friend, a beautiful half Labrador and half Irish Setter.

Every day after school, she would sit at the window by the foyer room waiting for me to come back home. She would just PACE back and forth, grinning from ear to ear. I KID YOU NOT, that dog could SMILE. About dang near broke it too lol. But man, the TAIL? Phew. Once that tail started wagging, you better watch out, cuz it felt like getting whipped by the trimmer lines from a weed wacker. No joke. Ask Mom, seriously! Like sheesh, how did she wag her tail so hard?

That was just her way of showing excitement and love. She would get so excited when Mom and I came back home. Squealing, wagging her tail fiercely, licking you, jumping on you, and showing off that beautiful smile of hers lol. But yeah, she was beautiful, but uh... not the brightest star in the sky, bless her heart LOL.

One night after baseball training, I was sitting in the passenger seat looking for the beef jerky I thought I had brought with me. I looked over at my mom and said, "Uh... Mom?" She said, "What?" I asked, "Do you know where my beef jerky is?" She said, "No, did you forget it at home?" I said, "No, I thought I left it in here?" We got home, and there was Kacey dangling between the rails of my top bunk bed, basically choking herself, clinging to dear life with her tongue reaching for the beef jerky I had forgotten up there. Thankfully, I got her down in time, but gall dang man. All that for beef jerky? Yup, that was my dog right there. Beautiful, but not the brightest LOL. I have so many fond memories with her.

I lost Kacey in 2015, and that was truly a dark moment for us all. It got really lonely and dark for me from that moment on. The year after that, I lost my birth mom to opiates in early 2016. My last words to her were not the greatest, and I still have not really been able to recover from that. It is not something I have opened up about much. I still have not gone to her grave. I am still in shock and disbelief with it all.

I also grew up watching all the good old classics: Die Hard, Home Alone, Jack Frost, Christmas with the Kranks, Freaky Friday, Bruce Almighty, Beverly Hills Ninja, Tommy Boy, Last Action Hero, Terminator, and many more. Arnold Schwarzenegger was pretty much like an idol to me growing up. I admired how big and strong he was. I would think, "There ain't no way a human could be this big and that strong. He must be an android or something." Nope, he was real just like any of us LOL. That realization was like a nebular explosion moment for me.

From that moment on, I wanted to be like him. Big and strong. I would always tell my birth mom that one day, I was going to look like him. She would smile and tell me, "I know you will baby, I know you will." That is one of the parts that still hits me, because I felt like I let her down by not accomplishing that before she passed.

After her death, I had this drive, this spark that pushed me. I started getting into weight lifting, and it became one of the prouder moments of my life. I finally reached the physique and weight I wanted, and I had confidence in myself that I never had before. For once in my life, I felt content and good about myself. Then I took it a step further and got huge. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and saying, "I did it, Mom. I finally did it." Then, I ran to the bathroom and sobbed for a bit because she was not there to see it. That was the same year I met my wife, by the way haha.

Back then, colors felt more vivid and alive. Blue skies, puffy white clouds, a bright yellow sun, vibrant green grass. The seasons changing from sunny days to fall colors, red, green, orange, and yellow leaves, sweater weather, candles, pumpkin patch wax melts, Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas, and pulling out the vintage camcorder with the side strap to record family memories.

I remember going to the mall, running around, jamming out in the car to ripped CD mixes, playing laser tag, go-kart racing, skating rinks, and bowling alleys with blacklight neon carpet patterns. Nothing beat getting out of school on a Friday, making a trip to Blockbuster, grabbing a couple movies, making popcorn, pouring some soda, and spending quality time with my parents.

Man... I truly cherished those days. These are the things that still get me through hard times. I am grateful we have ways to take a trip down memory lane through smells, taste, game emulators, and watching my children grow through the lens of my fondest memories. I had lots of fun building this website. Finally, it gave me a way to express myself, a website that sort of represents me, being the epitome of me. Alright, ima stop rambling lol, but yeah, I think you get the picture. Looking forward to meeting some of you guys!

P.S. HOT TAKE: Did the world became lonelier after smartphones?