My Story So Far

Welcome to the Fat Days.
I'm your host, Brian H. Marston.

y younger sister, Kim, once told me that nobody cares about a personal Web site nearly as much as the person who created it. I agree with that, but I'm hoping that you'll read this anyway. Personally, I enjoy reading other people's life stories, especially if they're honest and revealing. The Web, at once global and intimate, is the first mass medium to make it possible to read about the lives of ordinary people in their own words. Here then, is my story offered up for your consumption, or not, according to your will.

Chronology

I was born on May 5, 1973 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My dad is originally from Brooklyn, New York. My mom is from Nebraska. I am a flesh and blood test tube full of genes that never would have met if the interstate highway system had not been built or if the United States Air Force had not stationed my dad at Warren AFB. There are millions of other things that could have happened to prevent my birth. When I think about it, it's amazing that I'm alive.

For those who are curious about such things, my middle name is Henry. I use the middle initial when signing my name, partly because I think it looks more official and partly because the name Henry has been in use on the paternal side of my family for four generations. I'm the last male Marston in my family.

The aforementioned Kim was born on January 22, 1976. When I was five, my family moved to the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri courtesy of corporate relocation (my dad worked for Citibank). I had a fairly typical middle-class suburban childhood. The details grow fuzzier in my mind with every passing year.

To answer the perennial St. Louis question, I went to high school at Parkway North. I was very good at getting points and didn't sleep much. As a result of my willingness to practice wholesale life deferral in the pursuit of academic achievement, I was co-valedictorian of the class of '91. My favorite subject was English, and I was on the swimming and water polo teams. I was also a member of the infamous UNO club (we had a faculty sponsor and an electric card shuffler and everything). Yes, I was a major dork, but my memories of my high school days are almost uniformly happy. Such is the power of repression.

I went to the University of Missouri-Columbia (AKA Mizzou) on several merit-based scholarships that more than paid for everything. Once again, I displayed my prowess at getting points and staying up late. After five years, I graduated with three degrees — Mathematics BS with honors, Philosophy AB, and Education BES — and a minor in Spanish, all summa cum laude. I also came away with a General Honors Certificate from the Honors College and a membership in Phi Beta Kappa. My main academic interests were educational technology, complex dynamics (fractals), and the problem of evil (theodicy). I've forgotten most of what I learned, but I'm left with a vague sense that my education somehow made me a better person. I think going back to school now would kill me. Somewhere along the way, I lost the faith in the system required to jump through hoops set up by other people.

Up until the last semester of my fifth year of college, I was planning to teach high school math and Spanish. Then I fell in love with the Internet. Like almost every other young geek, I started a Web development company. Before long, the company broke up. As part of the settlement agreement, I was paid $200 for coming up with the company's name. I think that's the only time I've ever been paid just for having an idea.

After a brief stint at another Web company, Global Image, I was hired to work at the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis (OSEDA), a quasi-governmental organization. I did Web stuff and my title was "Research Associate," whatever that means (it was the same title they gave everybody). At OSEDA, I witnessed the Dilbert Principle up close and personal. After eight months, I escaped. I'm never going back to the Land of Cubicles again.

For exactly three years, I wrote Windows software in Visual Basic with my dad and a guy in Idaho to handle the mortgage pre-qualification and application process for Bank of America. We worked out of our homes. As you might guess, it was a rather lucrative business with almost no overhead. I learned a lot about business strategy from my dad.

I moved from Columbia to Lafayette Square in the city of St. Louis in April of 1997. I much prefer the sense of community, beautiful architecture, walkable neighborhoods, owner-operated businesses, cultural amenities, and diverse residents of the city to the strip malls, cardboard McHomes, SUV infestation, big box stores, and plastic people of the 'burbs. So many problems (urban blight, traffic congestion, environmental destruction, population sprawl, racial tensions, etc.) would be alleviated if people would quit fleeing en masse from the region's core.

On August 31, 1997, I married Amanda Esperita Doyle in Memphis, Tennessee (her hometown). It was the best day of my life. Amanda and I met at Mizzou, where she was a journalism student, and dated for four or five years before finally tying the knot. It's hard to remember how long we were dating because we were friends before that. Amanda is my lifelong companion, which these days is to be distinguished from a mere spouse, and my commitment to her is the one constant in my life.

In April of 1998, Amanda and I bought our home in Tower Grove Heights. It's a large brick two-family building that was constructed in 1907. We're planning to eventually do extensive renovation work and convert it to a single family home. With a wife, a mortgage, two dogs (Homer and Sasha), and two cats (Minx and Fang), I'm well on my way to becoming a full-featured adult.

On the first Monday of 2000, I started working as a Web developer for The Evergreen Project. Thus began a classic dot-com tale. Despite a drastic pay cut, I was lured in by gossamer talk of a cool new office, stock options, and an IPO. I was also attracted by the opportunity to combine my backgrounds in technology and education with my interest in environmental issues. In February, we were bought by Ask Jeeves and became Ask Jeeves for Schools. The roller coaster ride came to a screeching halt in October when the folks in California shut down our entire office.

A couple of weeks later, I went to work for LiveWire Media. It was a good job — I learned a lot, it paid well and I liked the people — but building employee benefits sites for big, faceless companies with names like Wabtec and LabCorp while dodging layoffs wasn't my thing. I would have been disappointed with myself if I had continued down the same path for another five or ten years. Fortunately, in the meantime I'd found something I truly love doing: The Commonspace, which began life in January 2001 as a monthly e-zine about grassroots civics and culture in St. Louis. On December 3, 2002, exactly 25 months after I started working at LiveWire, I emancipated myself. Later that month, the physical incarnation of The Commonspace opened at 615 North Grand in Grand Center.

Let's Get Physical

I'm 5' 10½" (I keep hoping in vain that I'll make it to the elusive 6' mark), 160 pounds. I have hazel eyes. Over the years, I've sported an impressive range of hairstyles and colors. I've eschewed vanity in favor of convenience and traded in my contacts for glasses, but I still have two self-pierced holes in my left ear to testify to my Gen X hipness. For post-mortem identification purposes, my right clavicle bone sticks up about half an inch above my shoulder as the result of a skiing/falling accident.

A Few of My Favorite Things

For a decade, from the time I was eight until I was eighteen, swimming was a big part of my life. I swam for my subdivision pool, high school, and a USS team. I was also a lifeguard and swimming/diving coach for several years during the summer. I rarely even get in a pool anymore. My last real race was the 200 yard individual medley at the 1991 Missouri State Championships. It was a nice way to go out.

My musical taste is fairly eclectic. Two of my favorite bands are the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Uncle Tupelo. During my freshman year in college, I attended concerts by a local ska/funk/punk band called The Urge with semi-religious devotion. They got a major label deal and some MTV air time; then they broke up.

I'm a techie who wishes he were an artist. Lately, I've been getting into digital photography. I don't know what I'm doing, but it's fun.

I strongly believe in the power of computers to change the world. They're anything boxes. You can use them to create art, crunch numbers, play games, communicate with others, store information, conduct business ... anything. No other industry has such a consistent track record of offering better products at cheaper prices every year. The rate of innovation is amazing. Without a doubt, digital is better. Bits are a big improvement over atoms.

Engineers and programmers are the wizards and medicine men of our times. We control the magic.

Between the Ears

I'm definitely a night person. Left to my own devices, I quickly adopt vampire hours, staying up until 4 AM and sleeping until after noon. I hate getting up, but once I'm up, I stay up.

I tend to be left of center politically. I don't have much of a problem with traditional Republicans, but I regard Dubya and his neocon minions as the antichrist.

My Myers-Briggs personality type is INTJ. The description of the INTJ personality type paints a shockingly accurate picture of what makes me tick, which is scary since the Myers-Briggs test divides up the whole world into 16 types of people.

I'm alternately plagued by self-doubt and delusions of grandeur. My greatest fear is to be invisibly average. When I walk down the street, I want people to think, "There goes a brilliant, compassionate guy" (in that order). I don't want to wake up one morning and realize that I never became what I wanted to and that I'm stuck in a dead-end job, marriage, and life. So far so good.

I'm adept at using logic as a tool and weapon, which is useful in my line of work. I tend to pose choices in either-or, all-or-nothing terms, but I'm always happy to compromise as long as my basic principles aren't violated. Faced with uncertainty, my intuition kicks in. My first instincts are usually right. I should learn to listen to them more often.

I have a strong obsessive compulsive streak. I'll seize upon an interest that grabs me with such singular intensity that I can think of little else until I move on to a new obsession. As a result, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none, but pretty good at quite a few.

I'm very selective about the battles I choose to fight, but if I do something, I do it all out, at least for awhile. I like to push myself, and I feel guilty when I don't. I can't stand doing a half-assed job. I feel like I've steadily declined in productivity since high school, and I'm scared that I'm losing my drive. The Puritan work ethic lives on, sort of.

The End

Well, that's who I am and what I'm all about, insofar as words on a computer screen can convey a sense of personal identity. Drop me a line at webguy@fatdays.com if you want to know more, or (even better) if you want to share your own story.