PuddinTopia is a labor of love born of frustration with my job situation a couple of years ago. As you can see from the posts near the beginning, the place where I used to work had more than its share of problems. You should be careful what you wish for, though, because a few months after I started bitching, I got laid off. What followed was a relatively brief (by most industry standards) period of unemployment, during which I questioned nearly everything about my life other than my wife and my children. Yes, in hindsight, it was brief, but don't ask the Puddinette if she thought so. At the time it felt like an eternity. I did manage a fairly regular posting frequency during my unemployment, which I think has helped me get a better feel for what I want to say here and how I want to say it.

After finally getting a job again, my posts kind of fell by the wayside. In order to kind of get life back on track, I worked two jobs for a while, and have been doing contract software development on the side since last summer. I even have my own company; scary huh? Anyway, for awhile I had to have other priorities. I just didn't have the energy for two kids and two jobs and constant new writing. I realize now that I should have kept up better, regardless. I did, after all, still have things I wanted to say.

I guess the real question is, who is PuddinBoy, and for cripessake, man, why the name PuddinBoy? Well, the name PuddinBoy, like all good nicknames, was given to me by some of my closest friends during one of many nights of unnecessary drunkenness. I used to play recreational hockey (I've recently hung up my skates for a bit while my young-uns are such young-uns), and all the core members of the team got nicknames one night. I'm actually pretty lucky, myself. I could have been the "Greased Weasel", the "Sloppy 5Hole", "Cocknut", "Asspipe", "Shithead", or my own personal favorite, "Braided Ass Hair". You see what I'm saying? Puddin Boy ain't so bad.

I'm a software engineer by trade, an employed one, (thank you God, or whatever you believe in). I turned 31 last year, and although I wasn't struck immediately with a mid-life crisis, I have begun to relize lately that it's time for me to decide what I really want to do when I grow up. Yes, writing software has it's moments, but it's not something that makes me want to get up in the morning. I guess, like anyone else, I'm looking for satisfaction from my life's work, a sense of accomplishment. My current position/career path isn't likely to help me out there, so I decided right about here that it was time to quit screwing around and really try something if I'm ever going to. So, I'm working on a novel, one that's been percolating in my head for over a decade. It's going to be a long road. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I'm going to be putting down a short story or so every so often as a form of practice. You can find those at my LiveJournal. Let me know what you think.

So, to sum up, I'm really a relatively chipper guy who loves his wife and his kids to death and likes to just kind of hang around and shoot the shit. Kind of like Hemingway, but without all that expatriate angst. Just give me a beer, a poker game, a table full of friends (well, they're assholes, mostly, but you can't ask for everything), and a family to go home to, and I'm pretty much a happy go lucky guy. Well, a happy go lucky guy whose life is beset by a huge black cloud that rains shit upon him at every available opportunity, in increasingly embarrassing and soul-sucking ways. But hey, you know, still...

Any other questions about who I am or why I do this? Don't ever be afraid to ask...

pud'n