Hello hello

Folks may know me from my professional work – that is the face I present the most.

But you are not on my portfolio page! You’re an adventurer on my personal site!

I have been publicly online since I was 11 in 2006, so I’ve amassed a more personal, online self that’s quite well-fleshed out. It’s a self that I no longer show in order to preserve my privacy and maintain boundaries as the spaces I use become more and more professionalised (internally and externally).

But you are on my personal site! So who cares!!

My internet moniker is Ashel. It used to be part of my branding as a middle name; however I have taken it out. Ashel is purely personal now. I still respond to it, and do prefer it being used over my real name – online, at least.

• I love writing, as you can tell – especially as a form of thinking. I can ramble on and on about things. So much so that I have this website to yakk about my art/interests and my blog to contain my thinkings about art, comics and life.
• I love drawing, too, because it’s always been my emotional anchor and form of escapism.
• Even from the early days I made up stories and drew them. You can see my very first comic here, as well as other ancient art. I never went to art school, neither was I singled out by my parents or teachers as an Artist whose potential should be pushed. However, I did make a conscious decision to improve my craft as an artist starting around age 12 to 13, and that led me to where I am today.
• I main as an online lurker, in the traditional sense. For the majority of my online life I am situated in the peripheries, kept to absurdly tiny communities. Excepting my own art, I tend to observe events and keep my thoughts about things I read/watch/play to myself, though I am trying to fix that with this Cabinet of Curiosities section and my blog.
• I started my online life as a kid playing Flash games on sites like Cartoon Network, Disney, Nickelodeon and Mattel. Then I discovered Neopets, and the wider world of the internet opened up to me. Neopets was my first community that bridged how I used the internet as a child and how I would eventually use it in the future: as an artist.
• I still check in on Neopets, the same way someone would check in on a place they used to live. You may occasionally see me on the boards or the Reddit, though I will not say under which UN. You’ll have to figure it out from the art style and other contextual clues.
• The sequence of my next substantial online communities are: Deviantart, Tumblr, Twitter, and Bluesky. I tend to stay in places for a very long time, and use them concurrently. I have not yet experienced a Club Penguin event despite my long internet history, and it’s something I am chasing (Twitter may be the likely iceberg).
• I’ve mentioned my former association with STEM in several outlets. Once upon a time it used to be a viable career path for me – I wanted to be a science communicator, or an academic pursuing the study of faith traditions as a constructive and positive form of therapy and identity construction (faith-based therapy but in a pluralist and progressive way). More than half my entire life, I pursued this path. Advanced Biology, advanced Chemistry, all of those things were stuff I learned in high school and college while juggling my passion for drawing and writing, which I had relegated to a side
• Then a quarter-life crisis happened and the road started to crumble. I’ve finally recovered from that crisis, thanks very much to The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya (which is why I bring it up constantly).
• Sometimes I think, if I knew my affinity for astronomy and life sciences, I might have gone into astronomy as a career path. Maybe I wouldn’t have so bad a quarter-life crisis then; at least I would have the stars to comfort me.
• I’m a life-long Camino Satiango de Compostela pilgrim. My connection to it began when I first read about it at 14, when I was very deep in my interest for world religions, and the Camino felt to me like a calling – something I would do in my life one day. That kinda fell to the side until the quarter-life crisis, and feeling a bit YOLO, I finally fulfilled that calling. I don’t think I will do pilgrimages often though – somehow my Camino(s) seem to function best as chapter markers, and I want to let that unfold naturally in my life. I hope to do my second one soon. And that I will be able to do a whole autobio comic about it!

That’s pretty much the core of my life’s history… or at least, the big parts of it that I think are important. These are details that provide context to some of the stuff I write on my blog sometimes, and the philosophies that inform my writing and art.

For the peripheral chunks, like my hobbies or favourite foods or my media taste, you may have to click around the links on this page and other pages of this big website! I spent a lot of time building this rabbit hole – so you better be wandering around!