“About” pages are always a bit difficult for me to write. It just seems so…narcissistic but I never said I wasn’t vain so here it goes…
My name is Nicole and I live in Toronto, Ontario with my amazingly sweet and talented fiancé Gary and my rat terrier pup, Pandora. I’m one of those rare people who have been blessed with the man of my dreams, a fantastic group of friends and a job that I love.
I’ve found that in my 30’s I have really started to come to terms with who I am…
I am a faithful friend, love deeply, trust until given a reason not to, rarely ever hold grudges, and I have a small addiction to body piercings and tattoos. When I laugh it is loud and contagious, I have a strange sense of humour, think sarcasm can be fun, can hold my own in an argument but know when to bow out gracefully. I have a sense of adventure, but really need to work on my spontaneity.
It took me a long time to get to this amazing point in my life. I’ve had some bumps and detours along the way but eventually my path led me away from living in the very conservative Colorado Springs and back to Toronto at the end of 2003. I had a broken heart that I was sure would never heal but, after moving in with my two very supportive sisters, they helped me put the pieces of my life back together.
Three years later we all moved out of our rented house and I moved in with Gary to start a new chapter in my life. Looking back, I have to say that moving back to Toronto was probably the best decision I have ever made in my life. This is, and always will be the city of my heart.
Joseph Campbell once wrote that to truly be happy you have to “follow your bliss”. I’ve taken that advice quite literally and, after a lot of hard work, and teaching myself design, html, css, php and other geeky web related languages, I was able to land a job as an Interaction Designer at a fabulous company called imason. What I do for a living is a far cry from my young teenage dreams of being a teacher which led me to complete a B.A. in History a McMaster University.
Now, even though Ruby Nite is a fairly new domain, I’m definitely not new to the online world. I’ve had an online presence since about 1993. At first I was only really on MUDs. I’ve been a drow, elf, mage, thief, dwarf, Aes Sedai, goddess, implementor, builder etc. I rarely MUD anymore but I’ve met some fabulous people through them.
My first domain, Dark Dreamers, started around 2000. It included a hand coded html journal that was later removed in preference to simply linking to my LiveJournal (LJ) in 2001. I really enjoyed my LJ and it dates back to 2001 but most of those entries have been deemed friends only or private. I find I rarely have the time to keep up to date on the huge friends’ lists and I now prefer using my own domain and personal journal.
Next I created Digital Masquerade in 2005 when I decided that I wanted a fresh start and decided to get rid of Dark Dreamers. I was pretty active on DM from 2005 – 2007 but then life got in the way and I took a break from the online world. I also found that Digital Masquerade was quite a mouthful and people always got it wrong.
This leads up to Ruby Nite. The name came from a request to come up with a fake name for a wedding party gift. It really grew on me because it’s short, sweet and to the point. I’ve imported everything from Digital Masquerade over to this site so nothing has been lost. Ruby Nite is just another incarnation of my online persona. I really hope this one sticks for at least the next 10 years.
If you’ve actually read this far I’d like to say thank you. Apparently writing an “about” page wasn’t as hard as I thought.
