Heinzel

Hello again, world

November 20, 2024

Hi and hello! Welcome to my blog. You're in the middle of the very first paragraph of my first blog! We're off to a splendid start.

The start is the hard part. And it's over. It wasn't great, but now I can find something else to procrastinate on. We're off to the races.

Before I lose you, let's start with some context. I'm a 47 year-old white dad/husband living with my family in an old American Foursquare house (that is forever a labor of love) in Springfield, Illinois.

I have four kids, ages 19, 18, 7, and 3. They are incredible people that I love with my whole heart. They continually push me to be a better version of myself, and they've been patient with me as I strive to find more respectful ways to parent them. I'm looking forward to talking about being a dad. I'm also looking forward to having an outlet for some of the chaos that happens in this old house.

I'm married to Hannah, who is my best friend and copilot. She's a great mom and has helped lead the charge on some of our best parenting work. Gold star! I'm not sure how she feels about being in the blog yet, but I guess we'll find out!

We practice what is generally called "gentle parenting" or "respectful parenting," which means something different to everyone I think. I'm looking forward to talking about cycles we've broken, cycles we're still trying to break, and social norms that we've thrown out the window as we figure out how to parent these feral kids.

We're also all probably neurodivergent to some degree. We have one autism diagnosis in the house and a plethora of self-diagnosed spiciness. This has led us on a profound years-long path of discovery and awareness. We have developed many accommodations for each other within the family, and it's helped us be better adults for All the kids in our lives.

Also definitely neurodivergent is Finn, our medium-sized house dog. He's a mix of basset hound/beagle/some other stuff. We acquired him from a McDonalds parking lot in Southern Illinois, because that is apparently how you acquire dogs when you start poking around on the internet. We have given him about a dozen nicknames over his eight years, but mostly we call him Finn or Hims or Biscuits. Or literally any combination of those. Sometimes we call him Szechuan.

We also have a new dog, Peppercorn, who is a miniature Schnauzer. She presents herself as a fancy show dog and demands the very best of everything. She also eats crayons, toilet paper, and literal human poop. We got her from a Menards parking lot.

We also have a cat.

Anyway, I call myself a multimedia artist, because that feels accurate and just vague enough. My creative work has taken me on some wonderful adventures over the years. Photography is probably where I feel the most at home. But I love playing in digital spaces too, where you can bring Everything together. That's led me to learn several programming languages and create a fun array of products, ranging from a beer-themed iPhone game to a small social media platform.

This is an animated GIF I made in the early 90s for my high school newspaper's website. I recorded myself against a black background using my parents' VHS camcorder, then I somehow digitized the footage into the computer. I traced out the background of each frame (using a pirated early version of Photoshop) and recompiled them into this GIF using GraphicConverter.

I've made several short films and am currently shooting a long-form documentary. I'm fascinated by the role of video in our lives, how it has changed so much both technically and how it's consumed, and what role it plays in shaping our worldview.

When I put on my "adult costume," I am the Creative Director for the Illinois Principals Association. It's a wonderfully challenging and rewarding position that I am grateful to have. I work in an actual office most days, which I commute to via bicycle, which you'll get tired of hearing me talk about. I've been working in education for almost twenty years somehow, despite starting as a graphic designer doing commercial work. For a brief period around Y2K, I was a digital illustrator for an online educational startup in Southern California.

Quick story. In high school in the 90s I worked at Chuck E. Cheese for a hot minute. Some crowded weekend day, when like it was full of ALL the kids... one of my co-workers went into the little closet to put on the costume to do a walk around. Sometimes I would do this, despite being asked Not to by management. You weren't supposed to talk or anything. I didn't fit into the Chuck E. costume, because I was too tall. But I DID fit into the Jasper T. Jowls costume, and I freaking NAILED the voice you guys. And they made me stop doing it.

But anyway this story is about one of my co-workers, who is now wearing the Chuck E. costume and has about 162 kids clawing at his legs somewhere near the salad bar. This guy trips, falls, and the Chuck E. head goes rolling comically away out of reach. All of the kids, at the same time, take a step back, gasp, and then silence falls over the salad bar. You could hear a spork drop.

Beads of sweat are running down this dude's face. Parents are stunned. Some kid points and screams. They all point and scream. He gets up, runs over to his severed head, grabs it in his arms, and runs to the costume closet. Kids run everywhere. Chaos ensues. It was awesome.

Anyway! Where were we... oh yes, The Blog!

This is at least my seventh blog since the year 2000 and as we all know, the seventh time is the charm! I'm excited to be back at my original domain name, with an all-new website that I've designed to focus on Content. You won't see popups, slide-overs, password or cookie warnings. I won't try and force you to download an app. I'm barely even keeping track of how many visitors this website has -- there aren't any side-loaded analytics programs or anything from Google. It's about as simple as it gets, which is rebellious as fuck with the landscape of the web these days.

I haven't written in years, and I'm curious to see how my writing voice has changed. I've grown a lot through being a parent, through losing my own parents, through digging into childhood trauma, and there's So much that I haven't figured out yet. I'm trying to learn how to be nicer to myself, and seeing my thoughts written out at words that are spilling out into the internet is... weird though sorta therapeutic I guess. But it's exciting, and it reminds me of the energy that came with making a zine back in the 90s.

A spread from "The Elbert," a short run zine I made in the 90s.

This feels like a good place to end it for the first blog. Notes to self: write faster. Prepare more snacks. Tell more stories from the Chuck E. Cheese days. Don't only write about the fun stuff; there's value and humor in the hard stuff, too. Don't be too self-important. Don't forget that Dave Rock told you, publicly and repeatedly, to look into bidets, and his intensity and lack of societal concern makes me think that maybe he's actually onto something. Don't forget that you put a Mountain Dew in the freezer just to get it a little colder like, hours ago. You should go deal with that before going to bed.