Tim Smith Avatar Illustration

Tim Smith he/him

@smithtimmytim

Geek, socialist, and maker of stuff

I sent the fol­low­ing mes­sage to some of my moth­er’s fam­i­ly and select old friends:

Howdy y’all. Just want­ed to let you know from the horse’s mouth that I’ve decid­ed to [no] longer be a Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness. I encour­age you to do some objec­tive research into your beliefs. I was cer­tain­ly sur­prised by what I found. Send­ing love and hugs. If you ever need me, you know how to reach me. May the force be with you ❤️

It feels incred­i­bly free­ing to final­ly send this mes­sage. I haven’t had con­tact with much fam­i­ly in the past two-ish years. When I first debat­ed leav­ing the cult, it was incred­i­bly scary to think about how my fam­i­ly would react or how they’d treat me.

In case you did­n’t know, leav­ing the Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness orga­ni­za­tion means essen­tial­ly say­ing good­bye to every­one you’ve ever known. Mem­bers are instruct­ed to shun peo­ple who leave the reli­gion, even fam­i­ly. It’s quite nuts. My research led me to con­clude with­out hes­i­ta­tion that this reli­gion is false and for some rea­son that means I don’t get to have a fam­i­ly any­more. The only rea­son I got to do this on my own time­line is because the pan­dem­ic turned out to be a fan­tas­tic cov­er to leave this cult under the radar. Which I guess is some­thing to be grate­ful for?

But what used to be scary, I’ve now come to accept. I mean, my fam­i­ly has shunned me before, so what does it real­ly mat­ter if they do it again? Like, ulti­mate­ly, peo­ple that actu­al­ly care about you don’t emo­tion­al­ly black­mail you into being part of their religion 😘

So this feels like clo­sure. I hope to have left things open for any of them to reach out if they ever wake up from their indoc­tri­na­tion. Till then, it feels good for peo­ple to know where I stand, and I think it’ll help me start writ­ing the next chap­ter of my life.

I saw this on Insta­gram, and just had to share it. Year after year, so many of my fam­i­ly mem­bers would com­ment on my weight and body. At the time, I didn’t under­stand how dam­ag­ing and cru­el that was. I thought it was my fault for being fat. I believed them when they said, ​“I only bring it up because I’m look­ing out for your health.”

This year, we all have the pow­er to sim­ply shut the fuck up. If some­one gained weight over the pan­dem­ic, mak­ing a com­ment about it is the sure­fire way to alien­ate the won­der­ful fat peo­ple in your life.

Next Sat­ur­day I’ll be stream­ing on Twitch from 10am to noon Pacif­ic. I’ll be work­ing on a few of my side projects. There’ll be weed, cof­fee, and good vibes. Hope you can make it!

I’m start­ing a lit­tle bi-month­ly newslet­ter with what I’m work­ing on, music I’m lis­ten­ing to, and inter­est­ing things I find around the web. I’m send­ing out the first issue this upcom­ing Fri­day. It’s sure to bright­en your day. 😎 You should like… total­ly subscribe 🥺😘

Personal

Friendly Alien HomePod Giveaway

Excit­ing news! The Friend­ly Alien shop is open­ing next Mon­day, Novem­ber 8th! To help me spread the word, I’m run­ning a giveaway!

The Prize: Home­Pod Mini & a free t‑shirt from the shop!

How to enter:

  1. Fol­low Friend­ly Alien on Instagram
  2. Like the give­away post on Instagram
  3. Share the post
  4. Tag a friend in the comments
  5. Sign up for the newsletter

You can do these for a total of five entries MAX. The win­ner will be announced on Fri­day, Novem­ber 12th.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

Film & TV

The Book of Boba Fett Official Trailer

Opened YouTube this morn­ing as I usu­al­ly do to eat my PB&J and sip on my cof­fee. And what do I find there on the home­page? This fuck­ing bad ass trail­er for The Book of Boba Fett.

Boba Fett is one of those char­ac­ters that was incred­i­bly cool in the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy, but we don’t know much about him. Fun­ni­ly enough, we know more about his Dad Jan­go, than we do about Boba. One thing we seemed to learn from sea­son two of The Man­dalo­ri­an is that Boba seems to have his own code of ethics, which we get a glimpse of in this trail­er too.

I’m real­ly excit­ed to see what they do with the series. What a time to be alive! The new series pre­mieres on Decem­ber 29th on Disney+.

Geekery Personal

Join Me on Discord!

Some­thing I’ve strug­gled with a lot since leav­ing the cult, is find­ing new friends. I didn’t know that my friends and com­mu­ni­ty were con­di­tion­al, but such is life. No one seems to talk about how dif­fi­cult it can be to find friends as an adult. Espe­cial­ly as a cult sur­vivor where my friends and com­mu­ni­ty were forced upon me.

With that in mind, I decid­ed to cre­ate a dis­cord serv­er to help me build my own com­mu­ni­ty of sex-pos­i­tive and inclu­sive peo­ple. I’m not sure what this com­mu­ni­ty will turn out to be. But if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s my abil­i­ty to bring peo­ple togeth­er. If you’re a geek, ston­er, or queer like me, let’s be friends!

Personal

Introducing Friendly Alien

I am so beyond excit­ed to share the first few designs for Friend­ly Alien! Friend­ly Alien is my new lit­tle side-project to make soft, com­fy, and size-inclu­sive cloth­ing (and maybe some oth­er knick knacks) for geeks, ston­ers, and queers. I deeply believe that fat peo­ple deserve great things, and so it’s been my pri­or­i­ty to find soft and com­fy shirts that go up to 5XL.

I’ll be launch­ing a pre-order soon, so get on the newslet­ter to find out about it first! Oh, and uh… you’ll get 15% off when we launch if you do. No shenani­gans. I respect your pri­va­cy, and will only send emails when there’s some­thing cool to share.

Be a friend, share with a friend!

I SAID YES!!! 😍😍❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️💖💖💖💍💍💍💍💍 Some­one asked me if Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es are a cult!!!!!!

Film & TV

Lightyear Teaser Trailer

I knew noth­ing about this movie except for what I saw in this trail­er, but it’s enough. It gave me chills at the end. Can’t wait to see it.

I’ll have more to say soon, but I’m start­ing my own lit­tle indie shop called Friend­ly Alien. I want­ed to make soft, com­fy, and size-inclu­sive cloth­ing and oth­er acces­sories for my favorite peo­ple: geeks, ston­ers, and queers. And would you look at that? I hap­pen to be all three 😉

I have no idea why, but I nev­er bought an Apple Pen­cil think­ing I would­n’t use it much. I final­ly did and doo­dled all of last night. Suf­fice to say, I should’ve bought this thing soon­er. Here’s my doo­dle from last night.

I’d been wait­ing for this Fall Apple Event to decide on what lap­top to get next. After see­ing every­thing they came out with, I went ahead and ordered an M1 Mac­Book Air.

I heard a quote yes­ter­day that kind of blew my mind and still has me pon­der­ing it’s sig­nif­i­cance in my own life.

The prop­er func­tion of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in try­ing to pro­long them. I shall use my time.

Jack Lon­don

I haven’t been feel­ing super con­fi­dent recent­ly. But then I have moments where I see and know how beau­ti­ful and lov­able I am, just for being me. Hap­py Sunday.