Tim Smith Avatar Illustration

Tim Smith he/him

@smithtimmytim

Geek, socialist, and maker of stuff

Had such an amaz­ing week­end in Palm Springs. I feel so loved and joy­ful. What a way to end the year and start a new one. Hap­py New Year!! 🎊🎆🎈 ❤️

I saw this on Face­book and had to share. In the past year of ther­a­py, I’ve come to real­ize how hor­ri­ble and fucked it is for par­ents to be your first abuser. Both of my par­ents hit me (although my moth­er want­ed to be less involved in this type of abuse). I got whipped with the belt too many times to count through­out my life.

I used to be in the ​“I got hit and turned out fine” group of peo­ple. No hon­ey, you didn’t turn out fine if you think it’s ok to beat chil­dren. Full stop. For many years I just thought it was nor­mal. That par­ents that actu­al­ly care about their kids hit them.

But now I know I didn’t deserve that. And nei­ther does any­one else.

It’s almost become a year­ly tra­di­tion for me to tack­le a cre­ative project of some type over the Christ­mas break. Not this year. I’ve got no gas left in the tank.

I get so tired of how sex neg­a­tive soci­ety can be, and even how that bleeds into the queer and polyam com­mu­ni­ties. It’s ok to want sex, and it’s ok for that to be a key way in which you express love.

Today was my last day of work for the year. I’m so excit­ed to have two whole weeks to rest, recharge, and spend time with peo­ple I care about.

This past week­end was cer­tain­ly one for the books. It was a week­end full of kind, sup­port­ive, and like-mind­ed peo­ple. I could be 100 per­cent myself and accept­ed ful­ly nonethe­less. I also seemed to unlock the next lev­el of the game called life, since I intro­duced myself to so many peo­ple and made quite a few friends in the process. Things are look­ing up.

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!