My name is Tyler, welcome to The backstory. I’m not going to write this in the third person because you know that I’m the author, and if you’re like me and get quickly annoyed when people do use that annoying narrative, your welcome.

At the moment I am residing in upstate New York with my pseudo-wife Megan and our almost three year old son Jonah (see image above). Oh, and with the Most Annoying Cat In The World, which replaced the Slightly Less Annoying Baby-Hating Dog.

I was born in Pittsburgh in Spring of 1982 and grew up in a small suburb of Portland, Maine thinking that a “big city” was one with more than 100,000 people…and a pro sports team. We had neither.

But 18 years go by and, you know what, anywhere more than a seven hour drive from where you’ve spent your entire life seems like the perfect spot to go to college. Places like this and this look ideal with all their charm and culture and crazy accents but inevitably you (or me, in this case) end up somewhere identical to the place you were trying to leave.

I finished college in a little less than the amount of time it was supposed to take me. After a summer in Los Angeles working on a few Hollywood film sets (we’re in 2003 now) I was able to graduate knowing that I never (ever) wanted to step foot in LA again. So I began questioning what I would do with that useful degree (film/photography) I had spent so long acquiring. A few months later I met Megan, grabbed my diploma, and hauled ass 450 miles back to my hometown that I had tried so hard to escape.

I planned an epic trip with my friend to volunteer and save the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, only to discover that our visas were denied, supposedly because the government can dig up that land we were trying to save and make a lot of money. I decide to join Megan in India where I experienced the joyous side-effects of my anti-malaria medication. And took lots of pictures (like the one below).

After a month of train rides, copious amounts of Chai, eating The Best Food In The World, nearly dying on rickshaws, sweating out the 110+ degree weather, and meeting The Greatest People In The World, I reluctantly returned to the states with no money and no idea what to do next, but some great cultural perspective (another useful thing to have, just in case, like my college degree).

So after bouncing between Maine, New York and Florida got old I headed towards Megan in New York…but let’s speed things up: I got offered a job working for Americorps in Oregon, which I inevitably turned down, Megan and I planted the baby seeds, I got a job as a teacher’s aide in a “special” school in New York, I started doing web-design work again (on the side), we quickly moved back to Maine with Megan, welcomed Jonah to the world, bought a house in Ohio (Megan’s home state), fantasized killing the realtor/seller of the house in Ohio, and went back-and-forth between being a full-time Stay-At-Home-Dad or full-time Stay-At-Home-Designer.

It’s 2007 and where are we? Back in Upstate/Central New York pretending to be adults. Megan is currently the Stay-At-Home-Parent and I’m still not altogether sure what comes next, but for now that’s alright.