The broken feature poster has been fixed!

As a curiosity, being a historian and all, I decided to try to break my life into epochs, or eras. Actually, I’ve been doing this out of habit for at least a decade. The reason I chose to focus on the subject for Jux is two fold; first, I have clearly entered a new period in my life. Second, there’s not been a whole lot of anything else going on as far as features are concerned. So come, let us venture into my life, and see what we see. Hopefully I can get Travis to either do a feature like this of his own, or comment on this one. Remember, this is just an overview. I might get bored enough to write a more complete biography later on in Jux time. Thanks to my packrattishness, the sort of thing that drives Vivian crazy, I actually have a large collection of primary sources to reference!

Over the course of this document I will be listing notable people. This is not meant to be a complete list of people that I hung out with, was friends with, or had interactions with. This is a list of people that contributed markedly to the progression of the era in question, or my mental state during it. These people influenced events.

1995-1997: The Gaming Era

I’ve named this part of my life the gaming era because this is the period where nearly every moment of free time at school and away was consumed by my hobbies. The habit would stick with me after the end of this era, but it would lose primacy and dedication, becoming an accessory to my life rather than the primary reason for going to school. It’s hard to explain today how much of an influence these things really had on me. You had to be there, and some of you were.

When I was living through this period, I made a habit of creating a sharp distinction between my 7th and 8th grade years. Looking back, it’s true that there are some very noticeable differences, especially in my emotional state and way of going about life, but enough common themes run through both to justify treating them as one. Yes, in 8th grade I became manic depressive and obsessed with the concept of “love” in general. In 8th grade I also had the first friendship of a pattern that would come to literally define the next era for me; Rachel Kaplus and I talked on the phone for hours on the phone, nightly. But at the end of the day, I still mostly played AD&D with Buddy, Will, and Scott; or Chrono Trigger and such with Travis. I merely bitched more while doing it.

The first year of high school was the transition period away from this period. The first semester, especially, saw substantial changes. By the time Kenny left for Pennsylvania in January of 1998, ending our games of Dragon Dice, this period of my life was real and truly over. My friendship with Rachel Kaplus also ended during this period. The circumstances were not hostile, we merely stopped talking to each other. The nebulous beginnings of the next would form over the second semester of my freshman year and the summer.

Notable People:

• Buddy Hennenfent
  

  • The first new friend I made in middle school. We had homeroom together, and he called me over in AIM later that day. That AIM class would influence a large portion of what was to come later in my life.

• Jayde Avakian
  
• Jeremy Raines
  
• Kenny Knapke
  

  • His tales are well told. AIM.

• Lesley Wells
  
• Rachel Kaplus
  

  • The prototype for what would soon dominate my life: The Graeme-class Obsessive Female Friendship.

• Scott Hankinson
  

  • I met him after his brother, but in the grand scale of things, this is the more influential Hankinson. AIM.

• Travis Rosenbaum
  

  • Although Buddy was initially my best friend, by the 8th grade Travis would fall into this position and stay in approximately equal relevance from this point on. AIM.

• Will Hankinson
  

  • AIM

Notable Games:

• Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
  
• Chrono Trigger
  
• Dragon Dice
  
• Magic: The Gathering
  
• MERP
  
• Middle Earth: The Wizards
  
• Overpower
  
• Star Wars: The CCG
  
• Vampire: The Eternal Struggle/Jyhad

1998-2001: The Era of Rebecca Graeme’s Feminine Problem

I think the best way to define this era is by my dependence on my female friends for mental and emotional support. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, either. I talked to all of the female friends listed below more than I would talk to anyone during the eras following. Hours on the phone with each, or AIM, regularly.

My personality had developed at this point past its 8th grade random mood swings, to a more controlled state. The facade was good enough that I was actually considered to be something of a “rock” by people like Travis. And it was true: especially during my closest points with Ryann and Rebecca, I was able to deal with almost anything thrown at me nearly as well as I can today. The problem was, any of the female friends could make me upset or depressed nigh instantly, often with no cause at all. It was a huge Achilles heel, one that would be gotten rid of later.

I was much more social in general during this period, spending almost every weekend doing something with someone. The early part of this era was spent in my eternal, frustrating quest for a girlfriend that I could never find, including two years of chasing after Rebecca. By the end, I had all of the female friends listed, and had dated both Ryann and Rebecca.

I could list all the activities we did that were of importance, especially worth noting is the group of people who played Mage: The Ascension, but unlike the era before that’s not what really defines this period of my life for me. In my mind, I spent these years on the phone, on AIM, or scribbling notes, while riding first in Caleb’s car, then Scott’s, and then finally Celes, my 1994 Pontiac Grand Am.

The beginning and ends of this era are easy to define. Simply look at the word I struck out in the title so that Vivian wouldn’t string me up and leave me to die. It is, however, true. This part of my life began when I developed a crush on Rebecca Traylor merely by looking at her during my sophomore year of high school; it ended when we had a huge fight over what I saw (and still see) as her lying to me during my freshman year of college. We didn’t speak for a month after that, and have never been close friends since. She was the first to arrive of her type, and the last to leave.

The transition lasted through the second third of my freshman year of college, although the building blocks of the era that followed were, as always, planted throughout the last bit of this one, starting with my taking a job at the library in June of 2001 and becoming friends with Samantha in May of 2001. Samantha would be the first really close female friend I’d had in years that I didn’t obsess over either as a friend or as more. She was different.

Graeme’s Female Crew:

• April Yamarino
  

  • No romantic interest.

• Ashleigh Gay
  

  • No romantic interest.

• Rebecca Traylor
  

  • The first person I ever really loved. Dated her, finally, in 2001, after chasing after her for two years; the whole of our friendship, other than the period I spent disillusioned with her while dating Ryann.

• Ryann Frye
  

  • My first real girlfriend and relationship. Loved her, too.

Notable, Male, People:

• Buddy Hennenfent
  
• Jeremy Ra
  ines

• Scott Hankinson
  
• Travis Rosenbaum

2002-2006: The Jux Entente

This era is well cataloged on this site, as in many ways this website is the best way to frame this entire period in my life.

The constants of this period with my life: I was a librarian, going to school for history. Travis and I had rediscovered Kenny after his absence in Pennsylvania during the Rebecca era. Before the end of the Jux era, Kenny would be living in Georgia again.

To write too much about this period would be pointless, as it is so well cataloged here. The defining movements of the era in my persona life was the complete break with what came before. During the course of my Year of Nihilism in 2002 I set about completely tearing down my personality to fix what had caused all of my problems in the era that preceded The Jux Entente. Despite the closeness we achieved as a group, my relationship with Travis was actually the most strained it would ever become during this year.

But, using the website as a place to test out parts of my personality I was unsure about, I was able to emerge in 2003, and for the rest of this time, as a better person. I was really the rock I’d always wished I was before. I became more outgoing, and more laid back. The part of my personality that worried me the most, my tendency towards arrogance, I turned into a running joke by intentionally hamming it up. Most importantly, the backdoor that my female friends could exploit before was gone. I no longer defined myself in a manner than meant I had to have a girlfriend to be complete.

That last bit cured my manic depression. I haven’t had an episode since 2003. I did develop another problem, though. I’d lived my life in a constant state of obsession over one girl or another for so long, the entirety of high school in most respects, that it became hard to live life without having a “target” so to speak. For a brief period I tried to convince myself to date Samantha, because I knew she had feelings for me, and she was very intellectually attractive, even though I had no true romantic feelings for her.

Vivian changed all of that, though, and after Vivian came and my relationship with Travis settled back down and for the first time we admitted that I had a problem with being too hard on him, and he had a problem with comparing himself to me unfavorably too often. I traveled to PA, Kenny traveled to GA, and finally moved back just after Travis’ wedding.

By the second week of 2006, this era ended. While the whole of the time I was writing my senior thesis, and part of the summer, would be used as a transition into whatever new era I am in now, Kenny’s temper tantrum sealed the gates on this part of my life. Two months after Kenny scurried off I quit my job at the library, which I’d had since June of 2001. In May of 2006 I graduated with a degree in History from Kennesaw State University.

Notable People:

• Kenny Knapke
  
• Sarah Gancarzenbaum
  
• Samantha Boylan
  
• Travis Rosenbaum
  
• Vivian Rath

2006-2XXX: The New World Order

I now work at Verizon, live in Kennesaw with Vivian, and am a graduate student at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Who knows what this will bring? The survival of the Jux website itself is in question.

Notable People Thus Far:

• Peter Rosconi
  
• Samantha Boylan
  
• Scott Hankinson
  
• Travis Rosenbaum
  
• Vivian Rath