Introducing a lurker that has been coaxed into posting

I'm veemun, my username is a play on my last name (It starts with a V and people use to call me V-Man). I've been a part of many social media platforms over the years from Friendster (remember that one?) to MySpace, LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and so on. Though one thing that I've always been is someone that prefers to sit-back and take in the world around me. I have offered opinions and comments on other people's topics in the past especially if the topic interests me. However, for the most part, I've been a lurker.

Now, I'm not sitting in the dark hating what everyone else is saying, and I'm not a troll. I'm an observer to the world around me. I think I've always been this way for the most part, more of an observer and less of someone who interacts fully. That is until you get to know me and until I get to know you. I tend to open up a bit after that.

Throughout life this has given me several stigmas I have to keep in mind and deal with when meeting new people. New people think I'm elitist or think I believe I'm so great and look down on others. This has caused problems in my professional life as well since some of our more junior team members didn't want to approach me with issues. Once I had learned one of our straight out of college employees was "afraid of me" I immediately switched gears and tried to become more of a mentor to him the way others have done for me. I find mentorship to be very rewarding as long as the mentee is open to learning new things. The old adage of you can lead a horse to water applies.

Professionally I started as a Junior Software Developer after obtaining a degree in Computer Science. Over the years I've slid into Computer Systems Engineering. I tend to have an innate ability to understand how thing work under the hood and that's helped me a great deal. Also, I love the field since there is always something new to learn. Once you believe you know everything about computers or any high-level field that is when you start to fail and fall down into stagnation. I never like to be stagnant, doing the same thing over and over. I never want to be the cynical company computer guy

In my Personal life, I have a thirst for knowledge of all kinds. Space, technology, physics, beer (a literal thirst for the last one). I feel that if there is a large community interested in a topic then they probably know something I don't and I want to know what they know (within reason, I'm not interested in bungee jumping for example). That is how I started to learn about GNU/Linux, about brewing beer, about bourbon and whiskey, about cooking really good steak, about cars, about playing guitar and music, and a lot of other things. I tend to do well at trivia nights.

Not sure what I'm going to share on this platform, it's never been easy for me to talk about myself, but I know that I'd like to be less of a lurker and more of a member and have a larger part in a community. So hello steemit.

- Veemun