an introduction of sorts
my name is victoria, but you can call me ginger~
i was born the middle of five children in 1993 to a witch turned into an evangelical christian mother, and a sociopathic and abusive father in the eastern USA. i won’t go much into all of this, but it is an important part of myself, and i have been learning more and more about how growing up the way i did impacts me today.
i was very tomboyish in my youth, and since one of my older brothers and i were closest in age, we often had shared friends from church (rarely at school). most of my friends tended to be boys, but i made a few lifelong friends who were girls starting in middle school and onward.
i spent most of my free time online in forums, in chats with friends, on cute animal and gaming sites like neopets, or playing video games. my brothers and my dad were heavily into shooters, or the risk board game—but i was not always welcome in that sphere so i played legend of zelda, or co-op or competitive games (mario games) on the N64 with my younger sisters. gradually, i moved onto xbox, and the wii as time went on and siblings left the house more often.
my parents had a rather nasty separation and divorce in my middle school into high school years, and we all lived with my mother and did not need to leave our home. however, she then took on the role of caretaker and money maker—which was excessively tough on all of us.
i went to college, as we were pressured to do, and studied psychology—a huge passion of mine. as someone who did not always understand others and was constantly told i was too cold, too blunt, too much, i wanted to know more about not only my brain and emotions, but the brains and emotions of others.
in college, i was sexually assaulted, and that pushed me to learn about Title IX, trauma, and i began to organize on campus. i helped change policies and procedures, got a new administrative position added dedicated to this, and a fellowship position was also created and given to me to continue my work, as i was graduating. my fellowship position also helped write a 300k grant that the college did get, but i was let go after two years.
i started in a masters program for counseling, and made it almost all the way through but an unpaid internship was inaccessible to me for many reasons, and i dropped out of the program with six credits remaining (both semesters of internships). throughout my years i have grown more and more critical of psychology as an institution, and have stopped working in the field.
i have learned a lot about myself through psychology, and astrology. i love personality measures and assessments, even if they are not always valid (in the statistical sense). i think these tools are helpful for self analysis, and for me i feel the results are often accurate. i have discovered i am autistic, and relate heavily to my sun/moon/rising in astrology. i have been learning more about enneagram and human design recently, and they are quite interesting: i am 5w4 and a projector.
as i continued to spend more time online, i found myself hating corporate social media and ads which is what drew me to the fediverse. i jumped around before i ran my own instance for a few years, but now i am back at kitty.town and moderating there. i have always loved blogging and writing, so to find write.as was such a joy!
i hope to continue expanding my knowledge, and use this digital garden as a home for the knowledge to be shared and added to.
you can usually find me on kitty.town