Hi. I’m James.
As you may have gathered, I’m a researcher, writer, and photographer, based in Dallas, TX. I’m not quite a renaissance sort of man, but I do have some varied interests and hobbies, and they’re varied enough that I sometimes find myself a bit overwhelmed.
I was born and raised in North Texas—the Fort Worth area, to be slightly more precise—and I moved around a bit in my 20s. I received a BA in Painting and Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2006, and an MA in Art History and Criticism (and Cultural Studies) from Stony Brook University in 2008. In short, I lived the Metroplex for many years, on the prairie for three, on an island for another three, and I’m now back in the Metroplex.
I miss New York, sometimes, but I’m happy enough to be back in North Texas, and especially happy to be living in the incredibly pleasant Oak Lawn area, where the birds sing and people are reasonably accepting. I migrated to this area from Old East Dallas, where I lived for 40-odd months. I miss the diversity and food over there, but this neighborhood is about 1000 times more peaceful and relaxed.
By day, I research corporations for Equifax. By night, play with cats, maybe write some, maybe play with the iPhone, or go on photowalks or maybe shoot some street scenes. And on the weekends, I shoot, lounge about, occasionally go out and find something fun to do, and try to get my writing on. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.
I keep strange hours: I’m up by 4:00am every day, and usually go to bed between 19:30 and 20:00. And I pretty much eat the same things every day at the same time: around 6am, I have about a half cup of a dried fruit and nut mixture, served on roughly 3/4 cup of store-brand Rice Chex; around 12:30, I have a bowl of homemade soup—lately, it’s been a nice, spicy, vegetarian tortilla soup, and it’s been YUM; and around 17:00, I have a plate of nachos (homemade refried black beans, homemade tortilla chips, extra sharp cheddar cheese, and some pico de gallo if I have any handy).
Two cats—Olive and Ivan—live with me and keep me company. For the first couple of years, I had them trained to sleep in a crate at night, but since moving to the new place (December, 2012), I’ve been letting them be cats.
I’ll keep this short. I’m an agnostic, vegetarian, anarcho-syndicalist with a mild (and undiagnosed) case of agoraphobia (or perhaps it’s introversion, or maybe shyness, or full-on social anxiety, I don’t really know). I tend to avoid mentioning this combination of beliefs and traits until I’ve already convinced you of my other charms. If you’re bothered by any of that, stay away from the jam esc section (a largely-defunct personal research project from 2010/11) and most of the recipes and you should be fine, as I don’t push much of that on anyone unless we’re already pretty close friends and I use it to rib you about your idologies, with full expectation that you’ll rib me about mine as well…
You can find out more about me by clicking around a bit and making some inferences, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.
Thanks for visiting!
Oh! and here’s me with a moustache, which I’ve grown for Movember the past few years and sometimes keep for many months, though I’m currently bare-lipped and mostly go without.
