Sean Shannon: An Autobiography

Hello there. Please sit back and allow me to catch you up on my story so far.

I was born 1976.03.18 at 2125 (9:25 PM if you prefer) at Flower Memorial Hospital in Sylvania, Ohio, a northern suburb of Toledo. To date I've lived all of my life in Toledo, although that may be about to change soon. We'll get into those details later, though.

My childhood was far from ideal, although things certainly could have been a lot worse than they were. My parents pulled me out of public school after the third grade because I kept getting beaten up for being a "brain," and from fourth grade all the way through high school I attended an elite private school, even though my parents really couldn't afford the exorbitant tuition there. (Especially after they started their own business.) Unfortunately at the private school I wound up being the favourite target of students, teachers, and administrators alike, and this left me with scars that still haven't healed after all this time.

After high school I spent one sweet year as a Music Composition major at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I finally established a good base of friends and felt like I was finally getting my life in order. However, the family business started to falter around that time, and faced with the choice of either going back to school or helping my father right his ship, I put my academic career on hold and began working for my father full-time. For a very long time I considered this the worst mistake I ever made in my life.

At Antioch I had gained my first glimpse of the World Wide Web, so when I went back to work for my father I started designing Websites both for him and his clients. I also did some personal Websites in my spare time, including some devoted to what was then one of my main hobbies, professional wrestling. My writing about wrestling started gaining me a small bit of "Internet fame," and before I knew it I was writing about wrestling for CBS Sportsline and adminstrating another commercial Website devoted to wrestling.

Eventually, however, I found that writing about professional wrestling was doing me more harm than good. Not only did I attract some negative attention from a few people in the wrestling business, but I started writing in a much more confessional, intimate style that many wrestling fans were unnerved by. I think what was going on was that I'd surpressed my artistic side for too long, and it started unleashing itself in my writing because it couldn't find another forum to express itself in. Thankfully, around this time I caught up with a friend from Antioch who recommended to me Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, a guide for people to reclaim their lost creativity. Realizing just how toxic of a situation I'd put myself in, I quit all of my wrestling projects, and on 2000.11.11 launched seanshannon.org (or "the .org" as I usually call it).

Six months after launching the .org, I went through one of the most trying weeks of my life. In the span of six days my two best friends disappeared (they had to go into hiding thanks to a business deal that went unbelievably wrong), I lost my biggest client at work, and then the cherry on top was a house fire that obliterated the entire second floor of the house. Even though I didn't lose that much in the fire, having to share a hotel room with my parents for the next ten months would have driven me insane if I hadn't made the decision to go back to college, this time at the University of Toledo.

Over the next three years I worked on, and eventually obtained, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Business Administration, graduating summa cum laude and with Departmental Honours. I got a couple of poems published during this time and won a nice chunk of cash for one of my short stories, but perhaps the biggest thing that happened during this time was first joining, and then becoming President of, the University's GLBT student group, Spectrum. During my presidency of Spectrum -- with the assistance of the best officer team I could have ever hoped for -- I not only brought the group to never-before seen membership levels and relevancy on campus, but I finally made real strides in my personal life, which had languished during my years outside of academia.

All was not wine and roses, though. For one thing, I had to leave Spectrum when a newly-elected President made it clear that she would do everything she could to make me as unwelcome in the group as she could. Also, in spite of a list of academic achievements that even made me blush (4.0 GPA, perfect scores on two sections of the GRE and 99th percentile on the third, the work I got published, the Spectrum presidency, etc.), I got turned down from nearly all of the graduate creative writing programmes I applied to. UT offered me a graduate assistantship for their graduate programme in English Literature, so that's what I wound up doing for the next two and a half years.

I got my Master of Arts degree at the end of 2006, and right now I split my work time between teaching composition part-time at Monroe County Community College and taking on freelance writing and copywriting jobs. My free time is mostly spent playing dance video games (Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove), and working on a countless number of creative projects. I've heard it said that some of the most successful and interesting people in life never figured out what they wanted to be when they grew up. I'd like to think I might end up being one of those people.

That's where things stand right now. In addition to being a showcase for my creative works, I also try to use the .org as a journal of everything I encounter in this strange journey that is my life. In the past I think my posts here have been kind of trite, writing about things like the weather and such, but I'm going to try to write about more substantive things from now on, especially now that I have to consider that potential employers might be reading this.

A couple of more things about me while I'm on the subject. From mentioning that I was President of my college's GLBT student group, you might have deduced that I choose not to walk the "straight and narrow" path in more ways than one. I first identified as bisexual when I was 16, and first identified as a male-to-female transsexual when I was 23. I have not had sexual reassignment surgery, nor do I foresee myself having the surgery anytime soon, but I have been living as a woman since 2000, and refer to myself (and prefer to be addressed) with female pronouns and surnames.

In addition to all of my creative pursuits, I'm also a connoisseur of fine music and video games. When it comes to music I like a little bit of everything, although my favourite genres are folk-rock (or folk-pop or whatever you want to call it), new age, and ambient, and my favourite artists are Björk, Tori Amos, and Sarah McLachlan. (Check out my Internet radio station on Yahoo! Launchcast for a sampling of my favourite songs and artists.) Although I don't play video games anywhere near as much as I used to, I still like playing through a nice console role-playing game (and still consider Final Fantasy VII the greatest video game of all time), although these days most of my "video gaming" (if you can even call it that) consists of playing dance games like Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove.

As far as reading material goes, I particularly enjoy the fiction of Poppy Z. Brite and the poetry of Sylvia Plath, although non-fiction political work is more my cup of tea these days. (On the subject of politics I am very left-wing and a proud member of the Green Party, although I've had plenty of right-leaning friends over the years.) I've never been much of a film person, and I don't watch much television these days, but I am deeply enamoured with the anime franchise Oh My Goddess!, and consider the female lead Belldandy as a role model for my own life.

I think that's about all I have to say for now. Oh, and if you want to e-mail me, my e-mail address is my first name at this domain.