April 19th, 1974, around lunchtime, a child was hurdled into existence testicles first. The Cult of Sean was born. the world would pretty much be the same despite.

i was a wide-eyed, fat-bellied baby with nary a care in the world save food, sleep and a clean diaper. since then i've grown into a flat-bellied twenty-eight-year-old with nary a care in the world save food and sleep. (i gave up the diaper years ago.)

frankly, The Cult of Sean is just my weak attempt at satire. with the booming popularity web and the ease of homepage creation came rampant self-promotion. sites like Geocities, Angelfire and theglobe.com gave even the least technically savvy of us the ability to publish lengthy manifestos and trite details on the minutiae of our lives. very few of these useless homepages in practice have actual function other than to extol the virtues (or lack thereof) of the individual. propagating cults left and right, he said.

so why mince words? come right out and say it. this is The Cult of Sean and you had better well preen my ego.

after looking around you may wonder why i put up such an extensive site for such a little, little man. the easy answer is that i have an over-inflated ego. that my egomania gravitated to the electronic medium with force. but the truth is i like to use this site as a creative outlet and as a sort of design portfolio. it's my stage, my gallery, my street corner soapbox. design is my art form of choice and here is where i develop and display my work. it's a place to try things out and it's a place to advertise my skills to anyone who wants to pay me a perverse amount of money to employ them.

the idea for the Vishnu-like image came to me like most great ideas: while staring at the ceiling trying to fall asleep. (i also tend to be immensely creative while in the shower and miles away from a pen and paper to write the flashes of brilliance down.) one day, while visiting my then-girlfriend Becky, we set up the camera and took a roll of photographs of me with my arms in various positions. twenty-four scans and many tedious hours of pixel-by-pixel editing later, Sean cum Vishnu came to be. and so did The Cult of Sean.

life has been pretty good to me over the years. the parental unit loves me and lets me do my thing without too much of an overdose of good advice. i am blessed with a super-cool sister and a more-than-friendly tabby cat. once upon a time, i was a successful distance runner. that helped me get into Stanford University, where i survived four years of silliness and all-nighters. now i live in a great apartment in beautiful, foggy San Francisco, with beautiful red walls, a spot in the garage for my motorbike, and a view of the City out my backporch. i usually have a decent job that pays enough to keep me in the lifestyle to which i have become accustomed and a few good friends to keep me from going completely insane and pulling me back to reality when i do.

in my life, i've come to a few major realizations. i've taken a lot for granted for a long time. i should feel blessed with the way things go. everything i listed above and everything i can't comprehend doing without (the proverbial clothes on my back, food on my plate). i wasn't born with extreme privilege and a passport to do anything but i certainly was given a fair chance. i have, occasionally, worked my ass off to get where i am but there weren't any extra hurdles for me to leap. and i'm starting to realize, despite all the unfortunate things i bemoan, that what i have far outweighs what i don't have.

so, i'm a web monkey. that's right, i hang from the ceiling of the Internet and throw bananas at passers-by. and i love what i do. i finally understand what it means to say that. it's like getting paid to do things i use to do for fun. how bizarre.

what do i do? i architect and design stuff. user interfaces, web pages, navigation, graphics, print collateral, and sometimes i write the code behind the pages. you know all the little symbols and words like HREF? that's me, too. the explanation could be much in-depth and detailed but telling it at that length would only serve to bore you and annoy me.

after a couple unfortunate layoffs in 2001, i decided to start my own freelancing business. for a year, it served me well and i very much enjoyed the diversity of projects and a complete lack of office politics to get in the way of good work. recently, however, i was wooed back to the world of the employed by one of my clients and now manage people in addition to my design work. me? in charge of people? frightening, i know. but i've discovered a hidden skill in it. i'm actually a pretty good manager.

still, having learned my lessons the hard way, i'm reminding myself that any job is always temporary and continue to do side projects to keep my brain and my client list fresh. check out my portfolio and my resume if you have an interest or want to pay me way more than i'm worth so i can live a life of leisure and luxury. and then contact me with proposals and kudos. (both are appreciated.)

family has always meant a lot to me. admittedly, sometimes it's meant a lot of pain in the ass. but that's family -- you love them and sometimes it's so easy for them to get under your skin. they can know you better than anyone and be there to tell you when you're acting like a fool. sometimes they're there to tell you that a little too often. sometimes you just need to make the mistakes and learn the lessons without their help.

i come from an Italian family. big, extended, warm. by blood, i'm only a quarter Italian. (the other bits and pieces are made up of Welsh, Polish, French and who knows what else.) by breeding, however, i consider myself much more Italian. i grew up with gnocchi on my fork and a homemade, fully official bocce ball court out the backdoor of the family cabin.

there's a long, sordid, and terribly interesting tale of how my family came to be. when i have the time and the interest, i'll have to tell you all about it.

home has been such a varied concept since i left the comforts of my parents house in Oregon. in college, home was where the hat was hung. and even that was stretching it. forced to live in a cramped room for nine months with someone you have no guarantee of getting along with is not what i call comfort. it's a good learning experience, for sure. but when everything else is being thrown at you, there has to be somewhere you can go to lick your wounds.

but after a years of living in the same city, and a couple of those in apartments all my own, i feel at home. i have made my space my own. i have painted my walls and hung my art. the woman at the Gyro shop recognizes me by sight. i have a special place at the pizza palour down the street. (i fixed their computer one day.) i've seen the same hair dresser for many years now. it's all coming together.

i'm not sure what makes it home. it's the stability. it's the feeling of being known, of being a regular somewhere. but it's something else too. it's belonging to a place, being a part of something grand and diverse and intimate and personal. it's memories retrieved by the ringing of a cable car bell. it's laughing at a fancy restaurant with way too much attitude that use to be a Boston Market. it's being pleasantly surprised by your neighbor's dog who's climbed up your back steps and into your kitchen to say hello and check out your floor for dropped food. home is something special that just doesn't come free when you pay your rent.

moving to the City has had a huge effect on what i think of friendship. i've always been very critical of my friendships and expected a lot from them. but when i moved away from the socially infested waters of college, things got rougher, friends harder to make. i even found myself "settling" for friendships that were way below par. this coupled with the end of an intimate relationship which i had relied almost solely on for my support and human connection made me more respectful and appreciative of the friendships i did have.

it all goes back to taking everything for granted. school is such a breeding ground for human interaction, it's almost impossible to escape it. and that is really all i had known. the City was a very different experience. unlike like college where everyone was in the same situation and hungry to find a support system and new friends, people in the City are settled, comfortable in their home and not necessarily eager to meet someone knew. i, on the other had, was plopped down in the middle of all this knowing not a soul.

but once i found my niche, or started to anyway, i really began to appreciate people. up until that point, my friendships had almost been relationships of convenience. i seemed to be in it just for the support and for something to do. and while that's not particularly bad, it's not particularly open-eyed.

friends provide perspective. friends give you things you could never get on your own. they help you laugh at different things. they provide the opportunity to understand a new human condition. they open your eyes to new tastes, new tragedies, new tests of life, and remind you of ones you'd forgotten. they share experiences with you, perhaps experiences you wouldn't have had without them. and they give you support and something to do when it's all said and done.

without friends, we may be productive, we may be happy, and we may even be enlightened, but we aren't whole. good friends are as precious as life itself for, in a way, they are life.