Meet the Llamas – Packy

Hi there!

My name is Packy Smith, and I have recently become a blogger. I have always been a great big nerd, but now I am a nerd that blogs. I had thought of starting a blog for quite some time, but I’ve never felt the urge to join the online rat race… until recently. What kind of change occurred that made me want to operate outside my regularly established patterns and comfort zones? In order to understand the change, you need to understand the llama.

Who am I? That is a fantastic question, and it deserves to be answered. Perhaps one day I’ll get around to doing just that… I jest, I jest. Seriously though, here’s the Cliffs Notes on Packy Smith Esquire:

• Avid devourer of entertainment content: movies, tv, music, video games, Internet, etc.
• I am a Creative type Pokémon. I like to write, draw, make videos, and generally play make believe.
• I am a nerd. Period. End of sentence. If it is even remotely nerdy, I probably like it. Science fiction, comics, fantasy, historical documentaries, video games, table top games, and more or less everything else: I am a fan (except for Firefly, never understood the fascination with that show, and yes I know that makes me the worst).
• My sense of humor is broad and on occasion weird, i.e. I hope you like pictures of my bed head, because they are a-coming every day for a year. Cherish them. (Update 2018: I am bald. Full stop. There shall be no more bedhead. You may feel free to play Taps now.)
• Sorry ladies and gentlemen, but I’m happily taken and have been since 2001. You all had your shot before the Space Odyssey. Kitty, I love you!
• Family man that takes a lot of pride in his wife and children. Everything I do is for them, even the embarrassing stuff. Oh man, a lot of embarrassing stuff. Sorry guys.

My goal with this is blog is twofold:

1. To force myself to actively push my creative ideas to the forefront, so as to stop myself from hanging onto undeveloped ideas and start writing on a regular basis.
2. To build a body of work, from written stories, web comics and other various forms of entertainment to create a brand, Nerfed Llamas, and to eventually make money leveraging the content of said brand.

Why Nerfed Llamas? I was looking for something fun, kinda catchy, but off the beaten path. For the record, finding a domain name, especially a dot com, is hard. It’s like creating a new Apple ID, all of the obvious ones are taken, and as such you have to be creative in finding a name that is true to the spirit of who you are, but at the same time available to purchase as a domain. I landed on Nerfed Llamas almost by accident. I conceived a comic strip idea many years ago. It was a simple concept, a group of goofy cartoon animals that were roommates, and all they did was play video games all day – the catch being that they were terrible at playing games and they represented the worst of gaming culture. The concept of “nerfing” something, generally means to make something less worth while than it had been originally. Example, “this sword use to attack for 700 damage per hit, since the update it only hits for 350 damage. Man they really nerfed that sword.” Also, a long time ago, in a LAN party far, far away…. the word llamas was used as a demeaning description of a lame game player – essentially, some one who sucked at playing games. Thusly, Nerfed Llamas was born, perfect for a comic about a bunch of irrelevant and useless gamers. Many years went by, and I did nothing with this idea. I attempted to refine it from time to time, but those new ideas went nowhere, mostly because they were like butterflies, flittering away before I could dedicate the time and attention to catch them.

Fast forward to now, as I attempt to create my nerdy creative blog empire, I find myself in a precarious position of being the self-same Nerfed Llamas I was going to make a comic about all those years ago. Ironically, it fit. I lack focus, hardly dedicate time to my dreams, don’t play as many games anymore (although I want to!). In many ways I became a caricature of the comic characters I had created all those years ago. In an effort to claw my way out what I was becoming, and to focus my mind on what I want to be (even if just for a little tiny bit each day), I chose Nerfed Llamas to remind myself to expect better from myself, and because it was an available domain, and because it’s fun to say! There you have it: I needed to make a change to help me chase my dreams and to zero out my complacency, and that change is this: nerfedllamas.com

So that’s me, just some nerdy dude who loves being silly and creating stuff. I’m just trying to better myself and entertain as many people as I can along the way. I hope you enjoy my blog.

Also, just to prove that I clean up very well, and that I can still easily fall asleep after a full cup of coffee (or two, or three, or…), I present to you this photographic proof of life – see, I exist!