Hi, I'm Matthew (Matheus in Portuguese), maybe you know me by my gamer nickname: "Grunky06". This is my personal site where I post about my personal and professional projects. I also post my most eccentric views about Life, the Church and Everything Else.
Warning: this site is under construction!
*theatrical creep intensifies* Feel free to browse, but be careful about what you touch (or click). *returns to normal self* In this virtual space, you will find many of my interests, both personal and professional, and how I can like many different things in life and *depressed self intensifies* do everything badly done, *returns to normal self* but anyway, you can use the navigation bar in the top of the screen to navigate through the pages. Or if you want to know a little about me and what inspired me to create this site, just continue reading (I swear I'm not schizophrenic, *in Gollum's voice* the voices told me I'm not).
For those who want to know about my nickname, "Grunky" is a reference from G. K. Chesterton: "A word I invented at the age of five to express my religious sentiments".
Se quiser ler o conteúdo em Português, pode utilizar o botão no canto superior direito da tela para alterar o idioma, este botão se encontra em todas as páginas.
*prepare a deep narrative voice* In the beginning God created heaven and earth... *returns to normal self* just kidding, I'm not telling the whole history, not even just the whole history of my life, because it would be pretty boring, so I want to tell a few of my references that I found through life that helped me to form the man I become (and still aspire to be). I decided to express them in order of importance (from the most importante to the least) because a chronological explanation would be too much long and boring and I want to make the right references for my projects from them.
The most important historical facts that you need to know (for now) is that I wasn't catholic when I was young, and some time after I become catholic I studied in seminary for 7 years to become a priest, but quit before finishing my studies.
I found that this particular formal religion matched my inner philosophical creed: the compromise to seek Truth and follow it whatever it guides us. But not just that, it also matched my other inner philosopphical creed: the freedom to be myself. Those are some of my most strong convictions. I don't want to be too much philosophical right now, but most people think these two creeds are incompatible because "you can't be really free if you submit yourself to a formal way of life", but I find that inside this formal religion there's many ways of life and they are the most harmonic with the elements of life itself, in them I see a place for happiness and also for sadness, a place for dreams and frustrations, where they have a meaning that makes sense of life in it's different expressions. From this perspective, I can say that all my other references are related to this one, they are the ways I find expression for myself inside the spiritual walls of the Catholic Church, where I can learn to be myself like an actor that needs to play his own role in the theatre of his life, wrote by God but played by the person in the way it wants, and talking to God is to understand this role, this particular mission in the world.
To put it simple, Chesterton is my most admired personality (after JC), from his deep insights about life to his comic battles with his friends (and many disagree him on everything), in a way that he defended and lived for the "common sense of common men". I believe he will become a Saint of the Church (not sure when) because he have this authenticity that all Saints have (among many other things), they were themselves and that was what God wanted them to be, so I try to find inspiration from him (and other Saints, but mostly from him) to become the better version of me. You'll find many references to his work and life in this cyberspace, as he exposed the balance that I'm seeking in a more funny and adventurous way (usually I explain my view of life using the 3 Transcendent Values: Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but that's just a classification of the reality as I understand it, no one needs to think using the same system, since "every saint is a man before he is a saint; and a saint may be made of every sort or kind of man; and most of us will choose between these different types according to our different tastes", as said Chesterton).
I have an artistic soul (or I like to think that), I love music and dance (and I have to admit I have some of the "latin-american swing"), I like to admire works of classic art and contemplate nature (and by contemplate nature I also mean I admire the diversity of life, as Chesterton says in "A Defence of Ugly Things"), but I also appreciate the more popular art that can be contemplated (the "simple and noble" kind). My only frustration is because I never dedicated myself to learn any skills on this field (like drawing or playing an instrument), I only learned the basic of music theory and have some writing skills. Sometimes I feel a lack of expression because the words are the only kind of art that I have some skill and I want to express something that words are not enough to express (and I'm an introvert). I love many kinds of literature, specially police novels (like the stories of Father Brown), fairy tales and mitologies, and I like to study different languages (real or fictional) to find different ways to express reality and understand different people from different cultures. I currently work as a Portuguese Tutor for English and Spanish speakers (mostly), and sometimes I think about writing books to sell (but I don't care much about markets and success, I would do it to deliver a meaningful message, but also a meaningful message is worth doing without my profit, but I don't have time to spend on an activity that don't make any profit because I will not survive that, being a poor artistic soul sucks).
I like to understand games as a new way to tell meaningful stories, a new kind of literature, more interactive and sometimes co-creative (to cooperate in the creation of the story). But I like some games for pure entertainment reasons, like Shooters/FPS (I'm starting to watch more the Brazilian teams of CS:GO) or Puzzle games ("Escape Rooms" with no context/history). Games are in my life since I was a kid, and I want them to stay as part of it, being just a hobby or in a more professional way (but I feel like the current industry have missed some aspects that made oldschool games great at their time). I'm an RPG player (Role Playing Game, I've known a few systems like D&D, Vampire, Call of Cthulhu, among others) and I love the way we can share and live different lives and stories through fantastic worlds (and some may be very similar to ours), and I also love tabletop games (there's something personal about them that makes them special, and I'm not refering as my better attempt of socialization). I was a nerd and a tech-savvy since I can remember, and I really love the capacity of technology to change human life for the better, but I have my reasons to hesitate about certain topics because of the consequences from what the bad use of technology can result (I can be a little paranoid with security and privacy topics, but it's most because "civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks" as Chesterton said). I'm learning Python with a friend that works in the field (for personal and professional projects) and HTML / CSS to help me in the making of this site (and possibly for future projects).
My interest in oriental cultures (specially the japanese culture) is almost as old as my interest in technology, from an early age I was presented to the world of "otakus"/"otomes" (people who like the japanese style and story in animations and comics) and it BLEW MY MIND. I loved the way that orientals had their bases on a solid tradition and at the same time were capable to express the most eccentric ideas in their stories (similar to what Chesterton says in "A Defense of China Shepherdesses"), also because they value the honor of character, the discipline of work and the loyalty of friendships (when I find beautiful modesty is a plus, because many animes/mangas exaggerate in the sexualization, I understand when it's part of the story, but it's annoying when it's just "fanservice"). Later I started to realize the importance of knowing more about all oriental cultures (their overall way of thinking and worldview) for many reasons, but also because the Orthodox Church have a long-standing relationship with the Catholic Church, actually they were the same before a certain event separated them, so understanding it was also important to learn from them (and I like their style).
I always was a rational person (or I liked to think that way), before my first experience of God I was seeking Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but only those that were more convenient to me (and I was honest with myself since that time), after my experience of God a new element was hammering my mind, one that I couldn't ignore anymore: the Mystery (something a mad man don't have). Before my experience of God I had a few openings to the Mystery, but I considered most just as an emotional response of the brain, and I tried to avoid these "psychological effects". But from my experience of God it changed, because I knew it was different from a pure emotional experience, I could see the emotional part there, but there was something else that was not possible to describe in the moment unless to say "I am loved". With that experience and the start of my own studies (that I continued after entering seminary, specially taking advange of my Philosophy classes), I learned about the Imaginary, the Symbolic World to transmit the experiences through the literature (not just books, but also other ways to tell the human experience), and I realized this is how I could understand more about the Mystical World (not like a hidden complex knowledge, but like the deep meaning of life that is so simple that we need to find it through a personal journey to discover it inside us, because the relationship with God can only have a personal approach, and this symbolic journey is something that fills me with joy).
It took some time for me to start to like manual works, because I always was more a thinker than a "doer", but I learned to appreciate what is possible to do and specially to make something meaningful with your own hands. A work, even a hobby work (meaning an occupation / something that let you busy and not idle), is somehow what exposes more your ideas, because it's something you do frequently and it shows how the common routine affects you. In a job it will tell if your compromise with duty is made with significance, with integrity, and even with happiness, while in a hobby it will tell if your compromise with fun is made with significance, with creativity, and even with quality. I like to see many gadgets inventions, from magical fantasy going through steam punk to more cyber-techno styles, some for decoration and some for utilities (but it's better to do something useful with style), these wonderful things make me remember to be wondered by what already is here.
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