Firstly, I'd like to thank the community at large for creating such a loving and excepting place. You wonderful bunch of weirdos have pulled together and carved out a place in society where "radical acceptance" isn't just a buzz phrase. I can't find the words to properly express my gratitude <3

I'm a VERY new convert to the community (see subject title) and I wanted to document a little bit of my journey so far because memory is so darn plastic. A week ago today, I was scrolling through reddit and I came across the meme that changed everything. It was a variation on the spike strip meme where the speeding car is "my heterosexuality" the cop was either "e621" or "furries_irl" and the spike strip was "Femboi Foxes". Until this point in time I had never considered myself part of the furry community. Actually, and I'm ashamed to say it now, I thought of furries as more of a punchline than anything else. 'Just a bunch of super-kinky folks who like to screw in mascot costumes,' I thought. So it was a surprise to me that this meme motivated me to do some googling. I've been out as gay for over a decade, so perhaps I was intrigued to see what the furry community considered fembois? Whatever the reason, I was off on a adventure to see what all the fuss was about.

After that first search my memory gets a little hazy. It was all a whirlwind of new things. Earlier that same day I had decided to finally check The Golden Compass off of my 'to watch' list. I'd seen the trailers years ago and it seemed like a fun and entertaining film. I'd also heard about its atheistic subtext from the atheist communities of which I'm a part and was intrigued. I couldn't have known then that I was grooming myself for what was to come. So, after some googling, I dove head long into the usual places: Reddit, e621, and FurAffinity. When I needed a break, I got high and watched Zootopia. Basically I had the most fur filled day a newbie like me could have xD.

48 Hours later I had picked my fursona species and two days after that he got a name. The intervening time has been spent trying to learn the lingo and devouring and collecting art from the community. I'm no artist myself, so my first sketches will be rough but I hope that one day I'll have enough concept art to commission a real artist to bring life to my fursona. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm still not sure if this is a new part of my identity or if it's a passing thing. Either way I've decided to just go with it and will continue to immerse myself in the love and weirdness that is this community.

Thanks to all of you kind creative beautiful people for being yourselves!