rfong

Hi, I'm rfong! (One word, lowercase, no punctuation.) You might know me for my blobby cartoons, deadpan writing, sassy hand lettering, or insatiable love of persimmons.

what's this
I like to unpack crafty knowledge out of my brainspace into accessible and engaging formats such as worksheets, infographics, or blog posts. A brief sampling of semi-recent topics: 

• photography techniques for candidly capturing firespinners
• learn how to read & write japanese kana
• the science and practice of DIY coloring your hair

There is not much rhyme or reason to these topics because I really just love doing a lot of things, and especially figuring out how to do new things. The common thread is that I always strive to pull out the underlying rules and principles that will lead to true understanding of a skill, instead of just instructing you how to do something a single rigid way.ok tell me about yourself
I've been drawing since I could hold a pen and I see the world through over-the-top cartoon lenses. My first love was mathematics. I have worked in software since I was 17, although I am taking a break from structured work right now. I started writing code in 2001, got distracted by robotics engineering for four years, majored in computer science at MIT, and now do about fifty different things, several of them seriously even. I moonlight as a freelance photographer, played classical piano for some 13 years, once got too excited about sculpting a Skyrim dragon priest mask, once accidentally stayed up for two days learning Na'vi grammar, and have probably taught over 100 people how to solve a Rubik's cube. Some of my top hobbies acquired in the past few years have been hand lettering (which I now sell), rope dart and other flow arts (which I now teach), and making zines (which I somehow co-taught a conference workshop on 1 week after beginning to create and test a super efficient pipeline to milk zine ideas out of one's head??).

I am not sure how to accurately boil the above paragraph down to a more succinct sentence because just "I like to do a lot of things" is vague as hell; help wanted.

I have always been a jack of all trades, jumping around from one topic or medium to the next. At some point I realized I was topically all over the place because I was motivated by process itself -- analyzing how to make anything more accessible, streamlined, or unblocked.

why pledge?
I want your perspective and thoughts! Sometimes I communicate way too abstractly because that's how my brain likes to operate. Feedback from other people helps anchor my runaway brain train and fill in my blind spots. In return, the stuff I make will become more useful to you.

A Patreon community will make it possible for me to better understand and hone value in the things I make, and figure out how to sustainably do this part-time. During full-time jobs, I usually juggle 45 hours of work with 15-40 hours of personal projects, which is...possible, but often splattered with stretches of burnout or mediocrity. Your dollars will also go toward worthy causes like making me feel less guilty about buying myself massively useful $10 papercrafting tools, or sending more money to my favorite Patreon creators.

We'll see how this goes! Thank you for joining me on this journey.