About Jess

I was born in North-Eastern Arizona in the early 1990s, and growing up, we moved around quite a bit. My dad is a third-generation over-the-road semi-truck driver, so we tended to move to where most of his loads were to try and make it easier for him to be home. By the time I was sixteen (16), I had moved seventeen (17) times. That’s slowed down a bit because at thirty (30) years old, I’ve only moved nineteen (19) times. My family has been in Ohio since 2003, so I’ve been in Ohio most of my life.

Growing up, I had your typical public education, local elementary schools, wherever we were. It was slightly tricky to make friends and then move and need to make new friends, but it became second nature after a while.

Things were good for the most part. I loved learning, loved reading and writing. It was fun to me– and it took a while to reach that point once again but I’m finally there. I had high grades and top marks in all my classes- until middle school came around.

That’s when things went downhill a bit. I began to experience bullying and taunting. I was a heavier person with bushy hair and a shy, quiet personality who hated confrontation. Despite having a small group of friends that were like family to me- I was an easy target for the bullies. I was lucky in the sense that it was never physical in nature, never shoved into lockers or beat down, never threatened. What I received instead was the mocking of my clothing, the hidden pulling of my hair during class, the verbal back-handed comments.

I tried to not let it get to me, but that’s hard to do, you know? My grades slowly deteriorated to Cs, and I began missing more and more days at school. By the time I was in 9th grade, my grades were D’s and F’s, and of the one hundred (100) days we’d been in school for the year, I was absent nearly eighty (80) of them. Halfway through the 9th grade, my parents asked me if I wanted to try an online high school, something I could do from home, and I jumped at the opportunity.

After that, it took an additional two (2) years to graduate from high school, graduating in 2014 instead of 2012, but I managed to get through it. My grades went back up to Bs for the majority of my classes, though my GPA was still lackluster. My childhood dreams of going to college were long gone because I believed that I no longer could go to college, let alone deserved to go. So- I dived into working and just focused on that for a while. One retail job to the next. I tried online colleges a few times, once in 2015, then again in 2016 and a final time in 2020, but it just didn’t seem to stick. I couldn’t get my heart into it; maybe it was the major I was trying, maybe it was because I was focusing more on working and not allowing myself to focus on education.

It wasn’t until after a mental health spiral in late 2021 that I knew I needed a change. I knew that if I kept going the way I was, in retail, that I would never be happy with my life. So, I made my choice and applied to Central Ohio Technical College, opting to pursue a Digital Media Design degree in Graphic Design. Why? Because it was art and art had become my happy place; I enjoyed drawing and creating. It was an escape to me, from everything.

And that’s where it all changed for me. I slowly re-found my love of learning, I let some of my fears and hesitations go. Walls that I had built due to past personal traumas, I slowly let them fall. For the first time in a while, I began to appreciate my own art, I stopped comparing myself to people in my past– friends I once had, people that meant the world to me, that cut me out of their life without so much an explanation or a goodbye. I learned to look at my own art in a better light, how I could improve, and most importantly- I began to learn how to love myself.

Central Ohio Technical College was the turning point in my life that I needed and I am beyond grateful for being able to have experienced everything they gave me. I was able to go to Italy for two weeks with the Italian Immersion program in 2023. I was invited to join the International Honor Society of two-year colleges, Phi Theta Kappa, in March 2024 for having my GPA at a consistent 3.25. In three different semesters, I had straight As. Two weeks after graduating, I was able to travel to England, Wales, and Ireland, which England had been a dream destination of mine since I was a little girl.

And it’s all just the beginning of my life as I know it.

I’ve since retired from retail, vowing that I won’t go back because of the mental state I was in back in 2021. I had a good last stint in retail back in 2022, which allowed me to moderately heal from that and gave me a peaceful retirement from that career path.

Currently, I am a freelance artist and content creator. I stream on Twitch and focus on self-improvement, both in terms of mental and physical health and my artistic and media talents.

Single, no kids. Just me and my cat – but that’s okay, I don’t think I’d have it any other way.

I’ve been to a decent chunk of the United States, and most of it is because of traveling around when I was younger, moving around from state to state. I’ve lived in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio. The rest have been where we’ve traveled through or traveled to when visiting family. My goal is to have traveled through each state though, so I have some work to do!

Other than that, international travel includes
-Italy (July 2023)
-Ireland, Wales, England (May 2024)

There’s a lot more travel in my future though. It’s just a matter of getting to that point and achieving it.

• Graduate from Arizona State University
• Study Abroad in Ireland
• Visit Glasgow, Scotland
• Begin a career path somewhere, doing something
• Buy a car on my own
• Get my own place