Least obvious, I have a family history of dementia and I’m genuinely terrified that someday I won’t remember the things that I’ve accomplished.

This tattoo represents a lot of things.

Most obviously, my love of math and the work that I’ve done.

Less obvious, I’m bad at celebrating my own accomplishments. This is a celebration of me in a way that feels genuine.

I started my career as a teacher. It taught me how to be a good student. Up until this point I hadn’t been a good student.

Eight years after my initial discovery I applied and was accepted to grad school. Fitting, considering my initial discovery involved the number 8.

This marked the first time that I considered theoretical (non-practical) math a worthwhile endeavor.

This was the first time where I felt smart enough to consider graduate school.

I applied and was promptly rejected. My grades were shit. It wasn’t a surprise.

I continued my work, but after a couple weeks my professors found that this had already been proven.

While I was frustrated that I hadn’t discovered something new I continued my proof because mine was fundamentally different than the original.

At this point I showed my work to two of my professors.

Their response, “We’ve never seen ANYTHING like this. Keep working. We will see if anyone else has done this before.”

I started trying different numbers and each number created a unique pattern and all of them repeated.

I spent a couple days staring at the different patterns and I eventually figured out that using a modulo base that was a Fibonacci number created a pattern that repeated in a predictable way.

Origin story:

At the end of college I was an active musician and studying math. Inspiration struck and I wanted to play a Fibonacci sequence in music, so I took the sequence modulo 8.

And I found a pattern that repeated.

For the most part I tend to prefer sci fi settings, but fantasy tends to have better games.