About
Hi. I’m Rise.
I’m a lifelong creative: artist, gamer, writer, and music lover.
I built RISEorDIE.net because I needed a space that felt real. No filters. No feeding the algorithm. Just a place to think, speak, rant, and create without holding back.
This site is a mix of things – part gaming blog, part personal journal, part whatever’s in my head fighting to get out. Sometimes it’s a deep dive. Sometimes it’s a late-night ramble. Sometimes it’s something I can’t say out loud anywhere else.
It’s honest. It’s unfiltered. It’s mine.
What you’ll find here:
- Game reviews, rants, or breakdowns
- Thoughts on creativity and burnout
- Ramblings about life, identity, and expression
- Music that hits just right
- Whatever won’t leave me alone until I write it down
Who I Am (Behind the Name)
I’m a Denver native. I grew up a shy, nerdy kid who loved creating. I spent my early years obsessed with games, comics, and drawing. I even made my own comics with whatever paper I could find.
Everything changed when my family got our first computer. I fell hard into digital creation. I taught myself how to build websites, how to use Photoshop, how to make something out of nothing. Eventually, I went to college for Website and Media Design.
Afterwards, I struggled to find full-time work doing what I loved. In the middle of that, I got married. For a while, things felt stable. Then they didn’t.
Eventually, I found a job I actually loved, doing the kind of creative work I had dreamed of. But not long after, I found myself divorced, starting over, and trying to figure out what I wanted from life. Not what I was told to want. Not what anyone else expected. Just me.
My alias came out of that process. That shift. That moment when everything fell apart and I had to choose whether to break or rebuild. It was my own kind of trauma. My own kind of rebirth.
One of my favorite albums, Rise or Die Trying by Four Year Strong, was with me during that time. The final track, “Maniac (Rise or Die),” had lyrics that hit me hard:
“So let me tell you it’s cold out there at the top of the world
You’re left alone and scared with nothing to hold
You’re beaten black and blue when you could have been gold…”
There’s something about being broken and alone, and still choosing to stand back up. That’s what Rise or Die means to me.
So that’s me. Still here. Still trying. Still rising.