Who is the wizard behind the curtain?
I float around in the vast, infinite expanse of the void in a place I like to call Exania, within which I keep the ‘Speculum’ — the magical device with which I use to navigate the cosmos.
But from the perspective of Earth … I project an image of living in Texas.
The work of Ex Inanis began as soon as I was put on this Earth. I have been doing this work since I first took breath. I knew from as early as Kindergarten that I was different and that I was here to do something — I had an intense lucid awareness that other kids just seemed to lack. I spent 40 years of life figuring it out.
The actual “product” that is the Ex Inanis website and articles came about in a phoenix-moment in March of 2022 where my life had been burned down to the ground. In almost an instant, I felt I had lost everything. I still had all my earthly possessions but it didn’t matter — something far worse had happened. I had felt like I lost my soul.
A desire for peace, a desire for a family, my health, the idea that other people even existed — all lost. I felt like I was the only person in the universe. I had an existential angst so terrible that I was worried that there were worse places than death than I could end up. And I had feelings that felt alien within me, like they were artificial, or put there by someone else.
All the things — all the precise things — I had ever wished for were taken from me and it was through a combination of help from loved ones and sheer stubborn will that I rebuilt. Between the years of 2022 and 2023, I felt like I had re-lived my entire life up until then all over again except super-compressed. It was brutal.
Ex Inanis was created as a way — a necessity — to reclaiming my soul. But it was also a work I had begun a long time ago. A special little fox kick-started this awakening journey in earnest.
I feel like my life has been a giant, but necessary, detour. I feel like my life is only now beginning after a prolonged, soul-crushing war. I feel like I have finally reached a place where I can actually build something solid after years of skirmish and all-out battle.
What does this wizard do?
To keep up Earthly appearances, I offer web development & design services. I am pretty good at it, even though I more or less despise computers & technology. Ironic, right?
In the evening, I masquerade as an artist, hoping to one day make the mask real and close the doors of my web business forever.
What do you do for fun?
I used to play a lot of video games as a way of dysfunctional escapism. I had a library of thousands of games that I sacrificed as a commitment to change.
I’ve whittled myself down to very occasional sessions in Final Fantasy XIV. You can find me in FFXIV as Anlaora Leoffennia @ Cactuar. I play primarily as a White Mage and a Dragoon. Feel free to message me.
Otherwise I listen to a lot of music, draw, garden, spend time in nature & meditate.
What are your plans for the future?
A good wizard never reveals his plans.
I would like to eventually organize the material of Ex Inanis into a book, but there is a great deal of material left unwritten, squirreled away in notes, journals and the recesses of my addled mind.
There are some interesting ideas being planned for the near future (April 16th, 2024 as of this writing.) They are not ready yet to be revealed. Keep an eye out.