about charlotte

I'm a 21-year-old senior at the University of Florida, majoring in journalism, minoring in classics and concentrating in awesome. I love building websites and lurking about with my sketchbook.

When I'm not writing code for work or fun, I can generally be found with a keyboard or controller in hand playing video games. I'm up to my neck in the Warhammer Online community, serving as the news correspondent for Warhammer Alliance, the Curse fan site for the MMORPG. I'm often tweeting back and forth with WAR's bloggers, and I try to find time to run my own blog as well.

Cpodemayo comes from my old high school/community college nickname, CPo, and my birthday, Cinco de Mayo. Random fact: Charlotte was too long to fit on my class ring, so I put CPo instead.

The photo below was taken by my friend John Cope as a Christmas present for my fiancé.

Charlotte on a swing

youth by samuel ullman

The quote on my home page, "Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind," is taken from my favorite poem, "Youth" by Samuel Ullman.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

© 2010 Charlotte Porter