The voyage hasn’t been an easy one, but who would want that shit anyways?
Let’s start with a discussion about why I go by SmittyC or NillaGorilla. Both nicknames have a little lore to them, so let’s dig in.
Back when my knees and I were younger, I was in the Army. Smith as a last name almost always becomes Smitty. No questions asked, if you are a Smith, you’re a Smitty. That’s how it works. Well at my first duty station there was already a Smitty. As he was larger than I was, he was Big Smitty and I somehow became Smitty.
We added another Smitty before too long and I wanted to stand out, so I chose SmittyC for my own moniker and they remained Big and Little Smitty. So that is really where the SmittyC side of things came from. Typically, you can’t choose your own nickname, but I like to bend rules.
NillaGorilla is a different story all together. I don’t recall the exact commercial it came from, but there was a commercial back in like 2008ish that had a flash of a box of cereal named Vanilla Gorilla on it. It was a satire on the way kids cereals are marketed I am sure, but funny in itself.
One day chatting with a coworker about throwing a tantrum over something not working for me, he jokingly drew the parallel between myself and said gorilla cereal we just spoke about. We both laughed quite a bit about that commercial being funny and I adopted the NillaGorilla moniker from that.
Of course, I normally just go by my real name, but these are two nicknames that will be with me until I am gone. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle I hear.
What, that’s not enough?
I came into this world much like most of you, against my will. In the years since that birth, I have struggled to understand as much as I can about the world around me and the people that inhabit the Earth with me. I can be frustrating for people trying to understand me. I am opinionated with dark humor but try to remain open minded and respectful. I believe everyone deserves the option to have an opinion, but I feel that most are opinions are trash. If your goal is to understand me through this medium, pack a lunch and expect to be disappointed.
I have lived a lot of different lives in the span of time I have been around. I will write about a lot of it I am sure, since this is my cheap therapy. I wasn’t lucky enough to come out and know what I wanted to do with my life. Most of my life experience reads like a kid with ADHD and too much potential, I have tried a bunch of different things before finally landing on something that was enough. I am only halfway through this journey and looking forward to seeing, doing, and sharing more as I go.
Why should I write anything at all here? I am not impervious to imposter syndrome, so I ask myself these types of things often. Who cares what I have to say? Why would anyone listen to me? What have I accomplished to make this worthwhile? Honestly, anyone could look at my life and say I have no reason to share anything. Lucky for me, that’s theirs to live with and not mine. I don’t have to worry about what people think about why I do what I do, I get to just do my thing. If you’re one of those self-help guru types or a holistic creep you agree with my right to share these things for your own reasons. Thanks, I appreciate that, but I don’t need anyone’s permission to be me.
Why would you ask yourself this stuff, Chris/Nilla/SmittyC? Simple. I was born into a family that wasn’t well off. Lower socio-economic origin has a tendency to make people want to live in the shadows (look that shit up if you don’t believe me), but those same people are just as good as anyone else. During my upbringing I lost a lot of self-confidence for a myriad of reasons. I battled all types of crisis of personal faith throughout my life. When I want to share my thoughts, I go right to the “who the fuck are you to think anyone cares?” mentality. One thing I have realized though is that there are more people like me out there than I ever thought possible. We are each a snowflake, unique in our own way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t snowflakes that are really similar out there.
I write this shit for those of you who are similar to me. Read through what I share, keep what you like and ignore what you don’t. That’s the law of this jungle.
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