I’m not sure how to write about this, because this is my personal and professional website. I’ve always been nervous about combining this side of me with my Drag Queen persona; when I’m in the office or doing Data Science, I don’t wear a flower in my hair, I don’t dress crazy, I stay focused on the work.

But I think being a well rounded person is healthy too. When I started performing drag on stage in 2017, I was stagnating in my Data Scientist career. I was working on personalization for Target.com and the product had matured to the point where there was not obvious “low hanging fruit” for improvement. IE, it was harder and harder to develop a novel personalization algorithm that would beat our current champion algorithms. So there was some “creativity” missing in my life.

But since I turned 28 in 2013, I had been going out and exploring the Minneapolis night scene, of which drag was a huge part. And if you read my fashion post, you know I was really getting into not blending into the crowd. I’d also started watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, which was a blast.

I guess I could have tried a hundred other creative hobbies, but I was most jealous of the performers that had people coming to talk to them all night. It seemed like an art form that made you “cool” instantly.

So, in spite of being a terrible dancer and not knowing drag makeup styles at all, I went to the Monday night amateur night at The Saloon and tried it out.

It was awesome. I did terrible, did not make the second round, and there were a 100 things that went wrong. But I tried. And it gave me something to work on, and made me feel like I was putting myself out there.

I’m still a terrible dancer/performer, but mostly the crowds feed on energy, and I really try to put it out there. There’s not many heterosexual drag queens out there, but at least there’s me – Tilda Nextime. Check out @MistressTilda on Instagram for a ton more photos.