I love women because I think they’re wonderful. What I hope is that you might also share that opinion, especially if you are one. That could sound sexist; there’s an implication there that I think women are better than men. That’s not the case at all! I just like them more, personally. (You’re welcome to write all about the greatness of men if you like, but I don’t care to.) Beyond that, though, I use that specific superlative because I like that I can interpret it both as “full of wonders” and “causing one to feel wonder”.

I feel it’s important to clarify that just because I make such a sweeping statement about that half of the human race doesn’t mean I think it’s necessarily true about every individual who happens to have (or appear to have) two X chromosomes. There do exist bitches who are nowhere close to fitting my broad declaration. And by now you may have noticed that I avoid referring to women as a gender and that’s also a conscious decision. I’ve come to think that there are a great many points between completely masculine and completely feminine on the gender spectrum and that any individual may well fit anywhere in that range, regardless of their physical appearance. But I’ll explore that topic more later.

Going back to my argument, I look at something like this video of mostly women dancing and I think there is much remarkable within them. They stir a sense of admiration and awe within me.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nN0AyGVN-eY

It’s not just their grace and physical prowess, though that is impressive. I see many more qualities in that routine that exemplify what I love in women:

• There is physical contact and cooperation aplenty right from the start. These women don’t merely follow a plan; they can meld their bodies together to work as a fluid whole. Each is individual and unique, but all invest themselves into this performance to make it the best they can together.
• They dress up in costume. Pop psychology may claim that wearing a mask indicates a dislike of self or an act of cowardice, but I don’t entirely agree. I feel that taking on a masquerade can indicate a strong sense of identity. These dancers don’t need their faces to be visible because they are confident in who they are and what they are doing so can take on another guise just as confidently.
• They act like peculiar characters. When a person can pretend to be someone or something very different from herself, it shows me a tremendous empathy. That ability to really project oneself into another’s mindset is a valuable asset in many endeavors, not the least of which is communication.
• They are passionate. The range of emotion that these women convey in their movements is as astonishing in its magnitude as it is in its subtlety. I don’t know if I feel that much. There are definitely times when I wish I did. Yet I know from personal experience that this is still just a glimpse of the fires that can burn within women.
• They can be silly! Oh, that is such a difficult thing for me to be. It lifts my heart when I can see someone set aside the seriousness of the world and infuse their actions with happy insouciance. It is an element of childishness that helps make life enjoyable and I envy women that so many can keep it through all their years.
• They are purposefully pretty. There’s a cruel deceit pretending to be on the side of empowering women that claims wanting to look nice is shallow and therefore undesirable. That’s nonsense. Certainly, there are more important things in life than having a pleasant countenance, but it is ingrained in all of us to want an attractive exterior. Just as it can be a valid observation that when a person doesn’t care about their appearance they may not care about themselves, the opposite is also true. Denying the fact that when we think we look good, we feel good, is no more helpful to anyone than denying that a pain can indicate an injury. Of course, that analogy gives me a fine place to point out that hurting yourself in the attempt to look good dismisses the value of your feelings and that is going too far.
• And of course, they are creative. Not only are all but two of these performers women of varying ages, the choreographer is a woman as well. Look at what they can create! Even among my small circle of acquaintances, I never stop being amazed at the artistic capabilities and sensibilities I find in the women that surround me.

That’s just a bit of what I see in that performance, but I’ll stop rather than keep going on about it. And even that video only just touches upon what moves me.

That word creative reminds me that women carry most of the burden of creating life. I am not particularly impressed that women have uteruses, ovaries, and vaginas nor that they can carry a child in their wombs. Those are all lovely but they are mere facts of biology. On the other hand, I am amazed that women can choose to suffer the indignity of having their bodies attacked and distended from within, can voluntarily experience the worst pain imaginable, and then sometimes even choose to repeat the process. And when they choose to undergo such experiences, it’s in order to bring about a new life to love which will, frankly, burden them for a damned long time.

Of course, men can possess most of the qualities above; not every woman possesses them all. And men and women both can contain numerous great characteristics that I haven’t even listed. My point again is never that women are better than men. Sometimes, they’re not even all that different. That last bit is why I don’t believe that women should be given some sort of special pass just because their biology isn’t the same as that of the patriarchal designers of most cultures around them. Every woman, just as every person, should be judged on her individual merits.

No, it is just that these are aspects that I can find in women and I often do find them in tremendous amounts. They can be so great that my breath is taken away and my heart swells and I find them glorious. Yet, and I touched on this in the last post, some women either don’t believe that they possess such worthwhile features or dismiss them as unimportant. And I am astonished by that!

So it is not that I’m trying to reveal some secret reason to appreciate women. It’s not that they possess attributes that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s that we shouldn’t, nor women nor men, dismiss the obviously fantastic traits in womanhood. It does not matter if you find creativity or passion or some other great quality in every single person around you. Its prolificacy does not diminish its value.

Stop ignoring the beauty that so often runs deep in women and perhaps you’ll start to agree with my opinion of them. Really, at that point, it should be no wonder.

I plan to write several installments on this topic (hence the part 1 in the title). I am ambitious, indeed, for a blogger who… you know… doesn’t blog. This topic, though, has worried at my mind for months now. You see, I think I love women and I want to tell you about it.

I don’t mean that I love several women, though I do. I don’t mean that I have sex with several women, and I don’t do that anyway. I mean that I cherish the female sex, I value its members dearly, and I want to do what I can to support and strengthen them. I think everyone should. Women are wonderful. I speak to you.

You are brilliant, strong, talented, artistic, logical, athletic, passionate, careful, carefree, wicked, compassionate, wily, honest, wise, foolish, and beautiful. Yes, wonderful.

With anything that is wonderful, however, there is a danger that people will start taking it for granted. In the case of women, I’ve come to think that they even take themselves for granted. That’s not to say that if you happen to have a uterus you should behave as though you are the greatest thing ever. But you should value yourself. I’m sad to say that many of my female friends don’t seem to realize their own worth.

It’s implicit in the decisions they make about family, career, and relationships:

“I want to travel to Europe but my mother gets so lonely, I should stay and keep her company.”
“I’d love to move to New York and join a dance company there, but I don’t think I’m good enough for that.”
“He doesn’t always remember to think of me, but when he does pay attention to me, he’s really great!”

There’s a school of thought that women are designed to be nurturers and put others before themselves. I’m going to point out here that it’s the year 2010. In the USA, we’ve had suffrage for ninety years, and we just came within inches of having our first female President. Using our genetic or divine programming as an excuse for having some self-destructive tendency is just giving up. Men may be designed to be vicious assholes but that’s not acceptable either. We have intelligence, sentience, conscience, and community. We can choose to overcome any programming that may or may not be present within us. Of course it’s difficult and of course you won’t be able to rise above your weaknesses every time but neither of those are good reasons not to try.

Women should take care of themselves. They are as valuable or more so than the people for whom they traditionally sacrifice their happiness. If you choose to care for someone in ways that disadvantage part of your life because that nurturing fulfills you as much in other ways, that is a fine and conscious choice. But if you sacrifice some of your own happiness for the sake of another person or thing just because you think that you are not as deserving of it, you are only making it so. Choose to be strong and fiercely embrace your joys and you will be deserving of that as well.

But pause a moment. There is a danger here to swing to an extreme that I associate with old-fashioned feminism. Not so long ago, women had so many societal structures stacked against them, that in their fight to realize equality, many pushed too hard and ended up overwhelming others in their struggle. Feminist action has, I believe, occasionally resulted in giving excessive advantage to women over all others. There’s a possibility of infringing on others’ rights to freedom of religion and speech, to squash the liberties of other genders, races, and creeds. That is pushing too much for my taste.

I separate myself from traditional feminists then by thinking of myself as a humanist. I don’t believe everyone is equal but that everyone’s rights are equal and opportunities should be as well. There is no true victory of freedom from oppression if it results in oppressing others in turn. Take hold of your self-worth and hold fast, but do not take away from others. Your own worth is already great.

Despite how far we’ve come, there is a ways yet to go. In your time, many will seek to rob you of some of your measure of your own value. Nobody can ever take away your worth, but stealing your belief in it is just as harmful. Your boss, your friend, your peer, your teacher, your family, your child, your neighborhood, the news, magazines, books, television shows, movies, computer games and many other elements of your surroundings are all laced with a nearly inextricable bias to try to make you think that you are not formidable. Yet, that is what you are. Still, every choice you make cannot help but be influenced by those perfidious persuasions. They are diminishing, yes, but they are still there.

All I ask is that when you make your choices in life,
when you feel that hesitation that pulls you back from what calls to you,
remember that everything telling you that you cannot succeed will be meaningless in the face of your demonstration that you can.

Of course, you can succeed. You’re a woman. You’re wonderful.

I haven’t blogged in months but I’m not going to apologize. I post private notes on facebook and rarely go as much as a day without tweeting something, but I tend to save blogging for when I have something both significant and universal to say. Hello again.

My New Year festivities for the second time in a row were held at Lindy Focus amongst dozens of actual friends and hundreds of potentials. While there, I got into a conversation with a dear friend that encompassed many ideas about relationships. One segment stood out in my memory and went a bit like this:

me: I don’t know what I’m passionate about.
she: Words? Do you even want to be passionate about something?
me: Women want men who are passionate.
she: [patted me consolingly on the arm]

I don’t think I was wrong in my assessment there, but I left out many important bits: that everyone is attracted to passion, that I have experienced many times of passion, and that passion drives me and everyone around me to some degree… just to mention a few. That is to say: the conversation reminded me of one benefit of passion, that it is attractive, but that wasn’t all there is to it. Still, my major concern there was that in a moment of introspection, I couldn’t name something that drives me like that off the top of my head.

She was right, of course. Words are my passion. It’s become such a reflexive response to the questions asked of me, though, that I’ve grown suspicious of it and had to reexamine once again. The thing is, it’s not just prose on virtual paper like this that I mean by ‘words’.

By WORDS, I mean the whole complex layered thing that is the magic of communicating ideas from one mind to another mind or several other minds. Some people can do that by painting or sculpting. Others can do that by leading great lives of purposeful example. Still others can communicate with their movements. I am impressed by them all!

I am not good at creating poetry; I fully realize I’m a hallmark card hack when I try. But in other respects, I think I treat words well in expressing myself. I think can turn a phrase just so and allow you to see it better. I can write it by hand or type it out quickly. I can speak the words as well as I write them, if I take the time to do it with care. I can read my own or those of others and I think my voice can convey as much as I feel. I can even sing to add more layers, though again I can’t write songs to save myself.

The words drive me. They drive me to wake up early and stay up late. I’d rather oversleep from having had too late a conversation than greet the day early because I kept words to myself. Yes, Words are still my passion: their curves, their spaces, their rhythms, their decorations, their meanings and their meanings, their sounds and their absences. Their music.

I’m not sorry for not blogging in a while because if I’d just done it for its own sake, it would have lessened what I had to say. I am sorry that I didn’t have better things to say. I am sorry that I haven’t explored more ways to say them. I’ll be trying to find more of these waves of passion to share with you this year. I may even sing them if anyone can reassure me that my voice is better than bad.

I’ve found you again, passion. And now I’ll share you.

Yes, I realize that social networking is not new. Yes, even the online social networks that are the focus of this article have been around for a few years. Consider this, though: the ability for human beings to communicate clearly with one another, anywhere in the world, without a need for any acquired knowledge outside of one’s own spoken and written language, and practically instantaneously, arose from the telephone. The earliest such clear communication from one place to another removed place, that is documented, happened on March 10th, 1876.

America Online was founded in 1983, over a century later, and was the biggest online social network of its day, back when AOL implied it was an interface for the internet and before the general public realized that was untrue. MySpace came about twenty years after that and really generated a recognition of the capabilities of the online social network, but was loosely regulated and regimented. And on September 26, 2006, facebook.com opened itself up to anyone with a valid email address.

Thus, the social networking scene of today only began a few years ago and is still new in the grand scheme of things. I’ve only been on facebook since 21 August 2007!

* the editorialization above is mine, of course

The social networking technologies I currently use are: facebook, twitter, linkedin, instant messaging, and blogging (henceforth, The Big Five). I still email, occasionally. I basically email for work and to those acquaintances of mine who have not joined one of the social networks. There are two of those people in my circle of contacts. Two.

I first started using the internet with my Apple IIe back when Compuserve competed with AOL for dial-up modem users and the hackers found BBS’s to keep them entertained and scoffed at services that had GUI’s. And nobody who used a computer was considered cool by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. Once I got into university, I discovered these things called unix and VMS and acquired something called an email address. I learned to finger people and carry that shame with me to this day. In these early days, the only way I knew to communicate with someone via computers was to find them on AOL and mail them within that service, or find someone in JHU’s printed mail directory (fingering them to make sure it was the right person — sounds awful, doesn’t it?) and then mailing them there. I probably used pine to do it, too, since I didn’t like elm. What the hell am I talking about?

Back on track, one day while trying to figure out how to use a computer to tackle a physics internship project, I discovered a program on a Sun station called NCSA Mosaic. Some user before me, I think, had set the homepage to WebCrawler. I knew pretty much nothing about what was in front of me, but there was some sort of field where I could type and some sort of button that my cursor could click and thus my life’s productivity began its downhill journey. (for younger readers, this is akin to discovering Google for the first time)

What I discovered then, and subsequently cherished for about a decade, was an unrestricted access to anything that the world wide web of tubes had to offer. If I wanted to find out information about an actor on Friends, I wasn’t limited to what AOL was willing to show me. If I wanted to communicate with someone from my youth in Korea, they didn’t have to be at my university, all I needed to do was track ‘em down with InfoSpace or WhoWhere. My previously restricted access to only my joined services exploded into access to anything broadcasting the http service. And I adored that freedom. I reveled in it like a non-nerd might revel in backpacking across the globe.

Sad to say, from the beginning of my use of the internet, I ran into spam and spoofing. I fell victim to some scams at first, just like most newcomers to internet fraud. By the early 2000′s, I was getting a ratio of something like 1000:1 spam emails to legitimate emails, even using a new email address! When I first discovered MySpace, through a swing dancer friend, I suddenly found a way in which I thought I could communicate with people from all around the world… but only REAL people, not spammers and scammers. That lasted a day or two. The overwhelmingly irritating abundance of abusers on that site made me wish for a service that was similar in robustness but with better security against annoyances. And then came facebook and the other internet technologies I currently use.

The primary reason I use The Big Five in order to communicate with the world at large is that I am, by and large, shielded from garbage feedback. If I don’t want to see junk from an app on facebook or to be friends with someone there, I block it or ignore them, respectively. I choose who I follow on twitter. I choose my connections on LinkedIn. I choose who I instant message and whose IMs I accept. And there are lovely plugins that protect me from spam on this wordpress-powered blog. If a service is more annoying than it is rewarding, I’ll take my time and money elsewhere. BTW, this is also why hulu.com generally kicks youtube’s ass: more reward than junk.

These days, most of my legitimate emails are either internet purchase receipts, or notifications from a service for which I signed up. There are many reasons why I like facebook, but here’s a quick one for anybody who’s not already onboard: how would you like it if all your emails were ones you actually wanted to read? There you go.

And each of The Big Five fulfills a different desire for me:

• facebook is like a great unending party full of my friends. Sometimes they’ll wander off to another corner, other times they’ll run up to me to share a fun meme, and once in a while something crazy will happen involving a sheep or a muppet. When one friend passes out another might wake up. I always share at least one thing in common with each person there. Occasionally there are an abundance of shared interests and discovering them at the party makes us closer friends. We walk by each other and make comments like, “Hey, it was good to see you at such-and-such,” and “Oh, we should totally do this and that,” and “Happy Birthday!”
• twitter is similar but more in the vein of multiple conversations going on simultaneously, all of which revolve around, “So, what are you up to?”. The added benefits here are that you are perfectly welcome just to listen, and to listen to people whose paths you might never cross in real life. I’m enchanted by @feliciaday’s tweets and often laugh out loud at @michaelianblack’s tweets. I may reply to them once in a while in a semi-fan/semi-peer sort of way, but I don’t envision meeting them in real life. On the other hand, I also follow some friends and find this a great insight into their streams of consciousness.
• LinkedIn is my business networking in a social framework. I connect to various acquaintances and collect and give out recommendations in the hope that we’ll all mutually increase each other’s career values. If I came across a business opportunity, I’d immediately look to my LinkedIn connections first to pass it along.
• Instant Messaging / texting is email and telephone’s faster and cooler lovechild. I do realize those aren’t the same things, yet… I suspect they soon will be. This is my preferred method of direct communication when I don’t feel the need for the richer and more dynamic nature of a spoken conversation. It’s like a private conversation that stops and starts by either side’s whims, somewhat regardless of their current situations.
• Finally, Blogging is contemporary journalism. Sometimes, it’s simply a biased reporting of facts, other times (like this), it’s outright editorializing or feature writing. Today’s novice reporters need have no credentials but their own work, and not necessarily any sources but their own experiences. A gullible reader can easily be led astray from the truth, but I suspect that blogs will just train internet users to question more and sift reality from the falsehoods better than they otherwise would.

The current social networks are, obviously by inspection, inherently more limited than the internet at large. But a savvy user can choose their own connections to the existing streams of information and thus acquire a data feed that is much denser with usefulness than a yahoo search and empty of fraudulent African royalty.

What a beautiful world!

I have never stopped being proud of being a US citizen, but that pride is certainly renewed afresh with this auspicious beginning.  I admired the President’s address and applauded many of his points.  It is not required that I agree with all of my President’s statements as that is one of my treasured freedoms.  Yet if I have any qualms, I am far too happy to be a dissenting voice today.

I congratulate and welcome President Barack Obama!

I’ve never been interested in travel.  That’s not the same as disliking it, the way I really dislike moving.  Travel has just always struck me as a means to a goal rather than a goal in itself.  I grew up as a child of the military so would routinely move from one home to another every couple of years.  My parents would take me from Korea to Japan to Hawaii to Maryland to Illinois and back.  The trips themselves always seemed to get in the way of our purposes, which were generally to visit family.

When I settled into high school and then college in Maryland, I finally stopped moving with my family and was happy to put an end to the traveling, too.  On my own, I never went anywhere far from home.  With the onset of my dancing career, I started to travel for the purposes of getting to those dance events which were inconsiderate enough not to be in my backyard.  What I thought was that everywhere is pretty much the same.  People, places, things.  Gravity?  Yep, still 9.8 meters per second per second.  Now, where’s that venue?

It wasn’t until I started dating someone who loves to travel that I slowly began to understand a little bit of the allure.  The fact that every place is influenced by its own history and that the history of every place is different from its neighbors.  The beauty and uniqueness of each environment.  The culture and practices of different peoples.  There really are places where the grass is greener, the water is bluer, the horizon is wider, and the sky looks bigger.  There are towns where I fit in as if we were designed for each other and there are cities where I would always stand out no matter how still I stood.  The weather travels more than any of us and it has its favorite places, too, depending on its mood.

Even in that relationship where my eyes began to open, I still didn’t want to admit the fun of going to a new place and exploring it.  It has taken an overlong time for me finally to confess that the world is an amazing place full of astonishments and that all I need to witness more of those surprises is to stand on a different patch of land.

Two years ago, I started to enjoy traveling for its own sake and went on trips just to go on the trips!  Last year, I let go of the last of my reluctance and began to embrace every bit of it.  I liked the driving, I liked the flying, I liked the getting lost and the getting found, I liked encountering the people who spoke differently and ate differently and thought differently.  I sang along with the Discovery Channel commercials that declaimed Boom De Ah Dah, the world is just awesome!

I would like to go to England and Canada and Australia and Japan and the various tropical islands where people play in clear sweet waters.  I’m sad to say, though, that I am a little stuck.  I have become estranged from my sister and mother and I think that my birth certificate and most recent passport were last in my mother’s possession.  I have a driver’s license and social security card, but no way to prove… well, that I was born. My physical existence notwithstanding, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how I can show that I exist and thereafter how to get a passport as a U.S. citizen.  My friend, Soo, has given me some ideas and so I will try to see if I can get a passport this year despite the odds.  I hope that I am not deported in the process.  Damn my slanty eyes!

Even if I don’t get a passport, I’m going to stay open to the opportunity of travel.  If I see a cheap flight to Boston or somewhere in Florida, I’m going to try to go!  Las Vegas, Seattle, anywhere in California?  Yes, please!  And if there is ever a last-minute cheap flight to Hawaii, I am so there.  Hmm, I need to find a dogsitter.  Or make friends with a pilot who likes flying with dogs.  Oh, man, that would be great!

Thus, I resolve to travel to places this year not just because a dance event is happening there (although I am looking forward to New Orleans for Showdown!), but just because I haven’t been there yet.  To give myself two quick guidelines: if I can drive there in less than four hours, it doesn’t count; if it’s specifically for a dance event, it doesn’t count.  I’ll start small and aim for just one completely new place before the end of the year!  And if I manage one, I’ll shoot for a second.  And if I manage two, well, you can see where this is going.  This resolution will go hand-in-hand with my fourth resolution and I will try not to let a lack of a clear plan prevent me from moving toward that new destination.

It’s taken me a while to admit it but the world really is awesome, and I want to see more of it.  Here I come!

I like to think I know what’s coming.  I try to prepare for the future by planning out my own path and predicting the obstacles I will encounter and then ways to get around those.  I don’t think this is a bad characteristic, necessarily.  After all, Carrie taught me that a man with a plan has a better chance of being a man with a happy girlfriend.  The problem that I have with planning is getting stuck there.

There’s a mental momentum to traveling from A to Z by visiting all the letters in between.  Missing a stop is at least disconcerting and at worst makes you a horrible speller.  I am not proud of the fact that when my contrivances have gone awry, I have reacted poorly in the past.  It’s not as serious a problem for me these days; I’ve become more flexible and accepting of accidents of circumstance.  Still, even if I no longer wail and gnash my teeth when my schemes fall by the wayside, I continue to begin each day and each task with a recipe of ordered steps.

Just as staying along the edges of life restricts me from encountering more of what there is to discover, so too does staying on a prescribed path.  In the musical, “Into The Woods,” when Little Red Riding Hood is attempting to evade the Wolf and stick to the path, he replies:

Just so, little girl – any path

So many worth exploring

Just one would be so boring

And look what you’re ignoring…

Sure, he’s just trying to catch her to satisfy his own vile desires, but he makes a valid point that has stayed in my mind for well over a decade now.  By staying on the path, I don’t know what I’m missing.  That’s not to say I shouldn’t try to get to my goals, and certainly the straight line appeals to my efficient scientist’s mind, but crooked lines possess a beauty of their own.  When I have strayed from the straight and narrow, I have found things like amazing architecture, intoxicating restaurants yielding exotic foods, magical sights of nature, and at least one remarkable girlfriend.

In 2008, I got a really good GPS device (my previous Magellan was garbage) from Navigon.  Since this acquisition, I have found myself happily driving off in random directions just to see what’s out there, confident that I can eventually find my way back to my goal.  But in doing this, I’ve also come to realize that I could have always made those drives.  I have no problems stopping and asking for directions, and roads always go somewhere.  It was fear more than disorientation that kept me on the well-known lanes.

Today, I have a credit card, a reliable cellphone, and that nifty Navigon.  The only thing that keeps me from wandering the world is me.  I think I am capable enough that I can get back safely wherever I go and whatever I do on the spur of the moment.  There are facebook events to which I get invited, there are Meetups that seem interesting in passing, there are flyers for events all over the place.  I turn away from things too often because I’m not prepared for them.  But what would it hurt me to try things without preparation?  I might stumble and look a bit foolish, but there’s no lasting damage that comes from foolishness.  Unless you consider knowledge to be lasting damage, and that’s debatable.  I want to shake off my anticipations on occasion and just do stuff because I really don’t know what will happen and I find myself yearning to find out.

Thus, I resolve this year to jump into things without plans.  No, that’s not a plan, just a resolution.  A goal, maybe.  So, I’ll say yes to more invitations.  I’ll hear about something in passing and try it.  I’ll point to places on google maps and just go there.  I’ll call up friends and ask if I can join them in whatever they’re doing, just because I have some time to do it.

Speaking of which, what are you up to?

When I was in secondary school, I decided I wanted to become a teacher.  It was almost a defensive choice as it seemed to be a safe explanation for why I was such a know-it-all and why I always seemed willing and able to tutor my friends in various subjects.  I tutored primarily in maths and sciences but could also lead group discussions in writing and literature classes.  There were also a couple of semesters when I took art courses and people started coming to me for help on their sketching and painting.

I was no athlete nor a popular kid nor attractive, so holding a position of esteem by dint of being knowledgeable on a subject was terribly enticing.  The clincher for me was when I started taking Physics from Mr. Moore in my third year and discovered not only that this was a topic that explained the world around me but also that I grasped the concepts almost intuitively and could then explain them to my classmates.  That’s what I wanted to be!  A guru, a shaman, a demystifier of the peculiarities of life!

Then I went to university.  My spirit broke.  I still liked most of Physics from Newtonian Mechanics all the way through both types of Relativity… but then things got Quantum.  And I found no solace there.  Maybe it was because I aimed too high as I did attend a college known for its research concentration and graduate student programs and perhaps I just chose the wrong place to nurture my aspirations.  I wouldn’t have traded that time for anything, though, as I did make some great friends there and ended up learning the technical concepts that lead to my current livelihood.  Still, my thoughts of teaching classes faded with my enjoyment of taking them.

When I escaped academia and began to make my way in the private sector, I did occasionally fall into the role of tutor once again.  I would provide individual instruction on computer technologies and enjoyed it.  As I took up swing dancing, I found myself becoming that student who would learn the steps quickly and then could offer bits of advice to the other students.  I tried not to be obnoxious about it, but certainly if I saw someone struggling to figure out what they were supposed to do, or if I were asked for help, I would step up.

A few years into my dancing, I would join my friend Monica and then later my girlfriend Carrie in teaching some dance classes or workshops.  I don’t know how good I was, but I know I enjoyed it.  It was simultaneously easy and difficult to teach dancing since I would usually give the disclaimer that regardless of whether it was the right way to do things, this was my way to do things.  Then all I had to do was avoid looking bad and maintain consistency.  As I became a DC dancer instead of a Baltimore dancer, it was readily apparent that my teaching wasn’t needed in that locale.  There were several, sometimes as many as a dozen, incredibly knowledgeable dancers who were teaching around me and often in the styles that I liked.  I would be redundant at best.

Now, as I am content in my daily life designing and manipulating databases, and then heading out in the evenings to dance the night away, I rarely seek positions of teaching.  Yet, I still find myself sharing what I know and what I think.  I don’t tutor these days but I still dole out advice as though I were overflowing with it.  That might be an accurate description.  I thoroughly enjoy casual mentoring.  I’ve lived through some trials by fire and though the scars have taught me much, I find I like to veer others away from those flames by passing on my own experiences.  I find I want to teach more.

My topics of expertise revolve around my skeptical but positive view of life.  I find I am knowledgeable about the relationships between people in general and men and women in particular.  I am able to predict trends in business and entertainment based on my knowledge of how people work.  I read books, I read internet articles, I read magazines.  I also watch more educational television shows and documentary films than ever before.  Drawing from this personal pool of acquired tidbits of information, I advise my friends and find that when my advice is followed, betterment ensues!  Fantastic!

Thus, I resolve to pursue teaching this year in whatever capacity I can.  Business Writing for Nerds?  School for the Courtship Arts?  Dancing for Fun at Varying Speeds?  How to be Badass Without Hurting Yourself?  Santa Claus University?  Maybe I’ll take a page from Yes Man and hold Meetup style seminars on how to have a positive outlook in life.  Whatever I end up finding, I’m starting my hunt now.

Any questions?

Words are important.  I still think that numbers are the vocabulary and mathematics the language of the universe, but that metaphor shows just how essential words themselves are.  Words are what we use to change the world, more than muscle and more than science.  In fact, I think that the notion of magic came about because some people were able to use words in unique ways that frightened and amazed others around them.  The ability to manipulate words so that disparate ideas can be joined together in unexpected ways is beyond many and certainly strikes me as magical.

I am proud of my ability to make letters dance across a page to a tune of my own devising.  I am not the greatest author the world has ever known, but I think I am no simple scribbler of pedantry either.  I write sentences that make me smile and I try to convey concepts in interesting layers of colorful hyperbole.  Sometimes, I can surprise myself by the structure and eloquence that I manage to capture in fleeting phrases.

In 2008, Aba invited me on a quest to write fifty-thousand words in a month.  I worked hard to accomplish that goal and in looking over my achievement, I think it was good and feel pride in my production.  That story is not yet finished, but I intend to tackle the challenge again come this year’s November.

Thus, I resolve to finish my book from last year’s National Novel Writing Month before the next begins.  I shall also continue to write whatever I can, whenever I can, in the form of these blogs and perhaps in other endeavors.  I have found that I can write poetry, though it is juvenile and amateurish.  I have found that I can editorialize and spin fictions.  I have found again and again that I feel great joy when my words come together and stand before me in thoughtfully organized dispositions which effectively convey my ideas.  I have been happy to discover that once I record an idea for posterity, more ideas stand up to be recognized and captured.

I will write more in 2009 than any previous year because I love words.

Deer are creatures of the edge.  They live along the outskirts of life, be it in the forest or the suburbs.  They survive on what they can find, grazing giving way to scavenging should they exist near sources of great teeming life.  They are pretty and innocent and useless.  They make this world a better place by their beauty but it is a purposeless accidental achievement.  I like them, but I do not want to be them.

I think my nature also keeps me living along the edge of things.  At dances, I stand on the sidelines and watch for opportunities to dance.  At parties, I move out of the center and converse with those who happen to pass by me.  I wonder how many more instances there are when I stand at the border of some aspect of life and just enjoy whatever circumstances fall in my direction?

I am comfortable on the edge of things.  I stand by myself, I do things on my own, I make decisions based on personal reasons, and I avoid impacts with those around me.  That lifestyle is comfortable to me.  But I realize that psychological comfort is an illusion.

I suspect that we are comfortable when we think that we have support and safety and knowledge of what is to come.  I could make the argument that by staying in comfortable situations, the probability of harm or calamity is lessened, but statistics working in one’s favor aren’t sufficiently useful when you are hit by an unlikely disaster.  At the beginning of September of 2001, I would have thought that working in a lower level of the Twin Towers in New York City was a safe enough thing to do.  I imagine probabilities would have been on my side.  But those probabilities didn’t save the victims of the terrorist act that occurred soon into that month.

I have come to realize that staying back in the shadows is only useful for cowards and villains.  When I wade into the thick of events amidst people and the chaos of life, I encounter more opportunities for excitement and happiness than what drifts in the thin fringes.  It can be a bumpy experience, but bruises heal and collisions breed interesting stories.

I have already inserted myself into the midst of dances.  I can have fun with a dance partner along the side, at the back, or in the middle of a dance floor; but when I can be there in the middle of things, I am more likely to be surrounded by excitement and can better share in my fellow dancers’ joys.  Most of life is a dance of some sort, so why not extend this approach to broader circumstances?

In 2008, I went on more journeys than in most years, though many of them happened by accident.  I attended more events and parties.  I put myself into more crowds of people.  I reached out to more people.  I didn’t like all of it, but that’s not required.  I did experience a much greater variety of emotions and encounters than perhaps ever before and by the end of the year I had much better stories.  All of those benefits came to me often without my conscious decision to pursue them.  Well, I can learn from accidents as well as I can from lessons, and I have learned that there is more and better in this life than what I can see from the edge.

This year, I resolve to throw myself into the midst of things.  Whether that means sporty activities, meetups of various groups of people, venues I normally wouldn’t enter, or just random circumstances from which I’d normally veer off, I will strive not to move away.  I will instead stride into the center of the world to explore what I haven’t yet encountered.  I wonder if I’ll find you there?  I wonder what I will find?