This post is totally reactionary That's right...I've been informed that some people who still occasionally check up on this blog after two and a half years of inactivity are getting tired of always seeing the last totally reactionary post. So here it is, the moment I dearly hope you haven't been holding your breath for (because if you were you'd be dead by now, and I would hate to think that I'm killing off my readers).
So where have I been and what have I been up to? I could claim that I have been busy with work (you may have seen in the news over the last few months that the project I am involved with has suffered repeated delays) or school (I'm working on a masters degree in systems engineering) or marriage (caring for a wife is one of the most wonderful and rewarding things I have experienced in life, but anyone who thinks that it does not take tremendous effort to do well will probably learn otherwise someday one way or the other) or some other activity (most recently, a wonderful week on the Italian peninsula). On the marriage front, I could even claim that having my wife around gives me a different outlet to process thoughts that I might have previously posted on my blog, so that being married has taken away both the time and the need to write. But none of those explanations really gets at why I haven't posted anything in a long time.
The real answer is: I'm a nerd. For the most part, my brain works in facts and data. Thus the majority of my writing chronicles events. There may be some interpretation that helps distill the information presented in the way that 3x + 6y = 12 reduces to x + 2y = 4, but it generally does not include the kind of thoughtful and emotional insight that makes a series of words compelling to read. At some point, I realized that I am not interested in reading things that read like much of what I write; writing that I do find interesting has a spark in it that most of mine lacks. Putting my highly analytical nerd brain to use, I decided that I didn't need to spend the time recording what I would feel like I was wasting my time reading were it written by someone else. This filtered out most of any potential posts, and the things mentioned in the previous paragraph mopped up the rest.
Incidentally, nothing helps you realize what a nerd you are like a wife who is very much not a nerd thinks in all sorts of colors and emotions and possibilities. Frequently our conversations follow this pattern:
wife: What do you think about that? nerd: *thinks* What does she mean, "what do I think about that?" There wasn't a single shred of fact or data in any of what she just said. How am I even supposed to begin sorting through this mountain of seemingly unrelated bits and pieces to form a coherent response to that question? wife: Are you listening to me? nerd: Yeah, I...uh... wife: ... nerd: I don't even know how to respond to that.
Maybe someday in the long-distant future, the daily work of living with Lindsey in a loving and understanding manner will help mature me beyond my nerdiness to a point where I can regularly provide worthwhile reading material. Until then, expect infrequent updates--I'll shoot for better than annually to start with.
posted by Tom 4:49 PM
It starts with the shoe. Maybe the next day it's a t-shirt or a sock. You don't know if the washing machine ate it, or your roommate borrowed it a month ago and forgot that it was yours. All you know is that by the end of the week, you're walking to class naked because you don't have any clothes left.
