Reinvent Yourself

For every platitude there are ten self-help books you can buy that try to tell you how to achieve that goal. Want to be a millionaire in ten days? Book for that. Start your own internet business with no money and make ten thousand dollars your first month? Couple of books for that. Want a better relationship with your kids, spouse, co-workers, or pet? A whole aisle of those.
   And then there's reinventing yourself. There are even books on tape for that.
   Trouble is, there's no one definition for reinventing yourself. Some people just want to stop smoking, others want to lose weight, others want to drop a dead-end career and begin something new and fulfilling.
   I'm looking to reinvent myself too. But I have no idea how to go about it, mostly because I don't know what I mean when I say 'reinvent myself.' I'm in that demographic sweet spot, just comfortable enough that I don't feel the need to become a freedom fighter up in the hills, but not so comfortable that I want to keep on this same path the rest of my life.
   Kids are a pleasant interruption in most people's lives. You have a few kids and you know that for the next twenty years you're going to be raising them, teaching them, making them responsible citizens and then seeing them on their way. For a few decades you have a reason to endure the daily grind. But I ain't got kids. Want 'em, don't have 'em. So I'm kind of at loose ends here.
   Midlife crisis? Perhaps. But I think it's both less and more than that. I do keep thinking there has to be more I can do to help other people, to make a difference instead of just... consuming like an American does. But maybe I should just shut up and keep my head down until my time is over.
   Nah. Can't do that. I think, maybe, the struggle is the thing. The struggle to be heard, the struggle to be successful, the struggle to overcome yourself so you can get what you know you need instead of what everyone else says you should want. You only lose when you surrender.
   Besides, if I really wanted to 'reinvent' myself, I'd go with a prehensile tail and laser beam eyes. That would be cool.

Look Like A Terrorist

I know it's human nature to fear the unknown, it's an innate fear that's probably the single biggest reason our caveman ancestors lived long enough to have the kids who had the kids who had the kids who eventually became you and me. It's self-preservation turned to 11.
   But I hear people talking about other people who look like terrorists, and I ain't buying it. Timothy McVeigh, the single worst terrorist in America until 9/11, looked like a guy who used to play on my middle school football team. And if you think middle-school football teams harbor terrorists... well, you'd be right. But they're the kind of terrorists who light paper bags of dog poop on fire on your front doorstep, not the kind who use fertilizer bombs to kill daycare toddlers like Mr. McVeigh.
   What people mean when they say someone 'looks like a terrorist' is that 'someone looks foreign,' or more specifically 'someone is wearing a turban and a robe and a they have olive skin and a long beard.' Because, really, people from Ghana wear turbans and robes, but no one calls them terrorists. And the Amish sport beards that are eerily similar to the ones Muslim mullahs wear, but you wouldn't call anyone Amish a terrorist. They wear suspenders and straw hats, for God's sake.
   I'm in no way an apologist for Muslim extremists - they are dangerous and they are responsible for much of the violence in the world right now - but someone is not a terrorist because of the way they look, they're a terrorist because they're sullen, resentful cowards. It's what's inside that counts.
   Think about it. What if I was visiting, say, Fiji, and the people there had decided that pale white guys wearing uninspired office worker clothes were terrorists? I'd be stopped and frisked on every corner (they have corners in Fiji, right?), my picture would be on the 'no-canoe list,' and they'd have satirical t-shirts of pale white guys in office attire. How fair is that?
   While the Ku Kux Klan is vile and reprehensible, at least they're honest in their extreme bigotry. They don't like anyone who's not a white American Protestant and if you're anything but they'll tell you straight up that's the reason why they hate you. They don't hide behind 'looks like a terrorist.' So, when you think about it, the 'looks like a terrorist' crowd are bigger cowards and losers than the KKK.

How Do You Know?

I was watching Hamlet this past weekend, the Kenneth Branagh version, which is in Technicolor and totally rocks, and I specifically noted the line Hamlet says to Horatio, when they're chasing Hamlet's father's ghost in Act 1 - 'there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosphy.' Truer words were never written.
   For instance, I can tell when a woman I know is pregnant. Happens all the time - the part where I can tell, not the part where women I know get pregnant. Nobody believes that I can do this, so the last time it happened I wrote down the day and time when I took at look at one of my former employees and thought 'she sure looks pregnant.' She didn't have a big belly, she may not even have known herself that she was expecting, something about her just... changed. I could look at her and tell she was different. Fast forward about four months and she announces that she is, indeed, with child. Out of my wallet I whipped out the yellow post-it I'd written the day and time on, just to prove that I knew. Somehow, I knew.
   You ever have that sensation like something is crawling up your neck or across your ear and then five minutes later someone calls you? Obviously something is telling you that someone is thinking about you, or talking about you (or both), but there's no way you could say for sure what that something is. You just know.
   Or how about when you're waiting for your name or ticket to be drawn at a raffle, and you know, you just know that your name is the one they're going to pick next. Happened to me last December when I was at my city District meeting and they were pulling names out of the hat for Rose Bowl tickets. Somehow, some way, I knew that when they were reaching for the fourth pair of tickets that they would call my name. And they did. Don't know how I knew, but I did.
   So there's something working here. Scientists say that until you have hard and fast proof nothing of the sort exists, but experientially - anecdotally - you know it's true. At least it happens to me a lot, I don't know about the rest of you.
   I just wish I could make money at it. But they don't pay you the big bucks because you can tell the doorbell's going to ring.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes      back - 36 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 60 days

Say My Name

I have one of those names that's easy for people to get wrong at first. Dom, Dane, Dave, Doug, Dan, Donovan, I've heard them all many times. Usually I'll just correct the person if they call me the wrong name, they laugh self-consciously and then remember my real name from then on. The only time there's a problem is when I don't correct the person. And that's where I am now.
   My next door neighbor calls me Dan. It started years ago, when I left him a note on his car (it was leaking bright green coolant) and signed my name. My letter 'o' looked like an 'a' evidently, and he called me Dan. I didn't correct him because he was going to move out before too long. At least that's how I understood things. Didn't quite work out that way.
   Fast forward a few months and he's still living in the building. We see each other and he calls me Dan again. And again I don't correct him. I don't know why.
   Fast forward a few years, and he's still calling me Dan to this day. I only talk to him every few months, and he takes pride in using my name, he says it often when we converse. But it's the wrong name.
   I've let it go on so long now that I can't correct him, because rather than laughing self-consciously he'd demand to know why I let him call me Dan for years now. And he'd be right, it's entirely my fault. So now I dread the times when he wants to talk to me, because I know he'll call me Dan over and over again, and I know that I'll be unable to correct him, either because I want to spare his feelings or my own, the result is the same.
   Maybe he'll move out soon.