Do or Do Not.

I’ve never had a basement before. Never, not once in my entire life. So when we got all the rain that pounded the Northeast over the last ten days or so–apparently several months’ worth of rain compressed into a week-and-a-half, or so I hear–it never once occurred to me to go down into the basement to see how everything down there was faring.

The answer: not so well.

Honestly, I think we might have been OK if it weren’t for Tommy. One of Tommy’s favorite spots to rest her fat ass is right up against the side of the house…more specifically, right against one of the two small windows that opens into the basement. Even more specifically, right against the window which has a rotten board on the underside. The window which Tommy was able to knock completely out of place, opening a foot-wide hole into the basement. I have no idea when she did that or how long the rainwater had free access to my stuff.

Most of what’s underneath that window will probably be OK; it’s either in plastic boxes or just not likely to be damaged much, if any, by water.

But my comic book collection was under that window, too. And I’m not positive yet, but I think I might have lost half of the comics I’ve been collecting since I was eight or nine.

I’m not a bag-and-board guy. My comics are just stored in longboxes [1] without the mylar sleeves or backing boards that so many collectors use to store their books. It’s not that I don’t care about my comics; it’s just that A] bags and boards add to the expense of my little hobby, and I already have very little money to spend there, and B] I’ve always been more of a reader than a collector–I’ve never once considered the resale value of any comic I’ve ever bought. I buy them for my own reading enjoyment, plain and simple, that’s it, so I never thought much about “protecting my investment.”

That said, these comics are something that have been part of my life for a long, long time. I’ve been carting my collection around with me everywhere I’ve lived for the last–well, forever, honestly. From the time we moved up here in ‘03 until about three months ago, they were all in the storage unit we were renting to house all of the stuff that wouldn’t fit in our tiny apartment, and I was very happy when we finally liberated my comics from storage and moved them into our basement. I’d been meaning to go through them and figure out which ones I wanted to keep, which ones I might think about selling and which ones I could donate to a learn-to-read program or something of that ilk.

Now it seems like many of those decisions might have been made for me.

As I said, I don’t know yet exactly what’s lost and what’s not. It might be that I just have a bunch of comics that are just a bit floppier than they’d been before, thanks to the humidity (the one box I looked at seemed to bear that out as at least a possibility).

But here’s the thing: even if they’re all relatively OK, I’m thinking it might be time to get rid of them.

While Terry and I were in the basement trying to assess the damage, we found a couple of boxes of books that had also taken on some water. As I was going through that box to see what was in it, I was stunned to realize that I’d had no idea I still owned most of the books that were in it. These were books I just hadn’t thought about for years, and very few of them were books I ever had any intention of re-reading.

So why have I been dragging them across the country? Why did I bother stashing them in our storage unit for two years? Why bother still having them at all?

And the same goes for most of the comics I’ve been holding on to. I have them because I’ve always had them, not because I still have any great need to have them. Some of them I’m sure I’d like to keep (the dry ones, anyway)–either I think I’d enjoy re-reading them, or could possibly use them for story or art reference, or think I might actually be able to sell them at some point. But that doesn’t describe a very large percentage of them anymore.

Taking this realization one step further: there’s a lot of crap in that basement that we don’t need and don’t really want but still have just because. I can look around our office right now and see any number of books or other items that we have no use for anymore. How does it add anything to our lives to have all of these possessions around if we don’t even remember we have them?

I’m thinking the time is coming to simplify. We got rid of a bunch of stuff before we moved up here, but there’s obviously still a large amount of crap we’re holding on to for no good reason [2]. The time might be coming soon for a Purge. A Cleansing. A Lightening of the Load. A Basement Enema, so to speak. I think our familial spiritual colon would feel much better afterwards.

So…anyone want a bunch of soggy comics?

I’ve been thinking quite a lot the last few days about the current quote that’s over there in the sidebar right now. For those of you reading this through an RSS feed, or if you’re reading this entry after the quote’s been changed, here it is:

“It’s a reactive thing, like a Geiger counter; you click whenever you come close to whatever you were built to do.” — Stephen King

That’s a valid analogy. When you’re doing whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing, you just know. The puzzle pieces in your head click together perfectly, the picture comes into focus, however you want to say it–you get the buzz, the feeling of the internal compasses of your mind and your heart and your actions all finding true north at the same time.

(Incidentally, I think the same is true of the people in your life. I’ve had plenty of friends that I liked perfectly well but never felt that “buzz” about. I tend to think that those friends who do give me that buzz are the people that are supposed to be in my life for some reason. It’s more than just a matter of getting on well with the buzzworthy people; it feels almost karmic to me when it happens. Sometimes the reason I’m supposed to be around that person is obvious, other times not, but I always make sure to notice when it’s there.)

Some people discover very early in life the activities which give them that special sense of This Is Right and True; some never find it at all. Some people get close but never quite make that final adjustment necessary to get it.

That last batch of people, I’m pretty sure, includes me.

See, the thing is…in the same way you just know when you’re doing That Thing You Do, you just know when you’re not, or when you’re not quite. In my case, I know I’m supposed to be writing. I’m getting more and more sure of that the more of it I do.

But what am I supposed to be writing? Ah, there’s the rub.

I have a number of writer friends (any number of whom might be reading this–feel free to pipe in, y’all) for whom this particular problem doesn’t ever seem to have surfaced. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if for many of those people, there never was any decision or exploration necessary; they write what they write because that’s what they write. They write what comes naturally. Or so it seems to me…I’d love to hear some feedback about this particular point.

For me, that process of finding what I have to say, of finding the stories that are mine to tell, has been quite a trial. And that trial’s still not done. I’m getting closer, I think, but even on the novel I’m 15,000 words into, that buzz is still elusive. It’s been there in parts; I’ve lightly detected it in those areas where I started to understand my characters and found myself with vision for where the plot was going. But I’m not really not sure writing YA fiction is My Thing. I’m not giving up, not at all, not on this particular book nor on that category of fiction as a whole, but…

I’ve been getting some strong Geiger counter readings from another writing quarter altogether.

The clicks got louder and louder this week as I read a back-and-forth email conversation between two writers I really enjoy, Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman. For those of you unfamiliar with the names, Simmons is a columnist for ESPN.com’s Page 2 section and Klosterman is a columnist for, among other places, Spin. Each of them has different specialties–Simmons primarily writes about sports, Klosterman primarily about music–but both have a wonderful appreciation for and understanding of the broader canvas of pop culture. (At this point, any of you who know me very well at all are probably nodding your heads and can see the source of those Geiger readings.)

I read this conversation between Klosterman and Simmons and I very much had that feeling of “getting it.” It wasn’t just a feeling of “I can do this”…it was a feeling of “I should be doing this.” I don’t mean specifically that I should be either a sports columnist or a music columnist, but I should be part of the cultural conversation. I’m inspired by each of those writers, actually, in the way each one weaves in elements of the greater cultural consciousness into their columns. I know that there’s a great many people who dismiss pop culture out-of-hand as lowbrow or not worthy of serious discussion, but neither Simmons nor Klosterman believes that. And neither do I.

Pop culture is American culture, it’s the commonality that allows us to talk to others with whom we might not share race, creed, class, sexuality or gender. Even if I don’t know your or don’t have a lot in common with you, if I discover that we both have an interest in, say, “Gilmore Girls,” then that’s a talking point, somewhere to begin. It’s a bond. Is it a strong bond? Is that shared interest alone enough to sustain a friendship? Or a community?

Surprisingly, it can be–as just one small example, look at the phenomenon surrounding the “Browncoats” who so loudly supported “Firefly” and now Serenity. That’s a fairly large, strong, devoted community (and regionalized series of sub-communities) made up of a diverse set of people whose only real tie is a love for this particular fictional universe. And it’s enough. They frequently arrange social events to bring their members together, frequently (but not always) involving screenings of “Firefly.”

And again, that’s just one relatively tiny example. Look around–how many times do people gather together just because they have a love for some particular aspect of our culture? How many people get together for Dave Matthews Band concerts? For “Lost” viewing parties? For release parties for the newest Harry Potter book? For standing in line for weeks for the newest Star Wars movie? For performances of “Avenue Q” or “Spamalot” on Broadway? Popular culture by its very definition is our culture, it’s everybody’s culture, and that fact alone makes it worthy of discussion, from the most wretched of reality TV shows to Norah Jones’ albums.

Futhermore (lest we forget that this blog is All The Time All About Me), pop culture is an area where I have something to say. Reading Simmons and Klosterman’s conversation struck that chord within my head and my heart that told me: “These are your people. This should be you.” Will writing about pop culture win me any literary prizes? Nope…but it would make me happy.

So what am I gonna do about it? Oh, hell if I know. But when I do, you will, too. Chances are good that it will either involve this site or Moviegeekz. It looks like I have an awful lot of thinking to do over the next couple of days and weeks about just what my goals are going to be, how I’m going to get there…and about the greater cultural impact of Wedding Crashers.

“The results are not acceptable.” — The President of the United States

You’re fucking-A right, George.

When I first started this blog a little over four months ago, I wrote a post in which, among other things, I discussed the fact that while intellecutually I recognize the horrible things that sometimes happen to people in disaster situations and wish things were different for them, I don’t really feel much pain or sadness for those people:

I don’t always take the fact that I’m not easily angered to be a positive; I’m afraid it’s symptomatic of something bigger. I know that I don’t feel deeply enough for current events or for human suffering in other parts of the world. I care, but I don’t, y’know, care. I know plenty of folks who do: people who want to fight for issues they believe in or who seem to feel as much for people they’ve never met as they do for the people in their day-to-day lives.

But after New Orleans–and our government’s massive ineptitude and callous disregard for the people of the Gulf Coast region–that’s starting to change.

I’ve been too wrapped up in my own head since the disaster hit, and I’ve tried not to think too much about what’s been going on. I’ve been trying to keep up on the facts, but I haven’t been internalizing it. I know that’s wrong of me, but that’s the way I’ve historically dealt with tragedy of all kinds.

But now that my own little world has calmed down a bit, now that I know my father’s doing better and my dentist appointment is over and my cross-country drive is done, I’m more able to face the horrors of what happened, and doing so hurts. I can’t even fathom the kinds of conditions those people have been dealing with for more than a week. I can’t even fathom the numbers of people who didn’t even survive to face those conditions.

But as sad and horrified as I’m feeling for the survivors, I’m feeling even more rage and resentment for how our government has handled the situation. All of the anger I’ve felt for this administration for the last five years, all of the disbelief at the wrong-headedness and stupidity continually displayed by the men and women we (supposedly) elected to shepherd this country and protect its citizens…all of that is nothing compared to the outrage I’m feeling now.

And, glory be, I’m far from the only one: the mainstream media isn’t rolling over at the administration’s feet anymore, and the results have been wonderful to behold.

I want to share with you some of what’s making me so angry today. I know I’m coming kind of late to the party, and hopefully many of you are already plenty outraged, but if not I hope some of the following will help get you there:

• MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (long one of my favorite commentators, on a par only with Jon Stewart) scathingly, eloquently, calmly blasts the government response to Katrina. A must-watch (Windows Media Player required).
• John Scalzi has a series of articles on his blog about Katrina, but the one that affected me most was about what it means to be poor, to be really poor. He also posted a follow-up piece several days later about exactly why he wrote that post.

  I swear, I’m never going to complain about my financial problems again.

  (And as a quick aside to everyone, including the director of FEMA, who blames those thousands of people in New Orleans who were too poor to leave town for what happened to them: there’s a very special section of Hell waiting just for you. Please don’t keep them waiting too long, OK?)

• Another Scalzi post on governmental incompetence–and even his readers who normally disagree with his politics are starting to have trouble defending this administration.
• My boy Tim has reached his melting point as well, and fires off what’s easily the most articulate, impassioned essay I’ve read from him in quite some time.
• You might have heard that rapper Kayne West went off-script during the NBC benefit telecast last Friday night, saying that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” I’ve got to say it’s hard to argue much with him. You can see the video–which was edited out of the live broadcast when it aired later on the west coast–here. (Via Mr. Snitch.)

More links–and likely more vitriol–to come later.

I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks back that I tend to self-identify far, far too much based on what it is I do for a living. And I’m starting to realize that that self-identification is neither accurate nor particularly good for me.

I’m a programmer, I tell myself. And while technically that’s true–it’s what I put in that little box at the bottom of my 1040 form every year–it’s not really how I see myself. I’ve said it for years without thinking about what I was saying. But the more I do think about it, the less comfortable that particular set of clothes gets. It’s not that I don’t enjoy what I do, because I like it well enough, but it’s just not as much a deeply-ingrained part of my persona as I’d always assumed.

What it comes down to with the programming thing is: I’m a whore. I’m doing it for the money. I’m doing it so Terry can stay home while the kids are little and because it’s a job I don’t mind. I’m doing it because I can, and because I can stay in my own little zeroes-and-ones world and not have to interact too much with (shudder) people. But being a programmer isn’t my dream.

Does it have to be? Of course not. Isn’t it good enough that I get paid pretty well and don’t mind doing my job? Yeah, it is.

But it’s the identification part I’ve recently come to have trouble with.

I work with a lot of really bright people, people smarter than I am. And those of you who know me know that for me to say that really means something. These guys (not being sexist; the people I’m talking about all happen to be male) seem to have programming in their blood. They generally seem to have much more experience than I do, true, but to me it seems like it’s more than that: it’s a deep internalization of what they do, a love for the minutae and for the big picture, a passion that comes out when they’re discussing or debating various programming-related points.

And that’s what I ain’t got. Because, as noted, I’m just a whore.

As I hang out with some of these people, both at work and in a newer community of people I’ve recently met, my lack of experience in and passion for hardcore programming concepts has provoked in me a feeling that it took me awhile to recognize, because I hadn’t felt it in so long: I felt stupid.

Now, I can talk to people who have huge chunks of knowledge of subjects I know nothing about, who have mastered arcane disciplines that will serve mainly to allow them to get jobs teaching those same arcane displines to others, and those people don’t make me feel stupid in the least. I respect the work and dedication those people have put into learning what they have, and while I might be a little envious sometimes (I have occasional regrets that I didn’t do more with my education), it has no impact on my self-identity or self-worth.

But when faced with those people in my own field who have that knowledge and passion–yup, makes me feel like I’m holding up a sign with an arrow pointing at my face, a sign that says “You’re all with stupid.” And I suspect that feeling’s compounded by the fact that I don’t really want to learn as much about my field. I want to learn some more, of course, but I just don’t have the passion necessary to do so, so I’m dooming myself always to be among the ign’ant.

Locking too much of my identity in “programmer” and then being faced with people whom the word truly fits has been less than pleasant, I must say, and more than a little rattling to the pillars propping up my self-image. So as far as that goes, I’m adopting and paraphrasing something someone else said recently in a far different context: “Programming is what I do, not who I am.”

If I do want to use a vocation as the basis for my identity, I need to focus more on calling myself a writer. Part of me chafes a bit at that because I’m afraid it sounds pretentious, but it’s a much more valid label. Not only does using that word point me much more solidly in the direction I’d like my future to be going, but it fits me much better–like going from wearing a t-shirt three sizes too small to a finely-tailored Italian suit.

And I think taking the burden of the word “programmer” off of my shoulders will allow me to feel more at ease around these real programmers.

During the weeks when it’s Brian’s turn to drive us to work, we get to listen to selections from the fairly massive amount of music he’s got on his iPod. He’s got one of those groovy gizmos that allows him to play the iPod over his car’s stereo, so we get to rock out in style. His iPod has a sense of humor, though: even with thousands of songs to choose from in random-play mode, it’ll keep coming back to the same artists–and even the same songs–way more frequently than is statisically likely.

Which wouldn’t be a problem…except for the fact that his iPod seems to think that what we really, really want to listen to during our commute is selections from “The Pirates of Penzance.” Not so much with the rocking out, that. (Brian insists that the “Penzance” songs are his wife’s, but I know he’s just using that excuse to mask his obvious and somewhat disturbing love for old show tunes.)

But the other day, listenting to one of these songs–or at least those first few seconds before one of us was able to hit the skip button–reminded me of a movie I hadn’t thought about in nearly twenty years…and reminded me of one of my first big celebrity crushes, someone I hadn’t thought about in probably nearly as long.

Kristy McNichol.

Those of you under thirty or so might be saying “who?” to that name, and I couldn’t blame you; it seems Ms. McNichol hasn’t done much of anything for the past twenty years or so, not counting a few seasons on “Empty Nest,” a sitcom I had completely forgotten existed. But those of us over thirty should all remember her. She was one of the biggest child/teenage stars of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Won a couple of Emmys for her work on the series “Family,” made a bunch of movies (including Little Angels, where she and Tatum O’Neal played two 15-year-olds battling to see which one could lose their virginity first–try getting that flick greenlit today).

McNichol was all cute (in a very tomboyish 1980 feathered-hair kind of way) and popular and stuff, and all over TV and movies when I was a kid, and looking back into my memory now I can see how she probably informed the kinds of women I was attracted to as I got older–I’ve always gone for “cute” more than I have “hot,” and I’d be lying if I said that “tomboyish” hadn’t popped up in my real-life crushes a time or two as well. (The rest of the equation was provided by the fervent pre-teen crush I harbored for Olivia Newton-John (note: I was the pre-teen, not Libby), but more on the topic of Ms. Newton-John some other time).

The thing that astonished me about the resurfacing of Kristy McNichol in my consciousness was that those bits of my brain containing all of my memories of her had obviously lain dormant for about two decades. Those particular neurons hadn’t clicked until hearing some bits of “The Pirates of Penzance,” which reminded me of the wretched and justly-forgotten The Pirate Movie (starring McNichol and the chest of The Blue Lagoon’s Christopher Atkins)…which I didn’t even know was based on “Penzance” until years after I saw it (give me a break, I was eleven).

My point? The brain, much like the iPod, works in mysterious ways.

Ever have those times when you have so much stuff going through your head that you’re almost paralyzed? Too many things to think about, too many projects to work on, too much to worry about…too much to let yourself focus on any one thing, and so you wind up not doing a damn thing.

Kinda sucks, doesn’t it?

I’m trying to get myself more organized, because I really and truly believe that will help me with my “monkey mind” problem. Not with all of the issues I’m trying to work through, of course, but the more I can organize away and out of my head, the more brainpower I’ll have for dealing with those issues which can’t be cleared up quite so easily.

Today should bring my copy of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done,” which seems to be something of the Organizational Bible to the geek set these days. I’ve tried putting into practice some of what I’ve learned just by reading other people’s sites and blogs and wikis about the GTD system, but I realized that by not reading the book myself I was just ending up with a half-assed implementation of it. What little bit I’ve done has helped, so I’m assuming that the more I understand of the system and the more I successfully put into practice, the better off I’ll be.

I’m also hoping that the more I can get organized, the more I can clear out of the clogged gutters of my brain, then I’ll be able to focus more, which would be a Very Good Thing Indeed. I have so many things I want to be writing right now and can’t seem to get myself to focus on any of them (a longtime problem for me, believe me). But that’s more of a post for another time…some other time when I can’t focus on work.

What abot you guys…do any of you have any organizational philosophies you use to manage your daily and/or creative lives?

I just found this passage from Susan over at Write On Right Now! which seemed to dovetail nicely with my post from yesterday about fear:

If there’s a barrier in writing it’s me.

Being afraid to write what I want to write because it might not be marketable, might have a small audience, might not be understood, might make me an enemy, might tick off my mom. Substitute your own excuse of the week.

Being afraid to take chances with my writing that will stretch me and help me grow.

Being afraid to be the writer I am capable of being because what if I fail, what if I succeed, what if someone doesn’t like who I become, what if “I” don’t like who I become?

Being afraid I’m not good enough to tell the story I want to tell because I don’t have the skillset, because I don’t know where to find the information, because someone told me it was a dumb idea.

Just plain being afraid is the only barrier to me. The rest is scenery along the way.

I’ve frequently been afraid of writing, though afraid of exactly what part of writing I’ve never been sure. I used to rationalize and tell myself that what I was afraid of was success–my gosh, what if I actually am good enough to be a professional writer? Then I’ll have to go on book-signing tours and do radio interviews or (if the particular dream I was trying to avoid at the time was that of being a screenwriter) I’ll have to go to pitch sessions at the studios and I really don’t like talking in front of people and it’ll all just be way too much so I might as well stop writing right now.

(Please note that nothing in that fear-string had anything to do with the process of writing itself.)

Terry, who knows me so, so well, clued me in to the truth: I’ve been more afraid of not being good enough, of course. I’ve long thought/known/assumed that I had the talent to be a successful writer. I’ve thought that for so long, in fact, that I was terrified of finding it out it might not be true. No telling what that might have done to my sense of identity.

Cut to couple of nights ago: I dug out the 60 pages or so of the crime novel I wrote for National Novel Writing Month in ‘03. I’d gotten stalled at that point, 60 pages in; I’d written a scene that totally killed the narrative flow and I had no idea how to get myself out of the situation. What I should have done, in the spirit of NaNo, was scrap the scene, forget about it and just move forward.

Instead, I just quit. Not the first time I’ve done that.

But the other night, I went back and re-read what I’d written, and I realized something:

I am good enough.

I’m not saying that right at this moment I could send out a manuscript and immediately it would be purchased, published, shoot up the bestseller list and have the movie rights sold for millions of dollars. But as I read these pages, pages I hadn’t looked at it in almost two years, I had enough distance to be able to read them with an objective eye. And while there was plenty of not-good stuff to be found (it’s a first draft, after all)–there was far more stuff that was actually pretty damn good.

I’ve always been a good self-editor. I’m good at analyzing my own work and seeing what works and what doesn’t, and I think that’s going to help me quite a bit–probably more than quite a bit–if I’m going to make it as a writer. And I read these words I’d written right after having read books by Dennis Lehane and Tim Dorsey and I can see it: I can see myself actually pulling it off.

I have a lot to learn about the craft of writing a novel, I know that. But I’ll learn that by, y’know, writing novels. I’m looking at trying to plow through the rest of this one, hopefully to be done with a first draft by November 1–just in time to dive into whatever I decide to write for NaNo this year.

It’s time for me not to be the barrier to my own writing anymore.

It’s been said that the fear involved in anticipation of a thing tends to be far, far worse than the thing itself. And I’m realizing lately that I have to agree.

I’ve long been petrified of going to the dentist. I had a regular dentist appointment about a month ago, which scared the hell out of me–I hadn’t been in I-don’t-even-know-how-long. It wasn’t even an appointment for a cleaning or anything–just a consultation. But I was still terrified. However, the dentist was a perfectly nice guy and absolutely nothing scary happened during the visit. My fear was completely unjustified.

This morning, I had to go visit a periodontist–I’ve had some gum problems for awhile (mostly being that they’re seriously receding), and my dentist wants me to get that taken care of before doing the stuff he needs to do. I was even more scared of going to see this guy. Now we’ve moved to a specialized dentist, which requires a specialized kind of fear.

But, again, it was nowhere near as bad as I’d anticipated. Neither was my prognosis. Nor was the amount of money I’m going to have to shell out.

All of which means I’ve spent years being afraid of something that, it turns out, I had no reason to fear. And all of which makes me wonder…what else have I been scared to do when I really shouldn’t have been?

I don’t think I’ve ever in my life played a good game of Truth or Dare.

I’m thinking about my previous ToD experiences because Brian sent me a link today to Truth or Dare Online, a site partygoers can use to suggest various questions to be answered truthfully or actions to be accomplished, um, darefully. The kinds of questions the site spits out are configurable so that they’re appropriate for anything from pre-teen sleepovers to full-on adults-only orgiastic bacchanalia.

Every time I’ve ever played a game of ToD, it’s been in a group of people containing at least one, usually more, female in whom I had some level of romantic and/or sexual interest. Hell, even the one time I played a four-person game of ToD, I’d have gladly made the mad monkey sex (or any smaller subset of those activities making up the mad monkey sex) with either one of the two girls involved. And isn’t that what Truth or Dare is for (as an adult, anyway)? To have an excuse to play around with other people without the pressure of it meaning anything?

But oh, no, that’s not the way it ever worked for me. For some reason, I’ve always been the Offical Truth or Dare Comic Relief.

I’d watch as my friends, who tended to have better luck with the ladies than I did and therefore didn’t need the drunken lowering of standards of acceptable behavior provided by ToD, would take dare after dare that involved making out with hot chicks, or licking the bare bellies of hot chicks, or whatever else they were dared to do with hot chicks.

Me, though?

“OK, Allen, you have to sit at the bottom of the hottub and pretend like you’re enthusiastically masturbating while thinking about Stan. For one minute.” (Stan (not his real name) was our boss at the record store at which we all worked; his uncanny resemblance to Kermit the Frog did nothing to help put me in the mood for my mock masturbation. Neither did the fact that he was a guy.)

Here’s another of my favorites, one that I’m sure at least three of the readers of this blog will remember. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, one of the readers of this site was responsible for this particular dare as we sat in a big circle on the beach:

“OK, Allen, take off all of your clothes and go jump into the Gulf.”

The best part about that one, though, was the fact that I couldn’t find my glasses when I came nakedly up out of the Gulf. Fumbling around the beach for my glasses, Little Allen just kind of hanging there in the cool night breeze… not my most dignified of moments, I have to tell you.

Don’t get me wrong–I accept that these kinds of happenings are part of the game. You don’t play Truth or Dare in an attempt to seem elegant in front of your friends. I just hated the fact that in every game I ever played, I was the one to whom these things happened.

I think a large part of that was the fact that back in the days when I had less confidence than I do now, I’d give off the sort of desperate vibe that indicated to others that it probably wasn’t the best idea to foist me onto any girl who wasn’t already interested in me. Which I completely understand; god knows how badly I might have pulled the puppy-dog-follow routine on anyone dared into as much as kissing me.

But man, does part of me (only a part of me) wish I could have those days and those games back now–because I am such a different person in so many ways than I was then. I’m much more confident and several orders of magnitude more comfortable with myself…which, of course, makes me far, far sexier. The outside doesn’t look all that much different, but the inside has undergone a drastic revolution over the last few years.

So, to sum up… Me then: lonely; desperate; probably more than a little creepy to women. Me now: happily married; not even remotely desperate; far, far sexier.

The moral, of course: be comfortable with who you are, whoever that person might be, or no one else is gonna be, either.

The Associated Press released an article today about the fact that computer programming jobs are going to become harder and harder to come by over the next decade or so. Between management wanting employees with more cross-discipline versatility and the ever-increasing move of coding jobs overseas, things don’t look so hot for American software developers.

Like, for instance, me.

I don’t assume this one article to be particularly prophetic, of course, but this also isn’t the first time I’ve heard this scenario described. The article even seems to single me out in particular:

“If you’re only interested in deep coding and you want to remain in your cubicle all day, there are a shrinking number of jobs for you,” said Diane Morello, Gartner vice president of research.

She might as well have said “there are a shrinking number of jobs for you, Allen.”

I’ve been thinking over the last few months that a change in career might be necessary for me at some point in the near future. (Yeah, I’m working toward a career as a writer, but I’m thinking specifically here of my day-job career.) As much as I enjoy my job, I’ve been feeling topped-out lately and haven’t had much opportunity to learn new skills and grow into another role. Some of that ennui could be because I’ve been working on the same project for two years, which is a pretty new experience to me–my web-development career before this job had been much more in the build-’em-quick-and-move-on vein, working for multiple clients at a time rather than on one monolithic internal project.

I really, really, really don’t want to go into management. Nothing against you managers out there–I just don’t believe it’s a career track at which I’d particularly excel, given my personality type. And I’ve rarely seen any managers who actually seemed happy in their jobs, so that’s not a path I’m anxious to go down.

Is it a matter of specialization? There might be options that way–software architecture or database administration, for example–but I can see where almost any road I select could be yanked out from under me and sent to India (where it apparently costs about one-third what it does here to develop software).

I’ve thought of changing careers altogether, of getting out of the technology biz–but how, exactly, do I go about doing that? I get paid pretty well for what I do, and I certainly can’t leave this field to go start over at the bottom rung of some other career when I’m the one responsible for supporting my family. And there’s also the matter of training; I’m not especially trained to do much else (though, to be fair, I had no training for this career, either).

I like my job. I like coding, I like sticking my nose into my computer (not literally) and building tools and applications out of code. But I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep on keeping on as I have been. I feel like a crux point is approaching more quickly than I’d like, a period of great life changes condensed into a small timeframe. I don’t know how much time I have. But I’d like to be as ready as I can be when the crux point arrives.