You would think that, by my erratic blogging schedule, I don’t like doing it. Totally wrong. It’s another way for me to go on at length about whatever topic strikes my fancy, and I love to give my unsolicited opinion to everyone. I imagine that someday, I will be the old man in front of you at the grocery store, regaling the checkout girl with a story about the high cost of lemons as you go mad from beign made to wait. I apologize pre-emptively.

So why do I blog so infrequently? I’m acting out. We all have responsibilities and a long list of obligations that we’re not terribly happy about (laundry, cleaning the cat box, doing a job you don’t like, etc) and sometimes we choose one thing on the list to fail on purpose. You know you’ve had those moments, when you’ve walked through the kitchen and shouted at the dishes “I DON’T CARE HOW YOU SMELL, I’M NOT WASHING YOU.” It’s a bad choice and it makes your life slightly worse, but you make the choice anyway for the sake of control. It’s a rebellion against determinism and expectations.

And so, to spite the world and myself, I skip my blog post. There are other minor worries and anxieties that encourage me to skip, but the need to be bad and do the wrong thing is the main culprit. Luckily, I’ve muscled my urge to rebel into a really weak position, so my outbursts are limited to giant slurpees and missed blog posts. If I had no control over my self-destructive urges, I’d end up doing something really bad, like voting conservative.

Having some level of insight into my own bad behaviour is pretty helpful on the little dude’s wild days. I can recognize that look in his eyes when he’s about to dump out a bag of sugar, or knock over a pile of books for the third time. He’s announcing his autonomy and self-determination by making a jackass of himself. We’ve all been there.

I have to change the order in which I do things. Leaving this here lil ol’ blog until late in the evening encourages a ‘bah I’ll do it tomorrow’ reflex that isn’t helpful. But, blogging in the morning feels unnatural (and I would have to work like a speedy demon to finish a post before the wife heads off to work and I start my day with the little dude).  This blog is the main voice I have to you, my audience, and when I neglect the blog, I neglect the audience. Bad writer, naughty!

Here is today’s “daily meaningless benchmark of Max’s development that caught me off-guard”: The little dude can look straight out of the front windows without assistance.  I hope his basketball skills start developing, because this fellow is going to be a tall guy. He can also pour liquids carefully, without upending the container and flooding the counter with milk or juice or what have you. Yay, fine-motor skills!

But back to me yelling at everyone. When I post/tweet/email something that I’m really passionate about, I tend to get slightly over-dramatic. I’m pretty sure that sometimes my enthusiasm comes off as shouting. It’s a hard line to walk, being excited and passionate without being too intense and off-putting.

On the other hand, I suspect that my moments of unbridled optimism are misread as naive.  It is possible to be both optimistic and fully aware of the negative obstacles standing in the way of progress.

Self-published author update: It’s been a month and a half since the book went up for sale (for sale here, for anyone who is late to the party). Sales have slowed down, since everyone I am in regular contact with has purchased a copy. And, for the record, thank you wonderful people. The next challenge is to find new opportunities to put the book up for sale: local bookstores, artisan’s markets, etc… This is the kind of stuff that an actual publisher would take care of for me, but until I can build a loyal and sizable audience, I have to go it alone. And no, ‘sizable’ does not refer to your weight. I love you all just the way you are.

(Either the title is poetically cryptic, or it’s sleep-deprived nonsense. Up to you!)

Human beings are contextual creatures. Our identities are built around the experiences we’ve had and our perceptions of the world around us. More importantly, our identity is informed by the people who we share these experiences with. A lot of us try to create a definition of ourselves that is entirely derived from within, but it’s an incomplete definition. You are not simply defined by your work, or your role as a parent, or by the wealth you’ve accumulated.

I think this lack of completion is what leaves people lost and depressed as they look for some kind of direction. Sadly, the first fix they attempt is to fill that identity gap with material possessions. We’re all a little too comfortable with the role of ‘consumer’.

So what’s the missing piece? Citizenship. By joining different groups of people and working with them, you create the other pieces of yourself that fill in the gaps between work, family, and individualism. By being a part of something bigger than yourself, you get a better idea of who you are.

I’ve heard the blame being laid on the isolating nature of modern technology, that iPods and personal computers cut us off from the world around us and disintegrated society, but I have a different theory. Go a little further back in North American history to the suburban post-war boom of the Fifties. The suburbs pulled us away from community centres, religious institutions, civic organizations. As the years went on, we pulled further and further away from the groups and the crowds and even our neighbours. The electronic devices weren’t the cause of this retreat, they were a reaction. The kids turned inward and blocked out the unsatisfying noise around them.

But there was a search for community that kept taking place in the electronic realm. Facebook could in no way be as popular as it is if there wasn’t a desire for connectivity with other people. For some of us who had never learned the real world skills to seek out and forge new bonds with the community around us, technology gave us alternate means to learn how to find our community. Strange that it was around us the whole time, but there’s no point in dwelling about any lost time.

I’ve turned a corner in my own socialization: I’ve moved past tolerating social interaction to actually enjoying it. I meet new people and I try to find out what they’re about and what we can share together. And I get really excited when I imagine the interesting and wonderful things we could accomplish together.