Confession: I’m Really a Geek

I’m glad to have that out of the way. No doubt, some of you had already figured this out, but it seemed only fair to admit this for those who hadn’t.

As there are many, many, many sorts and varieties (genus and species, if you prefer) of geeks, let me define my own version.

One

I love words.

Totally, completely, gobsmackingly in love with them. About a decade ago, while working an 80-hour/week job, I took two freelance writing assignments just so I could justify purchasing the full, unabridged, 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. And one of my favorite pastimes is just pulling out a volume at random, opening it to wherever, and reading what’s there.

Coupled with this, I love the innumerable ways in which those words may be arranged so as to convey a thought or idea. I particularly relish the challenge of creating a construct of words that communicates effectively something that I feel can challenge everyone (myself included) to view the world from a slightly different perspective.

I’m told that I taught myself to read somewhere between my second and third birthdays, and I’ve yet to stop. Making up stories (sometimes to my detriment) is critical to my survival/sanity.

Two

While I read, watch, and enjoy many genres, my go-to is typically science fiction.

I remember the theatre in which I watched the release of Star Wars in 1977.  It was transformative for me. 

What I like about science fiction is that it (more than most other genres) has the capacity to speak Truth in ways that can be heard.

One of the most difficult things in Communication Theory is sorting out how to effectively communicate a message to which the receiver is not inherently open. Now even I realize that scifi has often (largely?) moved away from this truth-telling toward “entertainment” of more base sorts, but it does come up now and again. 

One of my favorites was Stargate SG-1. Admittedly, SG-1 was more on the entertainment end of the spectrum, but it does have moments of brilliance (imho, mostly when Damian Kindler was writing the episodes, but maybe that’s just me). And besides, I’m a total sucker for Richard Dean Anderson. I was saddled with the nickname “MacGyver” in high school and it has stuck. 

In SG-1’s 200th episode, in which they spend the whole 43 minutes sending up/paying homage to nearly every scifi television show since the original Star Trek, they have one moment of poignancy. Some argue that they don’t have the right to sit at this table, but that’s not what I care about.  What I care about is that even if they didn’t execute on it properly, they did recognize the historic role of scifi in Western culture.

If you’ve not seen it, don’t worry, you can still read this and it’ll make sense. These are the final words spoken in an otherwise entirely silly episode.

“Science fiction is an existential metaphor. It allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, ‘individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today. But the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.’”

THAT is why I love scifi.

Three

I really, desperately want to be a computer programmer.

I don’t know why this is. And as my SBH is quick to point out, I might not have the patience required for debugging. 

Four

Philosophical and theological debates/discussions are THE BOMB. Yup. 

Five

There’s nothing, and I mean NOTHING, I don’t want to know.

I’m talking in general here, people. I do NOT wish to know about your sexual, toilet, or eating habits. But I DO want to know why whenever I say I want to learn “everything there is to know” that the first go-to for my listener is some tidbit about their sexual, toilet, or eating habits. 

If it were possible for me to learn everything I would. My dream job is to be paid to learn new stuff every day and then communicate that stuff to an audience that wants to know, but doesn’t want to be bothered with the learning process.

For example, I’d love to sort out how to fund myself to research and write biographies of non-famous people who have had measurable impact on their communities. There are thousands of them, and their stories can help others continue and grow the work. THIS is how the world can be changed . . . one story at a time.

Six

I’ve yet to meet a gadget or gizmo I don’t lust after.

Even if it’s just a little bit of lust. And being a Mac Bigot, audio tech, and theatre tech, there are innumerable gizmos and gadgets available to my lusting tendencies. 

Enough with the Geek Creds

There are likely myriad other ways in which I am a geek (and anyone who knows me in RL could likely enumerate them from here to kingdom come), but I’ll stop here.

It’s an arbitrary stopping place, and I’m okay with that. I’m not really celebrating my geekdom as much as I’m just fessing up to this critical component of my Self.

The Point

(I’m finding it strange that I feel the need to create this “The Point” heading in order to make myself get to the point. Ah well, Havi has a duck, Naomi has her mouth . . . I have a heading. I’ll take that. For now.)

So back to The Point.

I’ve realized as of late that although I’m a GREAT BIG HONKIN’ GEEK, I try to hide this truth from many/most people. Apparently, I’m less successful at that than I thought, but still, I try.

And these attempts at hiding it are rooted in the slings and arrows of being a geek in junior high and high school. (Probably elementary school too, but my very selective memory has chosen to pretend that I never went to elementary school.)

And I’ve further decided that I’m tired of hiding. So I’m outing myself. For all of those of you who already knew, you now know that I know too. You can quit being polite about it.

Being a geek is a really good thing for me. My passions (other than my SBH and the furballs) are all geeky. 

That’s the key.

My passions.

My next trick is to embrace those passions, and (with the help of Jonathan Fields’s Career Renegade . . . good stuff here, folks!) harness it. Harness it and make it real.

See? I’m working to unfetter my own mind. And this is part of the process.

It’s going to get messy.

But in the good way.