Who Am I?

Submitted by Taran on Fri, 03/10/2006 - 21:47

I said "I don't reckon i'll be
makin it big,
you know it's hard to get rich
off a tout of coffee house gigs"
and he said "yeah, but ain't it a blessin
to do what you wanna do..."

-- Shawn Mullins

I don't know why people ask me who I am, or what I do. I have a resume up for work and contracts, but that's not who I am. That's not even all of what I do. It's certainly not a definition of what I want to do; I already did that stuff - it just gives people an idea of what I have done, and what I have demonstrated aptitude in.

About 15 years ago, I watched a friend of mine pack his 12 string guitar into his van, heading off after a lifetime of helping 'troubled' youth... just before retirement, saturated with what he'd been surrounded by, and a need to let it out the best way he knew how. Mad Anthony Wayne (not General Anthony Wayne) headed off in the darkness, his cap covering the sore spot on his soul. I remember that day. I also remember when he came back about 5 years later. I'd changed, and maybe he had... because of the changes I had gone through, I couldn't gauge how different he was.

Anthony and I played with words a lot (we did originally coin 'Rataroni' - I think he's the one who came up with it), and though Anthony was more of a friend of my mother's, he and I were friends in that I looked up to him. Anyone who can play a 12 string like that and write lyrics that hit like a boxer... well, that's someone to respect. But someone reminiscent of Tom Bombadil, sure of their own abilities and not caring who anyone else was... that's inspirational for a younger person who is much the same. Tony's last words of note to me were that I should pick what I love and stick with it, that if I did what I loved the world would fall into place.

The truth is that I didn't know it at the time, but I wasn't particularly happy with where my life was going. I had the cigars and martinis, I ate at the good restaraunts, and I worked like a dog on things which I had a feral interest in - yet I was always chained. Always. My neck was becoming sore from the chain, and though I didn't know it yet - Tony apparently spotted it.

Of Plans And Lack Thereof

That, of course, cause me to wonder what I wanted to do with my life. That's something people have been asking me since I was way too young to care about it. To this day I don't know what I want to be, and I like it that way. Some people will tell you that you need a plan (my father told me that, and I bet your father did too), or they expect you to have a plan.

Enter an institution of education and you're expected to figure out the rest of your life within 4 years while you're picking courses. You can actually be penalized for doing things you're interested in doing if it doesn't fall into some 'master plan' for your 'career' that hasn't even started off. There are two choices. The first choice is the one everyone takes - follow a path and pray that you're good at it. The second choice is a more difficult path; do what you're good at and bumble down a path. You pick a general direction, and you simply go.

Wanderers don't usually get much respect from those that are settled unless they don't fall off the map, as expected through the myths and stories of those settled.

'What Do You Do?'

Always, people ask me what I do - it's some societal totem, a job or a position - and more and more these days I just look at people like bugs under a magnifying glass when they ask me. I do what feels right, which is odd coming from someone accused of having a rational, analytical mind - but when something doesn't feel right, I don't do it. Some people think I've missed a lot of opportunities because of it, but when I look at what they asked me to do and what time has given them in answer - well, those weren't really opportunities, they were things that occupied time.

What I do is what I do.

Exhibit A

A few months ago, a woman with a small shop was telling me that her electricity bill was high and that the electricity company was going to be charging her commercial rates.

I asked her what used electricity in the shop; she had 2 60 Watt bulbs, 2 refrigerators, a television, a radio. Not much. I told her to buy 2 of the newer fluorscent bulbs - that will use 26 Watts instead of the 120 she's using - and explained to her that the number of Watts tells you how much current a device uses.

I told her that she needed to get a refrigerator that opens from the top because the standing refrigerators lose cold air every time you open the door; cold air falls and hot air rises - the cold air falls like water when the door of a standing refrigerator opens; a refrigerator that opens from the top loses less cold air because gravity holds it in the refrigerator. Since electricity is used to keep the refrigerator at the set temperature, more electricity is used by a standing refrigerator- especially if you open and close the door a lot (as in a shop).

I told her that the television burns a lot of electricity, and if it's not in use it should be off. And I had fun looking at the problem and the solutions...

A few months later, her electricity bill is a fraction of what it used to be.

Exhibit B

My nickname for a lot of people is 'Doc' (a Hospital Corpsman reference) around the area, so some fellow heard me called 'Doc' by someone a few days ago at a store had him looking at me a bit nervously, wanting to ask the question that was painfully on his face - an abscess. I asked him if he had an abscess, he said yes. I asked him if he'd seen a dentist, he said yes, and he had been on medications to take the swelling down for almost a week and it hadn't subsided.

I told him to try a prune pressed against the abscess while taking the medications and seeing his dentist, and stopping if it made it worse (the latter is common sense, but...). Today I bumped into him; the swelling was down and he had an appointment with his dentist on Monday for his tooth.

'How did you know?'
'I read about it and tried it on someone before, and it worked. 2 years ago, I tried it on me and it worked.'

The worst that could have happened is he would have had a toothache and clean bowels, unless he was allergic to prunes- which he wasn't. I asked.

Exhibit C

A local company had a mess of data and needed it in a fashion which could be used by their clients. They let me lose to do what I would, and even paid me for the trouble - not a king's ransom, but then again, the king wasn't the problem here. So I mapped it out, some extras became visible, and I have a happy client.

Which Exhibit Defines Me?

I could say that all of the exhibits define me, but it would be more true to say that none of them define me - you just get hints. There are quite a few different knowledge specialties involved, ranging from basic physics to basic electricity to 'bush medicine' (homeopathy) to MySQL and a content management system. I don't need a label for who I am, I know who I am. Other people don't, and want me to neatly fit into a category which I don't want to be in. I've found that being me has limitations - and like the prune incident, I know where they are ('keep seeing your dentist!').

About 6 years ago, I started taking Tony's advice. Money is nice, when you can spend it on things you need or want. I got asked for permission to use some of my work in what I am sure will be a successful book next year, but since I wasn't getting paid and the organization is non-profit, I simply pointed out that the work was originally published under a Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial license and that, therefore, it could be used with my consent implicit in the license.

And still, people ask me what I do, who I am. My standard reply over the past few years has been 'writer and consultant'. When I got an email from the Public Relations Officer of the alumni association asking, 'Who Are You?', I didn't bother to answer. It took me 34 years to be who I am now, and it would take 34 years to explain it properly.

I'd rather do new things.

As I sit here waiting for House to come on, I remember the episode I saw last week - DNR... and the moment when John Henry Giles talks to Dr. House about finding what's right for you and sticking with it... 'the limp, the missing wedding band... you and I do it because we found something that is right for us, and you know you'd never give it up.'

Yeah. Solving problems and creating things is sort of like that.

Thanks, Tony

Sometimes, a quiet word spoken in a coffee shop to a young friend goes further than one could imagine - and I trace a lot of who I am now back to that conversation over lukewarm coffee and a full ashtray.