My Personal Inventory

February 23, 2009 / Uplift!

I thought it might be helpful if I provided an example of a personal inventory — both for you (so that you can see what I’m talking about) and for me (since it’s been a while since I’ve done this). So here’s one for me. It’s been about six months since the last time I really sat down to do this, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out. My life is very different today than it was six months ago.

So, without further ado, my personal inventory!

Health

This category is the most challenging of the three for me, and I’ve had a couple of health-related setbacks since the last time I took stock. Overall, I consider my health to be decent — I don’t get sick more often than average, rarely need to visit the doctor, and generally find that I don’t struggle with health issues. That said, there are a few issues that I am dissatisfied with or at risk for.

Here they are, in decreasing order of priority:

  1. In the past six months, I’ve discovered that I have a health condition related to a fiber deficiency in my diet, and have increased my fiber intake as a consequence. Pro-actively monitoring my diet in previous years could have averted this condition, and it’s important that I continue watching what I eat permanently in order to avoid exacerbating it.
  2. I wear glasses to correct my vision, which is quite poor uncorrected. My glasses are three years old, and it is well past time for new ones. They are currently on order, and I will switch to the new pair as soon as they arrive. I have worn glasses for all of my adult life and teenage years, and I would like to get rid of them.
  3. I carry around a lot more weight than I need to, and given the family history of diabetes, it is likely to develop into something more serious if not kept in check. This, coupled with my high cholesterol, means that I should be pro-active about improving my diet and exercise habits.
  4. I have a history of depression.
  5. I just don’t seem to have the time to improve my health, nor much enthusiasm for doing so.

Things aren’t as bleak as all that, though. I’m not one to focus solely on the negative (anymore), so here are the positive aspects of my health:

  1. As noted above, I have already improved my diet considerably. I eat a lot more vegetables than I used to, and I eat smaller portions. Although I still eat junk food, I am a lot more moderate about it. For instance, a trip to Jack in the Box used to consist of a large Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger meal with soda and a large milkshake. These days I’ll get a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, a small fries, and a small milkshake — or if I’m being really good, a Chicken Fajita Pita, side salad, and a small milkshake. My philosophy is that a diet that denies you everything you want is a diet that won’t last very long. It’s a lot easier to eat LESS of the things I like than to replace them with things I don’t enjoy as much.
  2. I walk a mile every morning. My commute makes this easy — I take the train, and I live a mile from the train station. Although I wasn’t keen on the distance from the train station when I moved here, I find now that I’m glad of it. I know someone who’s struggling to find time to walk a mile before work each day, whereas I do so automatically without thinking about it!
  3. My depression has been in remission for two and a half years, and I haven’t had any trouble keeping it that way — despite some negative events in my life since then (such as a breakup and the development of my dietary health issues).

Overall, health is the area of my life that needs the most improvement, because it is also the one for which I have the least enthusiasm. My primary motivation in health is to avoid negative consequences, whereas in the other areas of my life I have pro-active motivations and goals. Perhaps I should examine my outlook on it and try to find a way to be more interested in and pro-active about my health.

Wealth

Wealth is one of my favorite topics — I love talking money! I’m also pretty happy with where my finances are right now, although things could always be better!

I have a decent job in Silicon Valley, I have positive cash flow, and my assets outweigh my liabilities, although not by much (yet). I am on my way to being able to retire, the only question is… when?

I used to believe that the best option was to accumulate a million dollars, invest it at 5% (or more, but 5% seems conservative enough to count on), and live off the interest. The downside to that plan is that it takes a very, very long time to acquire $1M by working for a living. At the pace I’m currently going, it seems likely that I’ll be old and/or sick by the time I am in a position to fully retire. I don’t want to wind up with a retirement I can’t enjoy.

Additionally, I’m unhappy with the time investment required by my work. In theory, I work an eight hour day, but in reality, from the time my alarm goes off at 6 AM till the time I get home over twelve hours later at 6:15 PM, I’m doing things that are necessitated by my employment. The overhead of holding my job is 50%. I consider this excessive, it detracts from my happiness, and I want to find ways to reduce the amount of time I invest in earning income.

So now I’m considering the benefits of passive income, and learning to believe that retirement or semi-retirement is possible much sooner that way than it is with strict accumulation. Why should I spend vast quantities of my time working for someone else until the bank account is full? Why wait 40 years to begin enjoying the fruits of my labors if I can independently create multiple streams of income that will support me now? I am learning a lot about decoupling my income from my time.

It’s a transition, though, and one that I’m right in the middle of. I’m not fully decided what I want to do. There are other things I could do to speed up the accumulation, such as moving to a programming job. Right now I’m at a financial crossroads, looking around, trying to decide what to do.

I have some personal projects I’m working on in hopes that they can contribute to my early retirement from traditional employment, not the least of which is this blog. My biggest challenge right now is making the time to work on them.

Relationships

Relationships are important to me in a way they didn’t used to be. My sojourn to Portland, OR took me away from my friends and family here in Silicon Valley for two and a half years, and it was largely that social distance that brought me back. Right now I am in pretty good shape with my relationships, though there is one major thing I would change:

Time.

I don’t have the time I wish I had to see all my friends. There are people I haven’t seen since I moved back to Silicon Valley six months ago, and others I see occasionally or even frequently and wish I had more time for.

That said, I am glad to have reconnected with the friends that I have, and to be dating a wonderful woman who makes me very happy. In many ways, my relationships are the best they’ve ever been in my life, and with the exception of wanting time for even more of the same, I can’t think of anything I’m dissatisfied with.

Conclusion

There’s a common theme here: time. Overall, my life is pretty good — the best it’s ever been, even. The pervasive problem that keeps cropping up everywhere is that there just aren’t enough hours in the day — or days in the week — for everything I want to get done. And what time I have is largely consumed by employment. This issue seems to be the greatest challenge standing between me and the life that I want to live.

I hope that this personal example has given you some insight into the sorts of things you can write about in your personal inventory, what the value of doing so might be, and how to go about doing it. As always, please share any feedback you may have in the comments!

Leo at Zen Habits Posts Money Hacks…

February 23, 2009 / Uplift!

Leo over at the Zen Habits blog posted 20 money hacks today, ways to help keep your finances in order.  While I don’t agree with every tip in the post, I think this is a fantastic resource and if you follow Leo’s advice, you’ll see a major improvement in your finances.  Some of his tips are the very actions I took to get myself out of $12,000 worth of credit card debt and get myself started on the path to financial independence.

Here are  some things I would add:

  1. Get online banking and use it!  Check your balances at least once a week to make sure things are on track. Also, using online banking will allow you to…
  2. Pay your bills automatically online.  Many banks offer free online bill pay to their customers.  If you set this up to happen automatically, you’ll never be late with a bill again.  And you’ll never have to worry about not having the money, so long as you…
  3. Use multiple bank accounts to earmark funds.  I keep one checking account for my living expenses (food and entertainment, mostly) and another one for my rent and bills and so forth.  As soon as I get paid, I set aside enough money for living expenses for the pay period in one account, enough for bills (half my monthly total for bills since I get paid twice a month) in the other account, and all the rest goes to savings.  This is the equivalent of Leo’s envelopes idea, but for people who…
  4. Don’t use cash.  Okay, I disagree with Leo on this one.  I do almost all my spending via debit card.  By keeping tabs on my account online, I can keep track of whether I’m overspending or underspending(!), and I very rarely have to go to the trouble of using an ATM.  I find it easier to waste money when I have cash in hand than when it’s on a card deducting from my bank balance.  It’s more painful for it to reduce the bank balance because then you’ll notice your spending when you…
  5. Track your net worth.  I agree with Leo that keeping a Google Docs spreadsheet for your finances makes a lot of sense — but I think it’s more valuable to use this for long-term tracking of your progress than short-term tracking of your spending.  Total up all your money (and other financial assets if you have them), then total up all your debt.  Subtract your debt from your assets, and you have your net worth.  You want to watch the trend in this over time — month over month, are you getting richer or poorer?  I check this every payday.  This lets you measure your progress toward your financial goals, which is much more motivating IMO than seeing your spending all the time.

On the whole, as Leo says, you should do what works for you.  I’ve written this just to present another possibility — this is what works for me.

Painting Reality: Examining Your Current Life

February 23, 2009 / Uplift!

So I have undertaken this quest to uplift myself, and invited you to follow along with me and take any inspiration or ideas that you can from my experiences. Let’s begin by examining the process I’m using for self-uplift. The first step is to take stock of your life and figure out where you are right now. Then you figure out where you want to be — what you want for your life, what kind of a future you want to have. With those two points in mind, you can begin to figure out what actions you need to take to move in the direction of that future. Once you know what your first actions are, it’s time to act on them! You may find, as I did, that once you’ve started acting, your progress changes how you think about your goals — or even changes your goals altogether! If that’s the case, the process starts over again (though likely in abbreviated form — after all, you’ve already done most of the planning, so whatever comes next will likely be smaller adjustments). In the next few posts, I’ll be giving an overview of how to go about doing this.

We’ll start with the personal inventory — figuring out what your life is like now and how you feel about that, what you like and what you don’t. Don’t worry too much about your goals yet — that comes later. It’s even okay if you don’t have any goals (or don’t know what they are). For a long time, I struggled with a lack of goals, a sense of directionlessness that made it difficult to achieve anything because I didn’t know what I was working toward or why. It’s okay for now if that’s where you are. What’s important right now is simply to look objectively at the circumstances of your life and evaluate them from a perspective of figuring out what you’re happy with and what could use improvement.

This personal inventory can be as simple or complex as you want, but in keeping with the model of happiness I described in my first post, I suggest examining at least three aspects of your life:

  • Health
  • Wealth
  • Relationships

Consider what you like about your life in each category, as well as what you don’t like. I highly recommend that you write these things down, because often I find that my conscious thoughts only scratch the surface of what’s really going on in my mind, and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard releases a lot of pent-up thoughts that I didn’t realize were lurking under the surface.

If things are bad, don’t let this depress you. Keep in mind that taking an honest look at where you stand now is a crucial first step to fixing the things that you don’t like about your life and figuring out how to get to where you want to be. A map to the Promised Land will do you no good if you don’t know where you are on that map right now. The purpose of this exercise is simply to get your bearings, to understand your life as it is today so that later on, once you’ve determined the destination, you have a way of figuring out how far away that destination is and in which direction. If there are some things that you are unhappy about, acknowledge that, own it, and remind yourself that what you’re doing right now is taking the first step on the road to changing those things.

Conversely, if there are things that you are satisfied with, happy about, that bring you joy, be sure to write those down too! Appreciating the positive can be just as good a motivation as a desire to change the negative, so don’t ignore either side of the equation. Look for the good in each situation, even if the good is simply that it isn’t worse than it is! It’s important to identify and acknowledge the things that are good about your life — both because these things will help see you through any rough spots along the way, and because if you’re going to go through a process of change, you should know what you DON’T want to change, too!

With your personal inventory done, you’ll have a more-or-less accurate picture of what your life looks like now. Do something to reward yourself for having done some hard, honest, self-examination, and take a break to decompress before moving on to the next step. You don’t want to get burnt out before you start seeing results from this process!

In my next post, I’ll examine the next step in the process: figuring out what kind of a life you really want!

Meanwhile, talk back! If you have any questions or comments, please share them in a comment below. I’d especially like to hear anything you have to say about your results if you performed this exercise. Tell me what you think!

Welcome to Uplift!

February 23, 2009 / Uplift!

Welcome to the Uplift! personal development blog. My focus here is on how to improve your life and enjoy greater freedom and happiness through self-improvement and lifestyle design. My name is David Safar, and I make no claim to be a guru or an expert on this subject. On the contrary, I am still near the beginning of my path, and this blog is as much a chronicle of my journey as it is a source of information and advice for those who wish to follow a similar path.

I am a 27-year-old Silicon Valley native currently working in software and seeking a greater enjoyment of life than I am currently experiencing. My life has improved tremendously in the past three years, and I am doing everything I know how to do to keep it on its current trajectory. It is because of this intention to keep improving that I decided to create a blog. Uplift! is both the result of my upward momentum and a means by which I intend to reinforce it. I chose the name Uplift! because of the word’s many positive connotations. It encapsulates many ideas that are to be central to this blog — improvement, enlightenment, joy, self-reliance, helping others, and so on. Uplift! is an active imperative verb. It is not “be uplifted”, which would imply passive acceptance of uplifting stimuli. Uplift! means making an active choice to work to uplift yourself, uplift your loved ones, uplift humanity. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, Uplift!

Topics

It has been said that most of the problems people have in their lives are in the areas of health, wealth, and relationships. I believe that this is a useful model of reality — not perfect, but good — so my posts will usually focus on one or more of these three areas. I will also be discussing the idea of lifestyle design. I have only recently been introduced to this concept by Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4 Hour Workweek, and it has great appeal to me, so I will be exploring it in greater depth. My background is in technology (most specifically in web software testing), and that will no doubt influence my thinking and my voice as I explore these topics.

Let’s take a look at some of the more specific topics we’ll be covering:

  • Wealth: This is currently the area I’ve been the most successful with in my own life. I’ve personally recovered from being over $12,000 in debt to being in the black again and on the upswing. I am now looking into ways to free myself from the obligations of full-time employment and put my wealth on auto-pilot so that I can devote my time to something more meaningful than mere survival. I believe that it is possible to earn a living without sacrificing most of your time to make someone else rich. With dedication and creativity, I believe you can break free from the traditional model of employment and generate enough passive income to lead a comfortable lifestyle and still have enough free time to enjoy that lifestyle. It is true that time is money, but the exchange rate is not fixed. There are ways of making money that don’t require a massive investment of labor or sacrifice. What matters is how you use your time, not how much.
  • Relationships: This area of my life is undergoing a slow transformation right now as I learn and assimilate new ideas about what is possible for the relationships in my life and how to achieve success. There are many important kinds of relationships, but I tend to focus on romantic relationships because my own opportunities for growth are the most abundant in that area. I believe that it is possible to form rich and rewarding and joyful relationships with the people in my life, and to attract into my life more of the kind of people I enjoy being around. I believe that attractiveness and charisma are learned skills that anyone can develop by studying social dynamics and making an effort to use the concepts learned by interacting with people more.
  • Health: This is the area that could use the most attention in my life. Of health, wealth, and relationships, health is the topic of least interest to me, though no less crucial to happiness and success. One of my challenges right now is to change my thinking about health and to find a way to be interested in addressing it proactively rather than reactively. This area of life includes diet and exercise, hygiene, habits such as tobacco, alcohol, and drug use, and other various factors that affect your physical and mental wellbeing.
  • Lifestyle Design: As mentioned above, this is an idea I discovered in Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4 Hour Workweek. The basic premise is that your lifestyle is something you create, and as such, you have a great deal of control over it. Accepting a lifestyle which doesn’t suit you is the same as choosing to perpetuate it. By deciding what kind of lifestyle you want (i.e. dreaming big dreams) and choosing to make it happen, you can transform your life and leave behind the unsatisfying old lifestyle. Ferriss also explains how you can automate your work life to minimize the amount of time you must spend on it and allow you the freedom to realize those big dreams. Right now this is one of my primary goals in life. I want to work less so that I can enjoy life more. I’ve noticed a pattern in my life and the lives of those around me: time and money seem to be an either/or proposition. Either I have the time I need to enjoy life but I’m broke (e.g. when I’m unemployed) or I have the money I need to enjoy life, but I’m spending so much time earning it that I don’t have time to enjoy it. I’ve reached a phase of my life where I believe it is both possible and crucial for me to transform either/or into both/and.

Communication Is a Two-Way Street

As we take a look at how this path unfolds in our lives, I want to encourage you to comment when you feel you have something worthwhile to contribute. Uplift! is not intended as a one-way medium of communication from me to you, but rather as a dialogue between us. Comments are currently enabled; I will keep an eye on how this method of communication is working out and adjust as necessary.

Once again, welcome to Uplift! I look forward to hearing from you and learning more about the world of serious blogging.

Weblog 8/17/02

March 26, 2009 / Personal

I’ve now been up 27.5 hours and counting. I had a 20 minute nap 12 hours ago. *sigh* Oh well. I’ll live. D&D tomorrow, I’m unprepared (as usual) and uncertain as to whether I’ll be conscious for it.

I’m 22.5 today. Hurm. Looks like my accomplishments for biological year 2002 (as opposed to fiscal year, y’know, I set my one-year time frame… yeah.) will be a slight shift in direction, from wandering aimlessly in no particular direction, to wandering aimlessly in the general direction of goals. (Like that? Wandering aimlessly in a chosen direction?) *shrug* I dunno, maybe I can find some direction in the utterly TWISTED idea I co-created tonight at game. Doubt it.

Decided to alter this site’s focus a little bit (just a little bit). I think I’m gonna use it more as a blog (gawd I hate that word. Dunno why. Just hate it. Kinda like that little shit who whispered “I see dead people” in The Sixth Sense, which I refuse to see ’cause every time I saw the commercials for it I wanted to reach into the screen and throttle the living daylights outta the little shit. Yeah. That. This parenthetical is hereby terminated on the grounds of being entirely too bloody long.) or a LiveJournal, which means more frequent and (frequently) less philosophical content. Dunno if that’s good or bad or neutral, but ‘tever.

P.S.: It really is a shame about the kid from The Sixth Sense, because I have a great deal of respect for writer/director M. Night Shyamalan solely on the basis of Unbreakable.

Yeah, so anyway, life in general. Planning on D&D tomorrow, banking and chilling with a friend on Sunday, maybe plans for Monday, undecided beyond that. Played a Cheapass Game today (DeadWood, I think?) and discussed kew comics. No GamenStein, ’cause no Jeanne.

Maybe I’ll merge the weblog stuff with the ramblings. I dun wanna, ’cause they have a different feel (to me, anyway). Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll add a section. I anticipate that sometimes I’ll have trouble telling a weblog entry from a rambling (okay, so the feel isn’t SO different), which will suck. Like that entry from 8/16/02 could go either way. There’s enough short-term stuff for the weblog and enough long-term stuff for ramblings. Hrm.

If I keep up with the weblog, mebbe I’ll sort entries into pages by month. Maybe I’ll get a real LiveJournal. Maybe I’ll just kind of run out of steam and not update for months on end. Who knows?

Okay, enough rambling (weblogging?) for now. Time to try to nap. *sigh*

Weblog 8/16/02

March 26, 2009 / Personal

Insomnia, ennui, frustration, and general dissatisfaction with the world at large and my situation in particular are the order of the day. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on:

  • Web Design – I’ve been going through a bit of a web design crisis recently, which is a BadThing[tm] given that I make a living as a web designer. I’ve recently gotten it in my head to update all my web sites to XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS2 in order to be in line with modern standards. This has produced a great deal of frustration for me as I attempt to use CSS to do all the things I used to do with HTML, and particularly with tables. Bleah.
  • Insomnia – I got 7 hours of sleep last night. That’s the most I’ve gotten in a day in nearly a week. I’ve been terribly tired all week long, bailed on work twice, and left two hours early once. I’ve put in a grand total of 6 hours of work this week, and most of that has been unfocused because I’m just too bloody tired to concentrate, and unproductive due to my web design crisis.
  • Weather – It’s hot. It sucks. ‘Nuff said.
  • Unfinished Projects – I have quite a few of these, which I’ll explore in-depth below. They’re all vying for my attention, and I haven’t enough to spare to give them ALL a fair shot.
  • Money Concerns – I’m just scraping by right now financially. I’m not in any particular financial danger, I’m just accustomed to living more comfortably than I am right now. When I think about things that I want or need that cost more than about $10, it’s a case of long-term planning. I need a new bed or mattress, I want some books on XHTML and CSS, I want a couple of new D&D books, I want a new computer table or desk, etc.
  • Tech Industry – I miss my old job. This is partly related to the above, and partly due to my web design crisis. The tech industry is in a bad place right now, and I’m not sure if it’s a localized phenomenon. No one is hiring like they were in ’99, and I despair of ever getting back into the tech industry proper. Web design is getting me by, but it’s not my calling.
  • More…?

Okay, now for that Unfinished Projects thing.

  • Learning Latin
  • Learning CGI
  • Learning CSS2
  • Overhauling all my web sites
  • Reading Cryptonomicon
  • Tidying my room

Tetras in the Sea

March 24, 2009 / Personal

George Lucas is a wise, wise man. I went to see Star Wars episode 2 on opening night, and came out with something of a revelation. Significance.

I came out of the movie ranting about how cool Yoda is, and how cool lightsabers and Jedi duels are. After a suitable period of rant time (and a few episode 3 predictions), I came to the following conclusion: “And this whole ‘not being a Jedi’ thing sucks.” My dad asked, “Who’s not a Jedi?”, and I had a one-word answer for him: “Me.”

I realized later, though, what it is about Jedi knights that’s so compelling to me. In addition to the powers and the wisdom and the lightsabers, any of which I would LOVE to have for my own, what’s really compelling about the Jedi is Significance. They have the ability to shape their world, to make a difference. And not just a minor difference; a single Jedi can set forces (no pun intended) in motion that can alter the galaxy, even the universe, forever. They are the epitome of Significance among trillions of insignificants.

Significance is what I want for my own life. It is also something I respect in others: the ability to carve out a chunk of Significance for themselves in a positive way, and hold onto it for dear life.

It occurred to me to relate this idea to the old cliché about being a big fish in a little pond versus a little fish in a big pond. We have little choice in the matter; we are by default born into a colossal pond. This is a side-effect of civilization; the larger a society we live in, the bigger our pond, and the more insignificant we feel. We are born tetras in the sea. The neon tetra is a little tiny goldfish, about an inch long fully-grown.

This is where interpersonal relationships become important. Individuals and small groups give us smaller ponds. We define groups in which we can have positions of Significance. We gather in small schools of tetras, and swim within aquaria and bowls which we create within the vast ocean. The smaller the bowl, the greater our own feeling of significance, from friends, to family, to a single romantic partner, to whom our significance can be immense. A tiny little bowl just a few inches across containing but two little tetras who mean the world to each other. (Okay, that was excessively sappy, but I’m trying to make a point.)

Of course, unlike the neon tetra but like the koi, human beings have the potential to grow to a size commensurate with the pond in which they live. Some people, instead of or in addition to shrinking their pond, grow larger in an attempt to fill the space allotted to them. People take action, make a difference, educate themselves, get noticed, pursue goals, and do interesting and notable things. They act intentionally and insistently to increase their own significance in a positive way.

And that is the basis for my next rambling.

On Unfulfilled and Undirected Potential

March 23, 2009 / Personal

 

I have a cellular phone. I carry it with me whenever I leave the house for more than checking the mail or running downstairs to the laundry room. The great irony is that I don’t talk to anyone. I have a communications device undreamt of a generation ago. I have the capability of being in contact with any of billions of people in just a few moments. I pay monthly for this privilege, and I barely use it at all. The technology, the capability, the potential is mind-boggling when you stop to consider it. But what good is that capability when you’ve got nothing to say, and no one to say it to?

What good is the skill of writing if you’ve got nothing to write and no one to write it for?

One of the challenges facing a man who fancies himself a writer.

“And I sing this for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled 

For the heart with no companion
For the soul without a king
For the prima ballerina
Who cannot dance to anything”

 

-From “Heart With No Companion” by Leonard Cohen

On Poetry and Slavery to Rebellion

March 20, 2009 / Personal

My poetry lacks, and I think I unraveled part of the riddle this afternoon. Ultimately, I am a scientist, not a poet. In English today, we discussed connotative words versus denotative words. I tend to use denotative words. I describe things in terms of form and function, I use plain descriptive language and I tend to use communication as a tool, not as a toy. My style lends itself well to prose, but leaves poetry flat and dull. I write objectively; poetry is subjective.

I wonder how much of this shaping of my personality is my own fault. I’ve spent so long working to ensure that I am not ruled by my emotions that I think they’ve all but disappeared. I’ve rebelled against them so long that my life is based more on that rebellion than anything else. Garrison Keillor wrote of a similar concept in the “95 Theses 95” footnote in his novel _Lake_Wobegone_Days_. “75. I wasted years in diametrical opposition, thinking you were completely mistaken, and wound up living a life based more on yours than if I’d stayed home.” How true, how true.

So. As I asked last week in a rambling on a similar topic, where do I go from here?

I Fancy Myself a Writer

March 19, 2009 / Personal

More and more since returning to school last Monday, I fancy myself a writer.

Why “I fancy myself a writer”? Why not simply, “I am a writer”? I chose the words I did because there’s a great deal of hubris required to call oneself a writer when one writes as little as I do. More than the average person, perhaps, but not nearly “enough” to be a writer, if indeed there is such a thing. Still, I have this idealized picture of myself in my mind, a version of me indefinably but perceptibly superior. I see Writer Dave, and he looks as I do now, but there’s a certain confidence about him that I lack, a certain wisdom, a certain peace, and a good deal more depth of thought and action. He’s less rash, and perhaps less jovial, but wittier to make up for it. He has read infinitely more than I have, and written a great deal more, as well. His insight boggles the mind, as does his empathy. He is able to read people and help them to feel more comfortable with themselves, more confident, happier… more like him. He understands them, and they trust him. He’s never out-of-place, out of his element, stuck for something (the right thing) to say. He approaches learning opportunities with a tempered enthusiasm. He talks to people just to learn about them, hear a fresh voice, a new perspective, get a window into a different life. He’s also a linguist, and a translator, and can talk to many people in their native tongues (Spanish and a couple of dialects of Chinese top his list of known languages). He observes, as I do, but his perception runs deeper. He is educated in many fields, and can converse intelligently on many topics. He’s been published. Perhaps poetry, perhaps fiction, perhaps technical writing, DEFINITELY non-technical writing. He has an aura of contentment without arrogant self-satisfacton. He knows love not as a casual acquaintance but as a life-long friend and ally. He is, ultimately, who I want to be. Who I *thought* I would be.

I fancy myself a writer.