I wish I could remember why this feeling struck me (ouch!), but a couple days ago, it occurred to me how… self-centered having a blog like this can be. “Look at what I write! See how important it is? It’s worthy of public consumption! You should all read it! I’m so cool, my pee-pee has frostbite!” Okay, maybe that last one is a little extreme, but hopefully, you get the idea.
That’s not to say that I’m going to stop writing, but there was a thought I’d had a few weeks ago that spawned from stuff that happened last summer. You’ll have to blame Marie J (gotta protect her anonymity or she’ll kick my ass) for said spawning, but don’t mention anything in public—she’s married and I doubt her husband would appreciate her spawning with other people. She’s a former inhabitant of the godforsaken country commonly known as “Canada” (blame Marie for that comment, too). She’s also a member of Mensa and was responsible for organizing Mensa Canada’s Annual Gathering last summer.
Since we’re friends, Marie asked me if I could come up to Newfoundland and give a little presentation—I think the title (“Confessions of a Geek”) was her idea. I agreed, ’cause why the hell not? I jotted down a few things on a notecard that I was going to talk about, but that lasted for maybe five minutes before it turned into a Q & A session about my being on Beauty and the Geek. (Don’t worry, that was part of the plan.) It was somewhat unfortunate that there were only 15 or so people in the room because I had a blast—thankfully, it sounded like everyone else did, too.
Then I decided to top that by giving a similar presentation at the Mensa World Gathering in Orlando, Florida. I signed up too late to get my name put in the program book, but there were still a decent number of people sitting in the room, asking questions and listening to me ramble about whatever popped into my head (much like what I do on here, except they got to see me walking around and occasionally flailing my arms around like my hair was on fire). I wasn’t looking very closely, but given that people were leaning against the walls, I’m guessing it was closer to 75 than 15 this time—many more laughs, much more fun.
[Incidentally, the most fun was that the guy before me finished maybe 20 minutes early, so I started chatting with people right away and we essentially got started a lot earlier than your regularly-scheduled program. The room was slowly filling up as more people kept asking questions… I eventually pulled my cell phone out of my pocket just in time to announce to the crowd that the presentation was officially starting.]
So due to the fun I had and the enthusiasm of the crowd, it struck me one night (ouch again!) that maybe I could do the same thing in another manner. Naturally, no one would be able to see me flailing my arms, but here was the plan: start a series of “Confessions” where people ask me questions that I could answer like I was giving one of those presentations. I thought about using a tape recorder so I wouldn’t be writing and rewriting my answers if they sounded goofy—gotta do it like I did in front of a crowd, thinking off the top of my head.
I figured listing five questions at the beginning of each post, then providing the answers below would be a good method. Then I started to think about how I’d get lots of people to ask questions, considered how I might be able to do it again in front of an audience, maybe even turn it into a book proposal… my mind was coming up with all sorts of (good and bad) ideas. I haven’t done it yet, partially because I didn’t have my original blog and using a different one seemed… a little weird, I guess.
But the bigger reason was when my head stopped and said, “Isn’t that kind of egotistical? Trying to get yourself in front of a group of people and talking to them like what you have to say is oh-so-important?” (Thankfully, my body stopped moving at the same time—it has a very close bond with my head and prefers not to wander off without it resting on its shoulders.) What’s funny is that on my Myspace page, I wrote that I tend to be kinda modest. There’s a “magnetic fridge” on there where people can leave messages; one day, I checked my page and found that someone wrote, “Modest? Ha!” If my hesitance to follow through with this idea isn’t a good sign of modesty, I might as well unplug that fridge right now.
So now I’m torn (dammit, that hurts!). Should I follow through and start asking people to send me questions so I can provide cool answers or should I admit that I’m a regular person and stick with writing about other random stuff on the blog (which still feels a little pompous nowadays)? Methinks I’ll sit on this one for a while, but I’ll get myself a new e-mail address just in case. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go get a glass of hot water so I can defrost my pee-pee.
