Life as an Extreme Sport

the little engine that will

I’ve had another paradigm shift in the last few weeks. The first major paradigm shift was over the summer, when my internal monologue “switched voices” – it’s CHID-time all the time in my head. Or, less cryptically weird, my internal monologue has switched to what I long ago dubbed “academia” as it’s nativespeak, as opposed to the dialect called “normal”. (At least two other dialects exist – “g33k” and “sign”. There was a third, but like all unused languages, it’s dying and will soon be gone.)

The second paradigm is one of… well, I just added Steven Shaviro’s blog to my list of “things to read”, and doing so didn’t create the usual tremor I associate with, well, associating with people who are. More. Who’re educated. Have written books. Held great ideas in their heads, and then turned around and shared them with anyone willing to listen.

And I still awe at this. But in a different way, a way that makes people like Shaviro or Mitchell or Doyle or White (and on, and on) accessible. Instead of awe inspired by a feeling of never being able to, never being good enough, it’s an awe informed and inspired by the belief that I can.