Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Strange Evolutions

Photo by Mike Licht .  licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Life is full of strange evolutions.  At one point in your life you might find yourself shaking your fist at authority and later in life you may become an authority yourself.  As a man, you could spend your youth trying to decode the enigma that is woman, and later become the father of a daughter.  In our youth, we might shake our heads in disgust at the seemingly anachronistic habits of the elderly, but as we get older perhaps we start to develop those habits ourselves.

Maybe hypocrisy is built into life as a means for the universe to keep our egos in check.  It seems like many strong stances I've taken over the years have devolved and turned on their head as I've gotten older.  Some examples of changing points of view in my life have been liberalism vs. conservatism, appetite for country music, opinion on the desirability of red-heads, level of passion for gummy bears...  The list goes on and on.

But some old behaviors die hard.  I've always loved video games.  For the first thirty five years of my life, every time I went to the shopping mall I invariably veered toward the video game shop.  To quote some vernacular from a past life: "it had to be done."  But a lot has changed in the gaming space over the years.  Now, I play predominantly PC games and I buy my games from the Steam online store.  I still feel the pull to go into the mall game store, but when I do I mostly just mill about, deflect an inquiry from a youthful employee and then leave slightly dissatisfied.  Maybe I should buy a gaming console so I can experience the sensation of a physical gaming purchase again.  I miss that.

What is the fashionable ratio of anachronism vs. youthful behavior for a middle-aged person?  I've been asking myself this question, lately.

I went to a party recently where a middle aged man got stumbling drunk.  It was quite humorous in one sense, but it bothered me, too.  On the humorous side, it reminded me of the primal joy of having a party produce a memorable event.  So many parties with mature hosts end up being rather mundane.  It's a shame that my definition of a memorable event is often someone making a fool out of themselves.  I'm sure there are other classes of memorable events--although I can't think of any at the moment.  Hmmm...  Anyway, it was entertaining to watch this person make a fool out of themselves--and do it with exuberant moxy.  Think of the charms of the Animal House movie and you'll get the idea.

The dark side of this behavior was the following.  First, this man's pre-teen boy was at the party and had to witness this behavior.  Second, such behavior suggests either the lack of a personal code of conduct or a breaking of that code.  One thing I don't know is what the surrounding context of this event was.  This man was a stranger to me.  Maybe he'd just survived a plane crash and was embracing the devil may care attitude of an unlikely survivor.  Or maybe his code of conduct includes getting heavily intoxicated and falling into muddy streams and thrashing about.  How you'd react to that being a part of his code is a bit of a litmus test for the type of person you are, I suppose.

So, what is the appropriate line between anachronism and exuberance for someone in middle age?  I guess it's a decision every person has to make for themselves.

Progress on Hemlock book four has slowed a bit over the past weeks
due to some competing priorities, but I will be getting back in gear this week.  Word count stands at about 31,000.  I'm still experiencing a buzz from getting to write scenes I envisioned over five years ago.  It's an amazing blessing that I've gotten this far and that I am going to finish this quadrilogy.  Thanks for reading and I hope you are having a wonderful summer!