Take the Babble

I came down into the dungeon to write. The dungeon is our family computer room, in the basement of our rental house. Five desktops with seven full-sized monitors, a couple printers, a laptop fill the space. The boys spend hours a day here: Minecraft, Youtube, Duolingo, Coursera... At present, two of the boys are upstairs watching one of the Ice Age movies. The middle son, I, as is his habit, watches a Minecraft video on one screen, while working in one of his worlds on the other. No amount of explanations and articles and evidence that multi-tasking is a myth will deter his practice.

And he talks... and talks. When he's standing up, he can't stand still, endlessly pacing about. I used to describe the ceaseless need for distraction as relating to "the MTV generation", which for some reason I considered myself beyond, as if MTV had not first come to the fore as my puberty was in full swing.

I find myself often distracted and uninterested in his babble. But a part of me knows or believes that it is more. There is interaction there, relationship building, that I wish so much to learn to harness. I admire my wife, R, her ability to seem more interested than I feel, more interested than I believe she feels. So, I smile, and nod, laugh, and emit appreciative sounds: huh, wow, interesting, yeah, I see what you mean.

Fake it 'til you make it. How much of my life is faking it? There's the dilemma! Part of me, the adult let's say, the practical realist, has made conscious choices, discerning or deciding the best available choice (BAC) at each turn. See, a few years ago, I had my ideal career: I was an entrepreneur, sole owner, president, chief scientist of my small but growing R&D concern. I was the boss and the inspiration, the lead and the visionary.

I had felt important, appreciated, and on the path to realizing some of that potential I had always relied on. But then... it fell apart. My startup became a shutdown. I pared down to nothing from the 5 full time and 3 part time employees we had, until all that remained was to collect a few residual payments, continue to seek opportunities. Eventually, that became a full-on job search.

In the end, I chose the best available choice. And three years into a new career, here I remain, up and down. And that state of affairs has led me here, seeking happy once again.