Saturday, January 22, 2011

My Social Archaeology Fantasy

The great ones are always thinking, always looking ahead. The average to mediocre ones are content to sit and spin their wheels, perpetually mired in the mud of the present moment. Fortunately, I consider myself among the great ones, always on the move, always seeing tomorrow as better than today, and always striving toward a bright future.

In a way, I guess, it comes down to your personality. If you're in a shell, if you're huddled in the corner somewhere, if you live in the fetal position, of course you're not going to have much on the ball when it comes to greatness. To be among the great ones, the ones living for the ages, you need to have the kind of personality that believes it can be done. You'll face every day with an attitude that doesn't quit, that doesn't give up, that doesn't settle for second best.

And it's a lesson that does you good in every aspect of your life, not just in the realm that I'm thinking of tonight -- blogging -- the output that a person is responsible for on a blog like this.

You know, the truth is I'm not really that smart a person. There's not a day goes by that I'm not reminded that I don't know much of anything about much of anything. Math, science, statistics, anatomy, I don't know any of it. When it comes to anatomy, just as an example, I'm convinced that the body is made up of pipe cleaners and some kind of skin paste. And as to science in general, most of my personal facts are determined by what religious leaders tell me to believe. Which allows for some very quirky things, such as the lives and habitat of aborigines actually being older than the Earth itself. No, smartness isn't everything; I've got an attitude, and that puts me ahead of everyone else.

So when it comes to the blog ... you've got the idea, it's clearly superior.

My social archaeology fantasy -- which is what I wanted to write about tonight -- is this, that someday, like a thousand years from now when I'm dead and gone, some young social archaeologist will discover my blog (or be assigned it by her academic adviser) and go nuts over it as she digs in and finds out how much great stuff is here. Day after day!

Of course I'm proud. And it's not that I've got so many compliments from my readers. In fact, for the most part, most of my readers can't be bothered to leave a comment, even though every great writer craves positive feedback. I understand this because I don't leave comments at other people's blog either. My pride comes out of my own assessment, since I can clearly see that what I do has the highest quality. It's kind of funny. When I simply have an idea, I know whether it will be good or bad, and thankfully none of them is ever bad.

If I ever have any criticism of myself, it's mostly such things as I don't want it to be so good that it discourages others from even trying. I believe that's a constant danger, and, frankly, that's one of the main reasons I limit my blog posts to basically one a day. Because I could literally bury everyone and leave them in the dust if I brought out the big guns and wrote everything on my mind. And it runs quite a gamut, being insightful, thought-provoking, and philosophical, all the way up to hilarious if, say, I'm in a humorous mood. Some of my Pink Professor posts have shown my softer side, so I've got the whole package. And I'm not saying that with the sexual connotation that also would've been accurate.

OK, anyway, the future's out there. A year from now, ten years from now, or, in the case of my social archaeologist, a thousand years from now. By then I'm dead and gone, completely retired. And yet Google blogs are still going strong. And they've kept available all the archives, with social archaeologists combing the whole thing for signs of excellence in the past.

My own social archaeologist -- she finds this blog, and, guess what, she loves it! She's reading along and she becomes breathless. Isn't that great? She starts thrilling to the intricacies there and how it's all tied together, the many nuances, the moods that I've displayed, and the variances and the things that are constant. It's certainly going to be a delight for that person, and I just wish I could be there to see the look on her face. And, who knows, maybe she'll fall in love with me so much that she hires a medium, they come out to where I used to live, and they conjure up my spirit, which appears and does something appropriate.

What I've said about myself and this blog is something you also can aspire to! If you haven't got the confidence, yet the talent is there, get some confidence! Don't let anyone get you down. Don't let the lack of positive comments discourage you. And please don't be discouraged by anything I write here, in the sense that it's something you don't think you can compete against. The truth is, We're not competing. We're just trying to do our best -- and with a little confidence, anything I do, you could probably come close to a rough approximation of the same thing, assuming you work really hard and refuse to let jealousy get the best of you.

Friends, 1000 years from now is going to come. Wouldn't you love to be there to hear what they have to say about you? Well, you can't do that, at least with our current idiotic medical system, where it's every man for himself and dog-eat-dog. But you can work really hard right now and do your best, because someday they're going to look back ... and what they'll discover then depends on what you do now.

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