I’m neither modest nor introverted, so you’d think this wouldn’t be a terribly difficult exercise, but I find myself wondering what to say about the man at the keyboard.
I consider myself lucky to be married to a wonderful woman who attempts to keep me young and cheerful, despite my tendency to be an irritable middle-aged man (I’m practicing to be a crotchety old man). Together we’re raising two beautiful daughters with whom we’re trying to share the lessons life has taught us, while they, in turn, are reminding us of a lot of life lessons we’ve forgotten along the way. The girls are frighteningly clever and keep us in a constant state of something between attentiveness and wariness. To put it another way, we take a lot of care not to miss anything, but sometimes, after the fact, we wonder if it would have been best for everyone involved if we had.
In any event, as this site develops, you’ll see that my interests are numerous and varied, but this shouldn’t be taken as a sign that I lack focus. (I do lack focus, but I’d prefer you don’t take it that way.) Had I lived in the early sixteenth century, I’d like to believe I would have been considered a “Renaissance man”. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t fancy myself a modern Leonardo da Vinci or anything like that. I’m more like Leonardo’s younger, duller, less talented, and less successful second cousin. I do, however, have plans for a really cool beard when I hit my fifties.
I do a lot of reading. It’s both relaxing and satisfying for me. These days most of my reading is fiction. I read a lot of fantasy, particularly stuff targeted at teens. It gives me a chance to talk with my older daughter about what she’s reading, and, quite frankly, I enjoy it, because there are a lot of decent authors doing this kind of stuff. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Sisters Grimm, and the Charlie Bone series are staples of the household. I also like mystery/thrillers. A few of the authors I really enjoy are Nelson DeMille, Jeffrey Archer, David Baldacci, and James Patterson. Admittedly, some works by these authors are a bit formulaic, but I love the characters and action.
The little bit of nonfiction I still read is usually political, historical, or biographical. I got a bit burnt out on nonfiction during grad school. Most of what I was reading was long-winded, obfuscated, pompous, and irrelevant, but I’m slowly picking up the occasional work that appeals to me and am finding that I can once again enjoy “working” at a book. In all fairness, most of the stuff I was reading in grad school was targeted specifically at other specialists in academia, and impressing one another and making the work inaccessible seemed to be the order of the day. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule, but not many.
In addition to reading, I enjoy taking pictures of the things that fill my life: people, places, and the things around me. I refrain from calling it photography as that would make it seem a much more artistic endeavor than it really is. I’m thankful for digital photography, because while I think I have a pretty decent eye, my hands don’t always seem to cooperate. Digital picture-taking helps me overcome this problem by offering the ability to take several pictures to get the one I want.
My newest time-consumer is genealogy. I set out a couple of years ago to do some basic research on my father’s family before a family reunion and became hooked. Much of my academic training was in American history, so this was a comfortable hobby for me to enter. Currently, I’m working on tracing direct lines for both my own and my wife’s family. Additionally, I’m attempting to digitize all the old family pictures and documents. Hopefully, one or both of my daughters will someday be interested in learning about this stuff. For now, I’m just enjoying the challenge.
