“it’s an opportunity to explain that the blog is built from your life – life as inspiration – but that in fact it’s a construct. truth in a fictional form. or a fiction that’s built from truth.”

- a quote from a reader at this blog.

Every blog is its own little world.

Some are little worlds; written for the author’s enjoyment or a compulsion to keep a running tab on events and fleeting thoughts attached to those events.  I think nearly every personal blog lives an early life this way, unless its author was an avid paper diarist.

Some are conversations, and in their attempts to share they reflect a conscious effort to create a world that involves others; something that fosters a mutual understanding, sense of humor, or struggle.  It’s a call to the crowd, and the world it represents takes form as the author shapes their conversation with whomever will listen.

Questions and answers.  Giveaways, stunts, memes, nicknames, drama, and support.  They manifest as the participants in each throbbing little bubble grow into one another.

Finally, some blogs become something else altogether.

They become a desperate, driven attempt to communicate the human life, in one form or another, much bigger than any audience member or author.  They are a stab at the truth; whatever that truth may be for each particular crowd.  The words are chosen because they’re part of the voice, and the voice is something that found the author…something the whole construct has a measure of control over.

We, as authors, bloggers…we are not who our blogs say we are.

We are not what the reader sees.

We are often, albeit not always, the lead character in these fictional worlds.  We are the ones doing our damndest to find truths to keep building on.

But we are not who you think we are.

It’s incredibly important to remember that.

No matter who you are in whatever world you happen to be in at the moment.

For bloggers, how are you different than your blog says you are?

“This post is a part of 20SB’s Blog Carnival: Can’t Live Without, and Alice.com is awarding prizes to lucky bloggers and readers!”

This little piece of writing is intended to convey something I just can’t live without.

The concepts of need and want, intertwined as they are with the process of determining what it is you really don’t want to wake up without tomorrow, have significance beyond their somewhat negative connotations.  I do think we all have a handful of pillars that make us who we are against the backdrop of a pretty transferable human experience.

We all have a lot in common.

We all have a lot in common, and thanks be it, because blogging would surely underwhelm if I didn’t know where you were coming from.

Thanks be it, or we’d all be far worse off in our (often quite difficult) attempts to make some sense of one another.

Especially us men and women trying to make sense of women and men.

So what is essential to us, in my mind, is what makes us unique.

I guess that’s why I can’t answer the question, “What can’t you live without?” without making an attempt to determine what makes me different than other people, which may be complete hogwash…but I think it’s also part of the answer.

I have vices and I have mindcrushes and I have things that I really can’t imagine being without.

Coffee, and single malt scotch, super white tuna and chicken pad thai.

My email account.  Actually, my gmail account.

A little white computer made by that fruit company that has a big Shlitz sticker on it.

Portable music and headphones.  Female bloggers.

Just to name a few vices, mindcrushes, and things in no particular order.

Those lists could go on for a while, and in most cases I think I could live without all of them.

What I couldn’t live without is my sense of self, and whatever it is that makes me do the things I do because they feel right.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that sense of self seems to stem from a deep connection to whatever it is that makes new experiences stand out.  The first-time experience…the lack of familiarity.  I want things to be something a little more than they were yesterday; I want to witness the beauty of breakthrough and the neatness of perfect.

I think I need it.  I think that need drives me to look for it or seek it out.

Not in the way that thrill-seekers jump off mountains.

But in the way that most things aren’t intellectually compelling at face value, while quite a bit is quite compelling if you stop to think about the details.  To look to little things for significance.  To allow yourself to keep exploring the turns you can’t see around.

I’m not sure who I’d be without that.

Throw in the support and love my family and close friends offer me, and you’ve got me alive and well.

How about you?  What makes you you?

If you’re ever wondering what people are feeling at the moment you can find out by music hunting and using whatever’s popular at the moment as a decent barameter.

Seriously, look at any digital music popularity tool on a Monday morning, and then take a look at it on Friday afternoon…it’s basically an A to Z reflection of human disparity and jubilation.

I was a rap freak as a teenager.  I remember middle school, when I actually went out of my way to purchase every record that the Barenaked Ladies were putting out.  Those sentences are related; promise.

So if you’re not familiar with the gift from Canada that BNL was back in the early nineties, not only are Yoko Ono, Brian Wilson, and Kraft probably a little bummed, but congratulations.  Don’t get me wrong…time and place, and quite catchy funny songs all of them, but I owned every album, and I have to look at myself in the mirror somewhat often.

Anyway, I’ll give props to BNL because I think that’s where I got really into knowing lyrics (BNL being a very lyrically playful band), and that translated right into the rap scene, where I quickly became a disciple for Warren G, Snoop, Tupac, and Bone Thugs.

And to be totally honest, that carried me through.  I had some quality influences pulling me into other music, like the jammy, southern rock world that Braden was into, and even as far as the country scene at certain points.  Right next to the BNL albums I just threw out, I saw (and tossed) Brooks & Dunn and a few Allman Brothers albums.

I threw away all my CD’s…no need to read into what was tossed.

Nevertheless, I think hip-hop predominately carried me through high school.

Point is, I went to college with no real walls on my musical interests, but no real expertise in anything in particular.  I had decided that Tupac and Kurt Cobain were significant on the timeline of my musical education, but when I got to California I quickly figured out that the elements were different out there.

Napster had a lot to do with the viral spread of music, and it was just about to hit, but at the time I remember finding bands like Cake, John Mayer, Korn…alternative and singer-songerwriter stuff that I just don’t think was on my radar prior.

And then came Napster, and everything was at my fingertips.

Anything.

Live tracks.  Other people’s music libraries.

A teeming sea of tunes and artists and stories and a sense that there was more to know than it was possible to know.

Which is where my love affair started.

Not with an artist, band, genre, sound, form, or attitude related to sound or music.

A love affair with the hunt.

What’s music to you?

The new mixtape is up!

It’s a long time coming, and I know some of you probably forgot that I send out music periodically, but here it is!  It’s shiny!  It’s made with real music!  Get yours now!

Click here to check it out.

(There’s a bonus and everything)

I’m quite a conversation geek.

I know that stems from my father, who to the bone is a relatively anti-social intellectual whom, as he’s matured, places far more value on discourse than he does on emotional interfacing.

He writes plays, as a hobby, and he writes the kind of plays that explore deeply philosophical topics.

He’s not purely interested in high-brow conversation, but he’s also not immune to the geek rush he gets when someone engages him in some sort of argument that explores the intricacies of American history, human thought processes, or sociological implications of the generation gap and emerging technology.

I’ve inherited that geek tendency.

Lately I’ve had the fortune of great conversation.

I’ve met people like Nate and Mari and Nicole and each new conversation boasts excitement around what’s possible tomorrow.

Writing plays is an effort dedicated to pointing at humanity and saying, “Wow!”.

I like people who feel the excitement about human potential that I do when I look at what people come up with when they contemplate a better tomorrow.

What gets you riled up?

What ideas are you excited about?

I want to know.

I was cleaning my apartment today and I found my journal (the old kind that requires a pen) which I kept while I was traveling with the US National team and sporadically thereafter. I poked through it and found this entry.  I’ll post a few more in the near future.

I wrote this a few hours after a triple overtime playoff match with our biggest college soccer rivals. Our two teams were among the top five in the country at the time, and had the misfortune of meeting early in the NCAA Tournament, on our home field at Stanford. The match went tied through all the overtimes, in one of the worst downpours I ever played in; it was a total mess. The thousands of fans who showed up toughed out the horrible weather and three hours of soccer to watch it settled via penalty kicks. After five penalty kicks, we were stilled tied. We entered the sixth round, head-to-head rules meaning a made shot matched against a missed shot would end the game.

I was the our sixth shooter. My opponent made his shot, and I didn’t.

November 18, 1999

Until early November of the year 2000, I hope I never forget how tonight felt.

To watch every dream you had for a season, all your goals, slip away on a missed penalty kick.

To look into the senior’s eyes, Coach’s eyes, and the eyes of everyone else that put four years of hard work into being the best team in the entire country.

I worked my goddamn ass off for a year and it all ended in a rainstorm and mudbowl and a twelve year shot.  I am completely crushed, disappointed, and demoralized.  It just f*cking sucks.

I hate hearing everything that I would be telling someone else in my situation…

I know it all, and it sounds great as it’s being said but my goddamn heart is in the next f*cking round of that soccer tournament.  It might still be laying on the field next to the penalty spot at the north end of the field waiting for another chance to take that shot.

I’m so numb I don’t really have any idea.

And I know I can work harder that I have, be twice the player I am today…so why the f*ck aren’t I?  Why am I here and success is somewhere else?  I feel like a crock…a f*cking lie.  I’m left with nothing from this year’s season to prove otherwise.

This better be enough to put my ass in the game like it should be.

I put a huge effort into tonight and came up short.  End of story.

I am never going to say that again if it kills me.  Not winning hurts a lot worse than whatever I have to do to win.

F*CK.

Photo by Pink Sherbet.

I’ll admit to being at a point in my life in which things are a lot harder than they were a year, even two years ago.

There aren’t many places to hide from what’s happened in the United States over the last eighteen months, and I would think that’s true around the world.  I work extremely close to the epicenter of the seismic shift that happened around the Fall of Wall Street not long ago.  Every civilized nook and cranny on the planet felt the ripple effect.

Sure, it’s not part of everyone’s daily life, but we all know it’s out there.  We all know someone who’s in a challenging employment situation.  You might even know someone who’s had to change one or two of their habits or plans because of the way the world reshaped itself overnight.

I don’t mean to be depressing.  To suggest that life is miserable and we should all go cry ourselves to sleep.  However, I”d be hard pressed to agree with you if you suggested to me that the average (or median) barometer on society’s general well-being hasn’t slipped a bit as we wade through a recession that’s covered the globe in a blanket of systemic difficulties.

Now, it’s easy to get caught up in that.  It’s easy to let your lens get dusty; tough times kick up dust, and hiccups seen through dusty glasses tend to look like crises.  Difficulties seem to sharpen into focus and the good stuff seems blurry.

I’m saying this because it’s been my own experience.

Earlier this week you should have heard about Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped by a sex offender 18 years ago and lived in isolation, in a hut, until discovery this week.  Jaycee emerged with two daughters, 15 and 11, both fathered by her abductor.  You can read more here, if you haven’t eaten.

Outrage aside, her story has gutted my perspective.

The world is a big, big place, and sometimes I think we young adults forget how great we have it.

I know…that’s a little played out, and the ‘you’re so lucky’ chorus risks condescending overtones, but when I read Jaycee’s story I literally felt sick having lately felt as if I deserve to have things go easier on me.

As if my problems had any real relevance to the ultimate human struggle.

This women just joined the world as we know it.

She is twenty-nine years old.

Between today and my eleventh birthday, I’ve had hundreds of friends.  I’ve had a handful of loving relationships with beautiful women.  I’ve played soccer in ten different countries, and in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans.  I’ve learned about foreign cultures, political histories, emerging technologies, social causes, and human potential.

I’ve spoken to my mother and father over and over and over again.  I’ve watched my sisters grow up into truly incredible young women who each has the potential to make the world a significantly better place for other people.  I’ve gone from hating family trips to Upstate New York to a man who values my relationships with my 40+ cousins more than he ever thought possible.

I’ve developed a taste for single malt scotch, avocados, and sushi.  I’ve been in two car accidents that should have killed me, and emerged unscathed from both.  I’ve had coffee with the President’s daughter and I’ve debated everything under the sun with a myriad of different people with different backgrounds and diverse perspectives.

I know how to type.  Fast.

I have been disciplined for treating other people badly.

I’ve mended a broken heart.

More than once.

My struggles were faced with a web of support and resources every step of the way.  Through the total devastation in fifth grade at the friends chosen for the other middle school, through the broken foot I thought would forever derail my soccer career, and the mononucleosis that nearly did.

The day I lost my first job.  The pain of watching friends go through worse; divorce, eating disorders, abuse, suicide watch, and mysterious illnesses.  There were people to call.  Without fail.

I’m not preaching here.  Jaycee’s story stopped me in my tracks.  That was my experience and doesn’t have to be yours.

If you do take a second to look around, though…to try and imagine your life matched up next to one with an eighteen year stint in one room in an overgrown backyard…

…tell me what you see.

(A bit of a tribute: if you have any “since I was eleven” sentiments in light of Jaycee’s story, tweet them and use the hashtag #sinceiwas11JC.)

Photo by nyki_m.

If you’re not familiar with shaving your face, which I’d expect some of you may not be, let me tell you that it’s one of the most tedious aspects of being a man.

I realize that might come very close to stating that life as a male is pretty easy, but let’s not forget that we do have to navigate the intricacies of you women once we’re done shortening the hair on our chinny chin chin.  We still have to figure out what it is you want to hear when you ask us questions we think we know the answer to.

That being said, shaving is a pain in the butt, but in college I was lucky enough to get a free Gillette Mach 3 Razor and the course of my shaving woes was forever changed.

I think Gillette (warning: do not click that link unless you LOVE Flash) may have given every single adolescent male a free Mach 3 Razor ten years ago because they knew that these things were the crack cocaine of shaving.  I mean, one day your sliding a disposable razor across your chin and then next day you’re wiping the hair off your face with a soft laundered cloth that happens to have three razors built into it.  Gillette probably doesn’t want you to know this, but you didn’t even need shaving cream anymore.

The thing was perfect.  I think you could actually ask your facial hair to go away if you owned one.

Now granted, for the next ten years I was begrudgingly buying replacement blades which cost more than the outfit I’d put on after shaving, but that razor lasted me ten years, no joke.  It lasted four dob kits (where does that word come from, anyway?) and five residences.  Every girl I have kissed since freshman year in college reaped the benefit of that razor.

Until it disappeared on me about two months ago and I went through the same thing I went though when I stopped playing competitive soccer and my cleats wore out.  The Do Not Replace Syndrome that’s founded in something you’ve taken for granted for longer than you can remember.  Do people BUY razors these days?  Once free, always free, no?

And please don’t tell me people are falling for the FUSION.  Five blades is totally ridiculous.

So here I am, pushing thirty years old and in an all out battle with facial hair without a suitable weapon.  I am not joking when I tell you that I was commuting home today on a bus, thinking that although I really haven’t blatantly asked for anything from the Gods of Blog, and I really haven’t received anything in return (besides some effing awesome new friends, sidenote), if they gave me one wish I think I might wish for a Mach 3 Razor.

At which point I realized that my aspirations could probably be raised.

” You don’t understand.  You wouldn’t understand because you’re a guy.  And because you’re not me.”

She was energized.

This was a conversation we’d been having since we’d met, but like all our conversations at the beginning of our relationship this one had never had legs.  It hadn’t had time for legs; we were sneaking around and we were pressed for time and we were aggressively trying to get to know one another because our minds were madly in love but our lives and our hearts were still learning the language.

Our relationship had been founded on fleeting moments, an underlying urgency ripping away any real depth.  For a while we were passing friends with a curiosity about one another.  We had recently forged a path towards a more serious relationship and there was no doubt that our minds had gotten it right; our conversations were deep, fluent, and wonderful.

We were in a mausoleum off campus laying next to a glimmering fountain.  You could see the sun going to bed behind the foothills, a track of dusty burnt red rays piercing the blossoming water.

“Then explain it to me.”

She was a beautiful, petite young woman, with long blond hair and the soft smoothness that takes considerable attention.  She was pedicured, manicured, and done up at all times; crisp dark jeans with a black top was her uniform.  The first time I met her I wrote her off as a prissy pop-tart with questionable priorities.

I’d never been involved with someone who was willing to have the “How Important Are Looks?” conversation with an intellectual (and empirical) defense of prioritized self-maintenance.  Someone who was made up, all the time, without fail.  I had certainly seen and met those women, but I think I found myself confounded by my attraction to one and I was seeking insight into something I traditionally considered superficial.  I was seeking it from someone I’d discovered to be a blend of those women and an insightful, self-confident person.

I had equated superficiality to a lack of intelligence, or self-worth.  An effort to mask something under the shell that wasn’t gorgeous by prioritizing surface beauty.

She went on to explain some things I already knew, and some I took with me after our lives went in different directions.  Beauty for women was a different animal than it was for men. The world was set up to reward aesthetic prowess and as gradually as that was changing, or might change in the future, it was still something that most women experienced as they grew up and took on the world.

Her thoughts weren’t a victimization of women by society, and her point was that attention to outer beauty didn’t have to mean someone’s priorities were skewed.  It didn’t have to mean they were hiding something.

Some women put the effort in purely because it was more fun to feel their best.  It helped them be a stronger version of themselves, and they thrived on those feelings to accomplish whatever they were working for.  Looking your best was empowering.  Considering that and her particular perfectionist tendencies, and she made quite a case for someone who just wanted to accomplish what was within her ability to accomplish.

Like I said, we were finite.  I haven’t spoken to her in years but I still consider her to be one of the smartest people I have ever met.  It doesn’t mean she’s right about this, but it does mean she’s smart.

What do you think?

Where are the boundaries around superficiality?  What is your relationship with your outer beauty?

I would be very interested in perspectives from both men and women.

Photo by Artifex.

We all wandered into the common area with smooth pine booths along each wall and the standard college-issue knee-high “coffee” tables scattered about, where most of the upperclassmen already had their preferred beverages piled up in shopping bags next to mixers.

The benches were full, and they were full of upperclassmen we’d all met just a few days earlier and still could barely breath around.  We’d had a short week’s worth of soccer practice with these young adults who played a game we’d all considered ourselves pretty darn decent at and they played it like real athletes.  They stepped past us like we were children.

College was a totally different ballgame, and five days on the soccer pitch was plenty to drive that home.

Now they were marching us into a room packed with not only our team, but the women’s team as well.  The cat calls.  The jokes about the suits they’d made us wear for our Introduction Event.

We still didn’t even know each other all that well, and I remember TJamas, with his spiky California blond hair and his killer blue suit shirt yellow tie combination and I remember thinking man I am such a loser.

That kid would become my roommate, confidante, and best friend in quick time, and that night in front of hot older female soccer studs, heckling male soccer gods, and his fellow freshmen, that kid volunteered to go first.  He hopped up on the table and took the pressure off the rest of us.

That kid also asked a wonderful young lady from northern California to to marry him about two weeks ago.

A young lady who’s tall and slender and gorgeous and spunky and compliments TJ’s sense of adventure and energy.

Another athlete with a perfect smile.

A young lady I can tell digs him right.  Stares right into his good nature.

I want to congratulate the both of them and wish them a long and happy life together.

Them’s going to be some damn near perfect kids.

Photo by laszlo-photo.