"If life were predictable it would cease to be life."

A little less than a week until ConVocation, y'all. I've been working hard on the class I'm presenting, and it seems like the more work I do, the more I realize that it really is some pretty hefty subject matter. There are about a hundred different directions I could go on the subject of paranormal phenomena, mental disorders, how the diagnostic criteria overlap, and ways to keep yourself grounded. I would be remiss not to mention the value of intuition, and common cognitive biases (confirmation bias is a biggie). I quite like what it's shaping into, and of course I think it will be super interesting (I also happen to think reading the DSM-IV is interesting, so consider the source I guess). I'm excited to see what other people can contribute through their own experiences and insights.

All 4 of them that show up.

Basically what I'm saying here is, if you live in the Midwest region, come out and play! There might also be a certain Ben Smith in attendance...though I may have to bribe him in Snickers bars and shiny objects. I'm taking up a collection. (It's secretly for me.)

I'm going to try to put a video of my class up on Youtube after the fact, but I am not telling you this! If I tell you this, you won't come see it for reals, and I have to entice you somehow. If you only watch it on Youtube, you won't be getting the full experience...I'm not sure what I mean by that, but I stand by my statement. Snickers bars? I don't know. Maybe. Guess you have to show up and find out.

I'm at work (at the shelter) currently, and I was on the phone talking about my class to the staff at the other shelter. Pretty soon I realized it had been like 15 minutes and I was still talking, and it was only about one facet of the class. I've been mildly intimidated by the 90-minute time slot, but apparently I actually have some degree of authority on the subject. While I'm sure the other staff was only feigning polite interest on the other end of the phone, I can't help but feel like 19 years of formal education and a lifetime of self-insight could possibly pay off. Who knew?

One concern of questionable legitimacy? Voice projection. It was explained to me at length by the sound people on the crew of GHA that I have very little, if any, bass-tone in my voice. Bass-tones are what resonate to project one's voice, so people with more bass-tones are louder without trying. This is why no one ever hears me talk, especially in mixed settings, and they had to make a note to turn up my mic more than the mics of the other cast members (this is during the times when I wasn't breaking them - "your frequency is interfering with its freqency" - but that's a story for another time).

So what am I going to do, make my endocrine system manufacture enough testosterone to alter my tonal range in the next week? While that is an option, it' s probably not a very likely one, so we'll see if I can be genetically superior to monkeys and evolve (Darwin joke! Anyone?!...No? Okay. It's 3am, give me a break).

There is a more personal component to this coming weekend, which Eleanor Roosevelt puts much more eloquently than I could possibly hope to: “You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give”. Sometimes life thinks it's played its trump card with you, and you have no choice but to stomp your way back up to the top of the anthill to prove otherwise.

I'm a fire ant amongst all the little pavement ants, dammit!


I leave you with a little shelter wisdom for the ages: