What is Faith in Ambiguity?

Faith: belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit,etc.

Ambiguity: doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention

Photo by Mike Adams

"What do you blog about?"

Again and again, at my first writer's conference, I was asked what my blog was about and what kind of writing I do. I tried answering this question multiple different ways.

"Oh, I write some funny stuff and some think-y stuff."

"I write about ducks."

"I write about my kids. My kids all have ADHD. I guess it's a blog about ADHD."

The most surprising thing to me was that when people heard "Faith in Ambiguity," they usually asked me if the blog was about my faith.

"No," I would say. "It's about my faith in ambiguity."

Obviously, this wasn't clear, even to me. I learned many things at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop, some of them tactical, some of them inspirational, that will make me a better writer and a better blogger. None were more important than this:

I am funny, but I am not a humorist. I am a writer who writes about an idea. That idea is faith in ambiguity.

What is faith in ambiguity? Faith in ambiguity is about asking questions, questioning assumptions and taking a second look. It is about carefully listening to both sides of an argument and then throwing both of them out the window to look for the truth that neither side has found, in the dirty, dark place everyone forgot to look. Faith in ambiguity is about making the joke that gets the laugh of recognition but that no one was brave enough to tell.  Faith in ambiguity is about owning every part of being human, every part of being alive–the illness, the pain, the addiction, the embarrassment, the fear, as well as the love and inspiration. It is about showing up, fully human, not knowing the answer to anything, and saying so, and then laughing until you wet your pants because it is all so ridiculously hilarious.

Why, you might ask, would all this uncertainty be good? People find great comfort in answers and the faith they hold that there is a reason and order underlying everything. Ambiguity–faith in ambiguity–seems to fly in the face of that comfort. And I really think that it does. People who want their bee hives to remain unprodded will probably not like this blog as much as people who are strangely fascinated by a sudden exodus of bees. That is OK with me. I stopped being comfortable years ago with the answers that were served to me like bland porridge, and started seeking my own. But, apart from personal temperament, I think there are some excellent reasons for having a little more faith in ambiguity, all around.

Not knowing means we can experiment. If we are already sure that the earth is flat and traveling to the end will cause a person to fall off into an abyss, there is no reason to circumnavigate the globe. It takes a doubter to come up with that. All explorers are, by nature, doubtful people–the ones who want to see evidence with their own two eyes–our kindred souls rejecting their breakfast pablum in search of more savory fare that may conceivably exist, if only they look far enough.

Science is a function of uncertainty. Whether or not you think you like science, my strong guess is that you enjoy electricity, access to emergency health care and Starbucks WiFi, all of which are the products of somebody at some point supposing that a) this is not really all there is and b) it could actually be better. People who push the boundaries of the world forward, causing creation to unroll in a direction heretofore unimaginable, are not contented souls. They have itchy minds, full of wonders and doubts and problems to solve. I write because my mind itches something awful and the only way I know to scratch it is to inflict the questions I have on the rest of the world.

When we don't know, we can ask. Asking is a profoundly powerful act–one that binds communities together in humble service and mutual respect of one another. In a family, in a church congregation, in a classroom, in an office, if you want to empower the people you find yourself traveling along with, ask them. Ask them for advice. Ask them how to work the TV. Ask them what they really want from their community. Then listen. We cannot ask if the answers sit on our tongue, melting like lozenges that make everything taste like oranges. Our mouths have to be clean. I have learned to ask children for help and to tell them I am not sure and, because of this, they see that they can become a person of importance with me. They are dying to be asked for their assistance, and I find adults to be no different.

When we don't know, when we are not sure, we can have compassion. I may think you were rude to me just now, but what if really you are in terrible pain? What if I misunderstood? What if your intentions, all along, have been aimed toward helping me and I could see you as nothing but a bully? Ambiguity makes me pause. The data is not clear. Is that child behaving this way in class because their parents are bad parents or because the delivery of my curriculum is not working for them? Is it ADHD or boredom? A terrible attitude or perhaps a crippled sense of self? If I am not sure, I look again. And again. Doing so makes me a better teacher, mother and friend.

The long arc of justice is and always has been a function of the shedding of our collective assumptions. We don't think black people are lesser creatures deserving of bondage and abasement. We know they are. We know gay people are crazy. We know what kind of parents are the wrong kind. We know so much of which we have no experience at all. We are never free from the repetition of the same cruel injustice over and over until we stop knowing. If history is any guide, we should be very, very concerned about the things that we think we know.

Faith in ambiguity is the doubt of the mindful, the practice of asking "Why?" of everything, but most especially, of ourselves. Faith in ambiguity, is not, however, a license not to choose. The worst thing we can do, in my opinion, is fail to choose. In the absence of choice, Life drags us along by our ankle and we hit our heads repeatedly on the concrete as events fly by us, which we have observed but never been the author of.  Life presents you with decisions, and, if you are like me, you consider everything from the polarity of the earth to the astrological signs of the people involved, and then belabor that decision until it is worn down to a tiny nub of a thing, chewed through with agitation. And then you just select and live with the result. Every time you do, you end up upright, able to say, at least "Oh, well, that was not the best decision I ever made."

Faith in ambiguity is also not ignoring the facts. It is not sticking your fingers into your ears and saying that nothing is clear so you are going to ignore overwhelming evidence in favor of whatever inclination it is easiest to bear. Not knowing leads the scientist to conduct her experiment, a mathematician to find his equation, a philosopher to observe and enlarge on our views of humankind. It does not, on the other hand, alter the course of history in any meaningful way to throw out the controls, pretend that two equals three and suppose a new and implausible kind of human. It's just make-believe.  Faith in ambiguity is about facing the facts. If there is crap on the living room floor, it is about saying so, not imagining that really there is a Tootsie Roll. What is in question here is really the motivation of the dog.

I need to write to soothe my itchy brain, and I am so grateful that you show up and apply aloe. What I really want for this blog is to create a space on that internet that holds apart the crushing walls of surety and ill humor and allows us to laugh at silly, stupid things and to speak our mind respectfully without fear of retribution. I want to have this be a place where people come to take a second look, and sometimes to stop and giggle between those hard glances. So, I have this mission to spread a little faith in ambiguity out into the world–just cast out my little whirling dandelion seed of an idea upon its breezes–and see what happens.

Are you in?

Amplifying the Reach of Your Blog: a to do List

I learned a lot about blogging at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop last weekend. It wasn't a blogging conference, per se, but a writer's conference, which I think, is part of why I enjoyed it so much. But there was ample information about blogging. Since we all must blog. It has been commanded.

When I was there, I thought of all my readers who are bloggers, which is a good-sized chunk of you and almost all of those who comment. (Apparently, non-bloggers don't comment on blogs. It's a thing I have not yet fully understood. Perhaps they are simply less compelled to be verbal all the time? You guys tell me.) Anyway, this post is written particularly for those of you who blog. I want to share what I can with you of what I learned there.

At the conference, I attended a session with Nettie Reynolds, who is so demonstrably awesome that she had actually re-written "I Got You, Babe" to be pertinent to our blogging concerns and sat, quite naturally and elegantly, with a ukulele perched on her lap while she spoke with authority on social media and blogging. Famous people people pay her to tell them how to do this (use social media, not play ukulele). I will be merely piece-mealing for you bits of what she said, sifted through the wrinkled cheesecloth of my exhausted brain. In essence, her presentation was better. I will not, for instance, do Sonny and Cher for you.

I also attended a session with Debba Haupert, who is the creator of Girlfriendology–a wildly successful online resource for women–and a master of the use of social media. Both of these successful women had a wealth of information on how to get people to read your blog. Assuming you want people to read it. Blogging can really be a good way to create a springboard from which to launch a credible career as an author, and I think a lot of us have that in mind. I certainly do. Whether we naturally love social media or not, this is how it gets done. Unless you are "discovered," which I can't help you with. I learned just enough about writing a book proposal to decide never to do that, so I can't help you there either.

Additionally, I have to credit Nicole Amsler with some of these great suggestions, which she bestowed upon me along with a pen (lost mine–shocker!) and multiple enthusiastic introductions to other attendees. Nicole is also an authority on social media. I am reminded vaguely of Yoda, except she is much better looking.

I already knew to cross-post on platforms like Blog Her, to tweet (more than once a day–people don't see your stuff unless it happens to pop into their stream), to have a Facebook fan page for your blog and post to that, and to visit and comment on other blogs. However, I learned quite a number of things that were unexpected.

1. Your blog roll is really important. It needs to be vibrant and stay updated. (Mea culpa.) One third of the items on it need to be major media sources. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, since I am not a topical writer but a more of a idea writer. However, Nettie says it can really help you to meet your goals. It seems linking to some sources that share the kind of content you are interested in–the kind of places that you want to know about you–is a very good idea. 


2. Guest post. You knew this, right? But not just for your best blogging pals. Shop for places where you can post and get your writing in front of other people, then send in your best quality, 100% proofread work, with images attached in an email. Be aware of the style of the blog you are posting for and work with that style. 


3. Define and create new terms on your blog. Find a new way to talk about the same old thing, and then tag using that term. Nettie has helped clients invent terms that went viral, and when that topic was discussed, her client was called to talk about it.


4. Create an editorial calendar. You don't have to be chained to the calendar, but it helps to create a rough one to work with. Here's what should go on it: Features. What are the features your readers count on you for? These are the areas you post on again and again, the larger categories. Work these into a calendar and then, when you have a great idea about a post on your chickens' mating rituals, pencil it in the right spot for the next time you are scheduled to write about pygmy hens. 


5. Develop a blog mission statement that you can tell people. This was a huge blunder for me. 200 times over the weekend I was asked "What is your blog ABOUT?"  and I found myself muttering that it isn't really about anything...it's just my writing. Wrong answer. Actually, it occurs to me, my blog is "ruminations on life, spirituality, pet hoarding, and parenting from the standpoint that the worst enemy of freedom is certainty." I finally started telling people this. By the way, the speech needs to fit in a tweet. 140 characters or less. (Also, have a damn card to hand people when you go to a conference. Fail #2.)


6. Link to outside sources. A lot. And name the source. Choose people who you want to call you and ask you to appear on their show, write for their publication, or date their cute cousin. (The cousin thing is my added suggestion. It's good, huh?) But do this authentically. Don't do it if you actually don't mean it, only if you actually admire and want to reference their work. (At this rate, I am a total shoe-in to have Tangled Lou introduce me to all her hot relatives, by the way. This plan was unintentional, but I am thrilled.) These people, it turns out, have Google Alerts set on their names. They notice when you name them. And major media sources are required to reference online sources in their work. Maybe they will want to contact you for your views on duck euthanasia. 


7. Be on LinkedIn. It is a huge source of writing work. Yay! Another thing to join. I can hardly wait.


8. Build your own list. This suggestion comes from Debba Haupert. Facebook, Twitter and wherever else you belong–they all own their own lists and they change the rules constantly. You should have your own list of readers so that you can contact them directly and send out a weekly newsletter. For instance, you can email all the people in Houston, when you are in Houston, and demand that they meet you for coffee, and pay as well. I am still wrapping my head around how to do this list thing.


9. Adjust the schedule of your content to fit when people view. To know this, you can survey your readers. Using your list. Woo hoo! When the Hey do you guys read me??? Consider yourselves surveyed.


10. Use Pinterest. It is driving an exponential amount of traffic to blogs. If you are stumped for an image to pin, you can use a simple background (use an image you have the rights to), work it up in Picasa,  PicMonkey or another similar service, with a quote from your blog post and then watermark it with your URL. Pin this. It will drive traffic back to your blog. You can post videos to Pinterest as well. 


11. Try to link when you tweet. You can link to old posts on topic with what you are tweeting about. On Earth Day, when wishing everyone well, why not link to your post on making your own toilet paper?  


12. Use only 30-50% of your social media time to promote yourself. Use the rest to promote others and to engage with people. Make it a conversation, not a door to door sales pitch. You're not as cute as a girl scout. Yes, you can spend your whole life doing this social media schtick. Nettie suggests using an egg timer to set limits on your social media time. Start with 30 minutes three times a week. 


13. Choose ten pillar posts (your best ones) on your blog and optimize these with SEO. Click the link for a tutorial, complete with obnoxious voice tones, on what this means. Also optimize all your static pages (the ones that stay on your blog like Home, About, Contact etc.). Don't worry about doing this for the rest.


14. Switch to Word Press with a straight URL. Meaning faithinambiguity.com (which I actually already own but haven't moved to yet) not faithinambiguity.blogspot.com. Why? Blogger/Blogspot blogs don't search as well. Simply switching the same content over to Wordpress unchanged can improve your search results. Also, apparently, Blogger is not thriving and, if Google packs in this offering, your front door just disappeared. If you own your URL, no matter what, your front door stays open. Additionally, Word Press is the standard in blogs. It is considered to be more versatile and have better plug-in capabilities. 


15. Be clear why you are doing this. Who do you want to reach? What do you have to say to the world? What would you like your results to be? Do you want to have a certain number of followers, a certain amount of attention? Do you want a book deal? Do you want to self-publish and have a market for people to purchase your work? Do you want your blog to be a portfolio for you of the kind of writing you can do? Take some time to think about why you are doing this and how much is for personal fulfillment as opposed to meeting certain goals. 

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of work to do, apparently. I want to look at how many times a week I can write well and if I can leave myself time to work on other writing projects. I want to get ahead of just thinking of whatever is on my mind and posting that, and start adding a bit more intention so that this blog reflects more of my best ability. I need to clean up the design of my blog and transfer platforms. And I need to join LinkedIn. Damn it.

It is a bit overwhelming, but I am taking it bit by bit and doing a lot of soul searching about what I want from my writing. I don't want to compromise my voice. I am not a tip writer (except today, I guess.) I am not interested in trying to win a social media Homecoming Queen contest. However, I would very much like more people to read my work. So, if I can do that in smart ways, with total integrity, then I am in. 

How about you? What do you think for yourselves when you receive this kind of advice on your blogging?

Images are used according to allowable terms from MorgueFile.

Best Moments from the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop

Best Moments from the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop, 

not in Chronological Order

1. When I was sitting in a self-publishing session next to Barbara Cooley, waiting for things to begin and complaining how very social and self-promoting writers have to be now, when she launched into the idea of tweets from famous authors. Hemmingway: "Book out. Buy. Now." I really hope Barbara writes up this concept because it's brilliant. Imagine, if you will, J.D. Salinger's tweets.


2. Sitting at dinner with with Nicole Amsler, a fast friend at the conference, when she dished that she was once hired to write copy for anatomical dummies, including one named "Prostrate Paul." This story is pee-in-your-pants funny, and it is her story, although every writer there was itching to grab it. We demanded that she write it. It is basically the funniest situation I have ever heard of in my life. Here's a teaser. "Screwable anus." My stomach still hurts from laughing.


3. Listening to Gina Barreca at the last dinner of the conference. She is my new hero. She said many brilliant and hilarious things, but the best by far was when she said (I paraphrase) that for years she had had a sign that said "Work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching" and she thought that it was true but things were in the wrong order. It needed to say "Love like you don't need the money, work like nobody's watching, dance like you've never been hurt." Isn't that so much more true?


4. Meeting people. I met fabulous women while I was there. I ate breakfast with Amy, who writes at the very funny blog 4th Frog, and also with Paula Reece of the equally funny Boogers and Burps. I got to know the dry wit of Jeanne of the Raisin Chronicles over a couple of meals and the sharp intelligence and perspective of the author of the Wisdom of Moda. Please check out all of the blogs I have linked to. These are very talented women. 


5. Ilene Beckerman saying to the audience in her sweet and frank way, " I don't think you're going to make a lot of money writing. I really don't think so." Honesty is so refreshing in a world where everyone wants you to believe the sky is the limit and then buy their book on how to get there. 

Since so many of my readers are bloggers, I will work on a post bulleting the top things I learned in my sessions at EBWW, but if you are are a serious writer, you need to get yourself there in 2014. The connections you make and information you glean will be well worth every penny you spend. And, hopefully, you will get to see me.

I plan to be famous by then. Or at least make enough money from writing to buy my own lattes. So I can give up pole dancing on weekends. 

Synergy

Sometimes the Universe humbles me with its random endowments of unnecessary beauty. When again I have looked upward, bored, expecting to see the mediocrity of a sky cast in the usual tones of blue made dour by rain, the Universe occasionally surprises me with the lavishness of a rainbow. My breath catches as I am forced again to recognize that while this world may rain down hurt without so much as an explanation, it also invests its resources in the refraction of light that makes an arc under which we could imagine one could walk to another plane altogether.

I forget, sometimes, how I can be surprised.

Yesterday I was traveling to the Erma Bombeck Writer's Conference. A tightly packed plane ride taking me from Albuquerque to Atlanta had been survived without incident. I had walked through the Atlanta airport, passing trains packed as if full of cattle, miles of moving walkway and escalators as steep as fire escapes. Humans jostled one another, forced a shoe ahead to get one person ahead in line. Repeatedly, I was bumped and knocked. The rule of travel, it seemed, was every organism for themselves. Finally lowering my body into the seat of my second flight, bound for Dayton, and gingerly organizing my belongings about me, I extracted a fantasy book and prepared to cocoon myself in the world of demonic evil and tormented good, apart from the crush of bodies all around me.

"I think someone is in my seat," she said politely.

My neighbor and I looked up. A polite, composed woman with eyes accustomed to laughter stood in the aisle beside us. The man seated next to me was in the wrong seat. They switched seats and she sat down. She and I exchanged pleasantries as she got settled and extracted her own book.

"Are you going home or leaving?" I asked.

"I am going to this event called the Erma Bombeck Writer's Conference," she said.

Synergy. The rest of the flight was spent getting to know Nettie Reynolds, who was to be a presenter at the conference and the first one on my list with her presentation on blogging. We talked about the conference, about writing, about blog promotion. Nettie works with talented people—some of them incredibly accomplished musicians, artists, and business people to help them use web strategy to get their message heard. She is the source of a wealth of knowledge in the area where I am in sorest need. I absorbed all of this information with rapt attention, grateful that she should take the time to share it with me. Then we spoke the rest of the flight about raising children, about surviving divorce, about faith. We talked about things I rarely discuss with anyone, things I can't even write about.

Occasionally, you meet someone with whom you feel immediately comfortable, someone you know is already a friend before a friendship could reasonably have formed, before you can remember their whole name. I recognize this feeling from my writing. The reason I get up at 5 A.M to write every day, whether sick or well, is because as words spring from my fingers onto the computer and into the world, I re-create the world as authentic for myself. The little corner I have written is perfect for me, and I can inhabit it with my whole soul. It is wallpapered in Truth and decorated with Meaning. I took the real world and made it mine, with nothing but a thesaurus and the patience to re-work one sentence fifteen times. When I find a friend like this—whether old or new—it is like already arriving in a corner of the world made up just as I needed, with the wallpaper just different enough to be refreshing.

"How are you getting to the conference?" she asked me.

"I was just going to catch a cab, " I told her.

"Well, " she said, "They are sending a limo to pick me up. Why don't you ride with me?"

"Ummmmm....sure," I said. My ordinary ride is a 2000 Dodge Caravan with a cracked windshield and weather stripping which is falling off like the skin of a snake suffering from leprosy. A limo. Sure. I guess that would be fine.

Arriving at baggage with Nettie, she sweetly informed the limo driver that I would be riding with her. And then, up walked Karen Walrond. This was all a somewhat surreal experience. I follow Karen on Twitter and Facebook. She is this gorgeous, inspired writer and photographer who I discovered through her photographs of Jenny Lawson, with whom she is close friends. All of her subjects are beautiful somehow and infused with a sort of love that has always made me curious. How does somebody photograph people and have you feel that these photos are of their souls, not just their bodies? After spending the limo ride with her, I didn't have to wonder anymore.  Karen obviously sees people as beautiful. Her demeanor is like the warm breeze that tells a seed it is time to waken. People, it seems, would come alive around her, ready to be seen for who they are.

I was in the presence of accomplishment and talent, so enormous it threatened to use up all the oxygen in the small limousine, and yet what I felt more than anything was the profound joy of shared humanity.

I am just somebody who didn't finish college. I have a hole in my sweater. I don't have any business cards. I am just the mother of three. I have made your coffee, waited on your tables and taught your children. I have never made more than eleven dollars an hour. I have fibromyalgia. I have a blog. I don't make a cent as a writer. My life is full of doctor's appointments and cat hair and the dust that collects in corners no one has energy to clean. Cracks form in the wood of our white trim and then darken with dirt. I came here because my father believes in me more than I could ever have begun to believe in myself. I came because I love to write.

Synergy. Sometimes, over and over, there is nothing but air and water and light. Sometimes there is rain. Darkness covers everything. That is part of the poetry of being alive—this sadness, this cast of grey, this separation of light from dark, water from air. But sometimes, just sometimes, drops of rain become tiny prisms, and we can see light shiver into color, its bend made visible to the naked eye, the stuff of fantasies. Sometimes we show up as our ordinary selves, with our low expectations and limited experience. We have never seen anything but Kansas, black and white as far as the eye can see, all we have ever known or felt we had a right to expect. And even so we walk right into Oz.

Why I am Not Mentally Stable Enough to Go to a Writer's Conference

In two days, I am going to be waking up in Dayton, Ohio–a lifelong dream. Bear with me here. There is a reason I am making this pilgrimage to the Midwest in April, when I have no vacation time. I am going to be attending the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop there, with a number of grown-up, accomplished writers who probably aren't really just part-time instructional assistants. I confess that I haven't read most of them. You see, I hardly have time to keep up with the bloggers I am already trying to follow, who keep producing posts, one after the other and dropping them into my Google Reader, as if it were the nest box of an over-productive hen house filled with chicken essayists. Each deleted egg smells of betrayal. This is one more reason, in a series of reasons which might constitute an excellent sequence of blog posts, that I am not a real blogger.

But I digress. I am going to Ohio. To get there, I am taking two planes, and, quite naturally, flying from New Mexico to Georgia first, so that I can see more of the country aerially. This will also allow me to get to the conference well after registration has ended and dinner has already started, and perhaps been cleared away, because I love nothing more than making a splash with my entry. This statement is intended to be ironic. In reality, if there was a way that I could arrive already knowing exactly what the wallpaper was going to look like, so that it would be easier to devise make-up which would coordinate with it, that would be my overwhelming preference.

I suffer from fibromyalgia, migraines and facial pain, so my plans for this conference thus far have focused on surviving the travel without breaking into open tears in the Atlanta Airport. I am beginning to suspect that this is not in keeping with the spirit of the thing. This revelation came upon me rather suddenly this morning, when I happened to see a tweet from a fellow participant. (This was nothing but stray happenstance, as my use of Twitter is somewhat poorer yet than my use of Google Reader.) This participant may as well have been cavorting on a trampoline for all the enthusiasm conveyed in her series of tweets for...meeting the other participants.

This had not actually occurred to me as a good thing. Rack that up with other social networking fails, in case you are keeping score. So far, my greatest level of enthusiasm had concerned the availability of a comfortable bed and my own hotel room. Honestly, it's not that I don't care about writing. Or writers. I do. I am very interested in any information I can glean that might allow me, ultimately to improve my craft and support myself with it. And the kinship I feel with fellow writers is hugely helpful to me–from the comfort of my own living room. I just am having one of these Survival Moments, where pain and anxiety over pain have twisted my focus inward, and my inner resources are more or less amassed in service of mundane feats such as feeding my family and going to that place that sends me paychecks as often as I can. In short, I am an asshole. Which is what I realized this morning.

I have to ask though–when did being a writer start to become such a demanding social enterprise anyway? I have visions of gifted authors throughout the ages–twisted by mental illness and alcoholism, some of them hermits, others misfits–and it is impossible to imagine any of them gathering at "conferences." If J.D. Salinger's success had depended on his polite willingness to reciprocate comments on mediocre blog posts, I believe we would not have had Catcher in the Rye. I would feel entirely better about the conference, if I could shield myself with the safety of a known person. For instance, if somehow I could have succeeded in forcing Tangled Lou to attend this event with me, I know that everything would be O.K. In high school, I was given to running a sort of sub-curriculum for myself, which consisted of lurking in corners discussing events in impassioned tones and walking the hallways wearing no shoes. If I could complete the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop in this fashion, I think that I could be all right.

So, if you are someone who is attending the conference, look out for me. I will be the awkward looking 36 year-old woman with long, curly hair in disarray and the same facial expression President George Bush Sr. wore just before who threw up on a number of Japanese dignitaries. If you want to make me feel comfortable, ask me about duck husbandry or the development of phonemic awareness skills in kindergartners. You might think of me as a small, lost child. Try not to convey that this is your impression. I can get snappish with anything I perceive as patronization. Or maybe, on second thought, it would be safest to leave me alone. At least I've warned you of who to look out for, lest you find yourself entangled in awkward silence or disagreeable rebellion.

However, if you want to join me to lurk in corners, barefoot and swill espresso, while dissecting the worthiness of every statement uttered in your presence, shoot me a line. You're my new temporary best friend.