Defining the situation

Thought that since I now have a sizable amount of postings to the blog (of varying qualities but at least there are a number of them), I might as well explain the title of the darn thing. This really does fall into the category of frequently asked questions that no one has asked about but it gives me a topic to write about other than just simply writing a review of tonight’s episode of The Amazing Race (watch as the girls from New York try to figure out how to drive stick!)

Battling the Current is easily the best title for this effort of mine. I can point to three separate meanings. One points to the ending of The Great Gatsby, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” Gatsby is my favorite book and I still would like to live the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, tragic as it may be. To pay homage to the book with my own literary effort is just a small tip of the hat to pure genius.

The second one is an awfully bad pun. Think electric current and my former life where that is all I thought about every day. As I try to put that career and that part of my life behind me I find that I am constantly at war with those old parts of my personality. Those parts of yourself that you know are wrong and want to change but seem to be so ingrained in your psyche that changing them seem to be as challenging as changing the color of the sky. Hence, a battle against the current. Yeah, it’s a bad pun but there is some meaning to it.

The last one is the most important. If there is one key to my life right now it is that I really consider the current state of the world to be completely wrong. As I wrote yesterday, I look around and see a country and even a planet that does not match my expectations at all and I intend to find a way to make things right. And that starts with making the changes I need to make to myself. I will never complain that I have a tough life, I’ve been blessed beyond all belief, but my current life is not what I want at the end of the day. There are a number of pieces missing and some items that need to be put right. So that is what this blog will really be about, how does one person out in the world change the present. Can one person change the future (for the world or even for himself)? That’s what I want to find out and record here.

Along the way I’ll rant about television and movies and books and music and all of the other items that affect my life because that is all part of the journey. I ended my first post with the phrase Quo Vadimus, which means roughly “Where do we go from here?” I know that my dream is my destination and this little piece of cyberspace is going to be my road journal. To everyone who wants to come along for the ride, even for a little while, welcome.