Quick Robin, to the Compensation Mobile!

A propos of nothing, while returning from Boskone on Saturday I spotted another car on the road, a sporty little number with a license plate reading "A TOY", and it struck that, some day, that's what I'd like. A silly, overpriced, unsafe, red sports car, with a vanity plate. I think it'll say: TNY DCK.

That'd be so much fun....

Outline

What really struck me about seeing Neil Gaiman was a sense of wasted opportunities. (Mine, not his.) He's not more than ten years older than I, and yet I look back on what he was doing when he was my age: he was married, with two kids, and writing Sandman. Even appearing to packed theaters full of fans who wanted to hear him talk for a couple of hours. I was especially struck to hear him mention that, when he was 16, he had made a list of all that he wanted to accomplish in life before he died. He has since done most of the things on that list.

When I was sixteen, I couldn't conceive of being happy as an adult, of doing things that I wanted to do, or of experiencing joy of any sort except fleetingly, after long suffering. (An feeling that I am sure is not unique to myself, based on the number of action films that follow this dynamic.) What do I want from my life? I have thought about this before, but I think I need to do it in a more systematic, sustained way. I have never sat down and made up the list and kept it, much less used as a starting point for a plan on how to accomplish the things on it.

I think that my 'indiscretion' with Sabbath derives from my failure to come to grips with what I want, and to accept that I want it. It is in part a fear of happiness, but it is also a fear of doing wrong. I am reminded every day in little ways of how much easier it is for me to get what I want than it is for many people. Tall white guys with accents like mine command respect, even if we don't deserve it. I don't want to be someone who takes what he wants and ignores the people he had to trample to get it.

So, I need to think about what I want, how to get it on my terms, how to be comfortable in wanting it, and perhaps most immediately what I want in the short term with Sabbath.

But for right now, I want to play Diablo II.

I am a....

Is anyone else as puzzled as I regarding the appeal of the many "What ______ are you?" tests that many people seem to be citing in their journals? I actually find it slightly exasperating, which is unfair, really, and I'm not sure why. Certainly, I don't want anyone to feel bad about being amused or interested in something so innocuous. Yet, in the semi-privacy of my heart, I say to myself: What is the deal with these things?

One obvious notion is that the tests appeal to people who don't know who they really are. I shouldn't like to be too quick to assert that I do know, but part of the reason this occurs to me is that I have a sense that I DO know who I am, even if I can't quite say.

I suppose that, if I were a B5 character, the Vorlon question wouldn't stump me half so much as the Shadow question: what do I want? (Is the answer 43? Dammit, where's my magic Bonnieball when I need it??)