Yeah, so, probably wasn’t the best time to start a new blog! Job has been chowin’ down on my life with a fair amount of regularity and consistency. At last, I’ve managed to carve out some time to work on Manifesting… The Musical! I still like that title, but it’s more whimsical and self-indulgent than descriptive. Therefore, we’re going with What am I good at? Survey says… for this series. I’ve polled the tribes and they have spoken. Without further ado, let’s get started!

What Am I Good At?

A (merely quasi-) scientific exploration into my mad talentz and skillz

Introduction

The purpose of this exercise was to find out what skills and talents I possess according to people who know me from all walks of life. The exercise is modeled after one that appears in the ebook, “The Principles of Successful Manifesting” by Thomas Herold, founder and CEO of Dream Manifesto LLC.

Population Selection

Over the years, my key interests have driven me to seek out communities of the like-minded, in both real life and online. These communities – or tribes – were targeted for population selection. Individuals with whom I’ve had frequent and/or high-quality interactions have had ample opportunity to observe my behavior and form opinions as to my particular talents and skills – What I Do Well. “Frequent” does not necessarily mean “recent”. My key interests tend to morph as the years pass. “High-quality” is harder to define. It pertains to the level of exposure to one another via shared experiences, whether they are shared virtually or in real life (IRL). The more we share, the more we know about one another. Therefore, the better the respondents knew me, the more accurate – and therefore, useful – their responses would be.

Method

The population received a message, either in an email or else posted to the private forum, which said this:

Hola, friends –

I’m working on something – myself!

I’d like to ask y’all for the favor of your opinions. I am asking people from all different walks of my life, people that know me well and people that know me not so well. If I get the same general responses from people who know me in different ways, then that means they’re all on to something. I realize that a few of you know me only from the internet, but what you have observed over the years is in fact behavior, so I believe it’s valid to ask cyber friends as well as RL friends to respond to these questions.

Here are the questions – feel free to answer some, all or none, as the mood strikes you!

- What do you think I’m good at?
- What do you think my talents are?
- What do you think I should do with my life?

The first thing that comes into your head is probably the best answer.

Thank you in advance for your time

xxx
Erin

Responses were received on the same platform as the request was delivered (email or on the forum). Responses were analyzed and normalized for measurement, and the resulting data was plugged into a spreadsheet along with some demographics.

Metrics

Data collected and analyzed includes the following:

• Polling method (email, forum)
• Gender
• Venue
• Tribe
• Common Interest
• What I Do Well
• Career Suggestions

Venues, Tribes and Key Interests

Venues
The three venues or contexts within which the tribes I belong to generally meet to interact are –

• Real Life
• Internet
• I-2-RL

Behavior (interaction, relating) is not limited to “real life” in this, the 21st century. Internet life can be active, rich and rewarding. However, interaction on the internet requires different methods than interaction in real life. The chief difference is the mode of communication. In real life, the primary mode of communication is verbal; whether face to face or on the phone, it usually involves vocal cords and ears. Verbal communication can also be accompanied by vocal inflections, facial expressions and other bodily cues that convey context and nuance. Alternatively, internet communication has been primarily via text – the written word. Recently, audio and video communications have been introduced, but the prevalent mode is still text. Lack of vocal inflection, facial expression and body language can often lead to misunderstandings on the internet. Therefore, successful internet communication requires an additional level of attention to the selection and interpretation of language in the written form that is not generally required in IRL.

In addition to Real Life and Internet, there is a third venue, a hybrid of Real Life and Internet. It has become more and more common for people who initially meet and interact via the internet to arrange to meet in real life. In the cases of my Sanibel and Disney tribes, the initial meeting usually occurs at the travel destination that is part of the common interest, often for large “meets” but just as often for smaller groups who happen to be vacationing at the same time. Sometimes, these meets result in cases where Internet relationships take hold and cross over into Real Life. For the purposes of this survey, this venue will be identified as “I-2-RL” (internet-to-real-life). One-time or infrequent interaction offline is not considered for inclusion in this group.

Tribes
A tribe is the community and context within which I have had the most interaction with the respondents. Tribes are more than just collections of people; they are also the socio-ethnographic backdrop against which the respondent has observed my behavior. In some cases, a respondent and I belong to more than one tribe together. To simplify the analysis, I selected the tribe within which the most frequent and/or highest quality interaction has occurred.

The tribes selected for the study are:

• Disney Fans – lovers of all things Disney. Primary focus is on animated films and and visiting Disney’s theme parks. Interaction began 5-7 years ago
• Friends Back Home – these individuals are primarily friends from high school or from the performing community on Long Island. Interaction began 10-30 years ago.
• Sanibel Fans – these are people who have belonged to a few forums online devoted to visiting Sanibel Island and collecting seashells. Interaction began 5-7 years ago.
• Siblings – this is my birth tribe. In this survey, a “sibling” is a respondent who is either one of my brothers, or married to one of my brothers. Interaction began 20-45 years ago.
• Sistas – these are women who are members of a private, all-female support forum. All of them are also members of the Disney Fans tribe; however, greatest quantity of high-quality interaction has occurred in the Sistas forum. Interaction began 5-7 years ago.
• Tech Geeks – my oldest online tribe, this group of individuals started together in a technical support forum for distributed computing in the early to mid 90s. It is also the smallest tribe I belong to, consisting of three Englishmen, a dude from Pennsylvania and me. Interaction began about 15 years ago.

Key Interests
• Disney – shared primarily with Disney Fans and Sistas tribes; secondary interest with Siblings tribe.
• Family – primary interest shared with Siblings tribe.
• Geekery – primary interest shared with Tech Geeks; however, technology has become a very mainstream interest and therefore is a secondary interest shared with virtually all other tribes.
• High School – primary interest shared with the majority of the Friends Back Home tribe. “High School” really means “we were once all young together”. It should be noted that not all of the tribe still lives “back home” but once a member of the tribe, forever a member of the tribe 
• Long Island – catch all for friends who are on Long Island and therefore “back home” but with whom I never performed and with whom I did not attend high school. Typically, I met these people when I was already an adult but not within the context of work or music/performing.
• Performing – the third leg of the “Friends Back Home” stool, performing is an interest shared with people I know from studying vocal music technique/repertoire and participating in musical theater and opera productions in New York.
• Shelling – the collection of sea shells, primarily from Sanibel Island. The Sanibel Fans tribe often self-identifies as “militant shellers”. “Militant” shelling involves the study of optimum conditions for shelling and the use of tools and other gear to facilitate the hunt and capture of specimens. For some, the interest also extends to cleaning, polishing, displaying or crafting with the collected specimens. This interest is shared almost exclusively with members of the Sanibel Fans tribe.

*~*~*    *~*~*    *~*~*    *~*~*    *~*~*

So… fun stuff thus far, huh?   Wait till we get to the part about normalization of responses – woohoo!   Until next time….

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

No not really, but wouldn’t it be cool if there WAS a musical called Manifesting? I, of course, would be the star

I’m reading this e-book about manifesting. I downloaded it a while ago and then forgot about it. Was cleaning out my Thunderbird email so I could move it to the new computer (a neat little netbook) and there it was, attached to the original email that delivered it to me.

Printed it out today – 65 pages. Don’t worry about my carbon footprint – I duplexed! Anyhow, there are exercises. One was for my friends. I posted it for some of mah sistas to answer and I emailed it out to about a bazillion people. I will naturally share the results, but I won’t share names unless I have permission to do so.

There’s a whole list of questions to answer that are designed to make me do a deep dive into who I really am, authentically speaking. One of these questions, I’ve covered before; my Sanibuddies (fellow Sanibel Island lovers) will recognize this from long ago –

What does a perfect day look like for you?

PS – throughout this entire perfect day, I am 5 shades tanner with no ill effects on my skin, and 10 pounds thinner!

* “the Nanny” is a phrase I coined to describe the red algae bloom that sometimes plagues the beaches of Southwest Florida. See this trip report from July 2003 for further details.

FINIS

I wrote all that on Wednesday November 8th 2006 – someone asked the question and I remember typing with great speed and no edits and posting it just the way you see it here. That was apparently the right way to do it, for the book says to answer “spontaneously” for the best answers. Reading it now, what strikes me as remarkable is that I was apparently already “manifesting”, but didn’t know to call it that, much less to do it deliberately.

There will be more as I try to get through all these questions. What I’m hoping to get out of all this is figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I’m really tired of fearing the reaper in Corporate America and doing boring, meaningless work that feels like a chore. I want to find work that pays the bills and brings me joy. Quite demanding, aren’t I?

to be continued…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

Gratefully, I had a very different experience in The Box this time. Clearly, 10th grade had been the happiest year of my teens – this cute boy named Harry was crazy about me, and I was enormously popular! It’s all right there in my diary. What a satisfying read, and how grateful I was to be presented with the evidence, provided in the often-breathless, always exuberant style of my inner 15 year old. Harry did this, and Harry said that, and Harry is so cute and funny… I cannot keep the smile off my face, even typing this.

Remember last month, when I wrote about not wanting to be around when people were playing with a Ouija board? Well, something I read in the diary that I had not remembered had to do with Ouija and the softer side of Harry. At the sweet 16 party my friends threw for me, which the boys had crashed, someone dragged out a Ouija board. Despite my protestations, the lights were dimmed and they started playing. I got up and left the vicinity until it was over, and a few of them laughed at me for being scared. Not Harry. He abandoned the game and planted himself close to me, never saying a word. Looking back, I find that so unusual for a boy of his age; one would think he’d be prone toward leveraging a teasing opportunity, but he didn’t.

I read the diary up until the part where my family moved away, and put down the book feeling very certain that no subsequent developments could possibly detract from any of my fond memories of him and our good times spent together. We were buddies, we had fun together, and we had progressed to a point whereby we were happily devoted to one another in a carefree way that only people who have not yet been hurt by love can be.

A very clear picture began to emerge of what had been bothering me the most. It was the thought that their love for me had been a lie; that because they were gay, these young men could not possibly have loved me like they said they did. I’d been laboring under the false notion that a guy is either gay and loves men, or straight and loves women – there was no spectrum, no bell curve, no shades of gray. It had especially bugged me where Harry was concerned; my memories of our brief time together were very happy ones, filled with healing laughter that helped to displace the grim realities of home. The black-and-white thinking I’d been indulging in had threatened to invalidate what had arguably been the brightest period of my otherwise miserable teens.

Putting it all together – the wisdom of “mah sistas”, the experiential knowledge shared by Spencer and especially, the diary entries – it all reinforces something I already knew but apparently needed to be reminded of. It’s something akin to what we learned in science classes back in school. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. It’s the same with love.

To quote myself, “…love is infinite. Which means, not only does it abide into the future, but it abides into the past, with no alpha or omega. Kind of like God.”

And so it happens that when we love, we are like God for one another. Love heals, love transforms, and love never fails.

My inner 15 year old smiles, and whispers, “I will always love you, Harry.”

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

In the meantime, I’d also done what all women seem to do when such life questions arise – I took it to “mah sistas”. I am fortunate enough to be a member of not just one, but TWO private online communities of amazing women who gather daily to hold one another up in both joy and sorrow. The most resonating answer I got was from a wise woman who likened sexual preference to a bell curve. On the one end, you have your hard-core heterosexuals, and on the other end, your hardcore homosexuals. And then, there are those who can and do ride the curve, often but not always leaning discernibly toward one side or the other… how far can they go, where is the line, and how close to it can they dance?

I now understood it was not only possible that I had been genuinely loved – it was also very probable. There was once place left to turn in order to validate that – my diary from 10th grade.

I began keeping a diary when I was about 13, and did so with a very deliberate purpose in mind. I had the distinct impression that the adults in my life had forgotten what it’s like to be a kid, and I wanted to always remember. In those days, I had yet to arrive in the place where I’d challenged the validity of moving unquestioningly from childhood into the traditional wife/mother role. At that time, I had still believed that someday I would have children, and if I didn’t want to fuck them up and make them hate me, I’d better set about documenting everything. This way, I would never forget, never belittle their fears and aspirations, or disparage any of the other things that were important to them. As it turns out, I am childless by choice, and my nieces have been the primary beneficiaries of having an aunt who has remained close to the emotions of her inner teenager.

Fetching my 10th grade diary necessitated a foray into The Box. The last time I had visited The Box was sometime in April; spurred on by the rekindling of old acquaintances on Facebook, I actually removed the yellowed packing tape, opened the lid, and started reading for the first time in some 30+ years. My choice of reading material on that occasion had made me incredibly sad. I was hoping this wouldn’t be a repeat…

TO BE CONTINUED…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

“First of all,” Spencer replied, “what do PEOPLE see in you?”, whereupon he rattled off a number of my finer attributes that would be appealing to anyone of any “cognizance, originality, coolness or forthrightness”. OK, this is good, I thought. He’s made me feel better already In typical Spencer fashion, he then proceeded to inject a little levity into the situation. He joked that every gay man wants to be associated with a “diva”, and reminded me how attractive he’d found my “Peggy Lipton hairdo” back in the 80s, when I was going through my long-and-screamingly-blonde phase.

Finally, he got down to brass tacks. He first pointed out that birds of a feather tend to flock together; that I’d been reared in a household with a very specific family dynamic that included a “very present, difficult, and perhaps even hostile mother” – as had he, and many other gay men he knew. He pointed out a commonality; gay men tend to grow up as “minorities” against whom discriminatory practices have been perpetrated, and hadn’t I grown up under similar conditions, as the only daughter in a very strict and traditional household that afforded the sons far more social freedom? He pointed out that even though he self-identifies as gay and has been in a long-term relationship with a male partner for quite some time, he is still occasionally sexually and romantically attracted to women possessing certain attributes. Finally, Spencer said, “TRUST ME, he still thinks about you from time to time,” and urged me to make contact.

After digesting his email, I came to understand what Spencer was trying to tell me; if empathy is compelling enough, then it can metamorphosize into an attraction that is not only agnostic of gender, but strong enough to transcend sexual orientation as well.

Spencer’s email gave me much fuel for thought, and I eventually realized that being gay was probably not the only thing Harry and Mark held in common. There was probably another similarity between them. I’ve joked in the past about “Peter Pan – he’s every man I’ve ever dated”, but it’s really no joke. There IS something about me, but it doesn’t attract gay men; it attracts the “motherless lost boys” of the world. As luck would have it, some of them happen to be gay. I’m still not sure WHY this is the type I attract; I’m playing with a theory, but it’s not well-formed just yet, so I’ll leave it for another time.

I was not at all sure that contact was appropriate. Harry had changed his name for a reason, maybe because he did not want to be found. I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted contact, either…

TO BE CONTINUED…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.