Time to Saddle/Gear Up

Does it ever strike you as odd, that the sage advice passed down to us by generations can be so... conveniently opportunistic?

For example, while one is encouraged to overcome the difficulty/complacency and 'get back on the horse' for things that they should be doing, but have stopped for one reason or another, we are also told that other tasks are 'like riding a bike' in that, no matter what our reason for ceasing that activity at some prior date, renewing it presents no real challenge.

A horse is a living creature that won't generally go leaping off cliffs or running into walls on its own accord, while a bicycle separates us from serious gravity-induced bodily harm only by two wheels and our own fallible sense of balance.

I am only suggesting that the danger and ease of use between these two modes of 'pedal' transport does not correspond with colloquial common sense.

The 'Lame Texpatriot' blog begun in September 2008, following an interesting (and occasionally enlightening) 3 month trip backpacking around Eastern Europe. I cataloged my exploits, and more often, my understanding and curiosity about those exploits, on a blog called Weber on the Lamb, and upon my return to 'normalcy' attempted to continue that degree of contemplation about the everyday events in which I subsequently submerged.

Graduate school is a good time for thinking, and doing so in New York City affords one plenty of opportunities to spice up the monologue with excerpts from the many bizarrities with which New Yorkers are daily confronted: Pillow fights, Midnight Elephants, Newark.

Upon graduation, I took my diploma, new wife and great aspirations to Washington, D.C., where a blissful summer of exploration ensued. But as the months piled up, the funds ran low, and the job interviews remained painfully sparse, my ability to revel in the eccentricities of modern life dissipated. I needed work; I needed connections to get work; and I needed to get serious about getting connections so I could get work.

I started a new blog, Shashlykistan, focused on my intended professional work in Central Asian politics (yes, you can technically do that for a living, though I'm still struggling to prove it), joined the twitter-verse, read a lot of regional news, and tried to add something to all the racket.

In November 2010, I stopped what had been an almost-weekly 2 year experiment in audio/radio-blogging, WSRP - the 'Weber Surrogate Radio Project'. Shortly thereafter, following one final gasp to make light out of a pleasantly bizarre Thanksgiving spent with a friend's in-laws-to-be in December, Lame Texpatriot also fell silent: left to the dustbin of disregarded digits; banished to the purgatory of inactive websites alongside Metacrawler, Angelfire, and AOL.

But the fun thing about life, which I have discovered over and over again, is that, with but one biographical exception, it keeps on going. I don't mean to be morbid - or insensitive - only to suggest that one's fortunes, preferences, and habits will always have the potential to change until that one fateful moment when we quit this mortal realm, and after that, frankly, what do we care if we leave behind remnant cyberspace ephemera?

I'm not sure if this blog post represents any change to the status quo for the past 6 months, or just one more desperate attempt to pretend like I actually write a blog. You see, I can't tell if I'm trying to get back up on a Horse, or a Bicycle.

It's an important difference, and for obvious reasons. A Bicycle will not 'Woah', and a Horse will not willingly let you check it's air pressure.

Less metaphorically, it's a question of just how much effort is required to resume a pattern once one is out of it. I heard that it usually takes 3 weeks to quit or start a habit. Seems to me that makes once-a-month habits a little too easy. So I'm aiming just a little higher, and will try to supply these infinite pages with a modicum more content, hopefully to the tune of 2-4 posts per month. Henceforth, the pages of Lame Texpatriot will still, technically, stay infinitely empty - that's just math - but perhaps it will be a more entertaining infinity to stare at than the static abyss it has been of recent months.

I do now have a job, as does my wife, health insurance, and are soon to quit our subterranean abode. While DC rent continues to be ridiculous, at least our situation now prevents it from being full-on blog-stopping in its crushing financial girth.

WSRP is coming back too, with a special 75th episode memorial tribute to Billy Bang, a phenomenal Jazz violinist and a personal hero of mine.

And Shashlykistan keeps rumbling along, in fits and spurts. An outlet for me to voice an opinion on things for which I am barely qualified, to an audience of people who just might need to hire a junior Central Asia specialist - someday. It's a long-term plan, with the short-term benefit that my exceedingly patient wife need not sit through every reaction I formulate to the latest parliamentary developments in Bishkek, or the most recent LNG pipeline predictions to leak out of Ashgabat.

And perhaps more importantly, to both myself and to you, life keeps going.

All the best, and thanks for bothering to check in every 6 months or so.

Your Devoted,

Lame Texpatriot