“Where is that pesky TechnoMonk, anyway?”

(I know you’ve been asking yourself that question.)

The answer: truth be told, I have a split personality when it comes to my online identity these days. And this condition seems to be taking it toll.

You know, of course, first there was an introductory version of TechnoMonk’s Musings. Then along came this incarnation. Later on, I added a Flickr photo-sharing site. Eventually, last year, I set up a Facebook page and then started microblogging on Twitter.

Something, eventually, had to give. And, if you’ve followed along, you know that the frequency of my posts here has diminished.

My best advice at this point is a quote from that old TV show “What’s My Line?” ... you know, the part where John Charles Daly would say “enter and sign in, please.” Over there, in the right hand column of this page, there is now a section called “Subscribe.” If you sign yourself up in that little rectangular box, you will be sent an email every time I post something new here.

I’m not going away. I’m just making life slightly more manageable.

Thanks for understanding.

Soundtrack Suggestion

I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside
Oh yeah, Oh yeah. (that’s right.)
I’ve got a feeling, a feeling I can’t hide
Oh no. no. Oh no! Oh no.
Yeah! Yeah! I’ve got a feeling. Yeah!

(“I’ve Got A Feeling” – The Beatles)

You know, maybe I should run for Congress.

Dear TechnoMonk,

Thank you for submitting an essay to This I Believe. Your essay has now completed our review process. Though your essay was not chosen for broadcast on NPR, the larger goal of our project is to open a community conversation about belief--one essay at a time. To that end, we have placed your essay in the This I Believe online database.

If you go to our website at http://www.thisibelieve.org/, then click on “Advanced Essay Search,” fill in only your last name in the “Last Name” field. You can also find your essay by searching all essays from [Larkspur, CA]. You will notice that only your first name will be seen on the web page with your essay. We do not publish last names or other personal information on our website.

Please don’t consider this in any way a “rejection.” Our criteria for broadcast consider many factors beyond subjective notions of quality. We air only a fraction of one percent of those submitted, and we must balance our few selections across themes, perspectives, diversity of sources, and so on.

Though your essay has not been selected for NPR, we are working to find other venues to publish some of the many thousands of essays we have received, including newspapers, podcasts, and local public radio stations. Should we find a venue to print or broadcast your essay, one of our staff will be in touch with you.

We are honored by your having shared your most closely held convictions with us. Thank you, sincerely, for participating in our project.

Inspired by NPR’s This I Believe series...

I’ve always prided myself on my openness, my honesty, and my emotional availability. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve frequently received favorable comments regarding these qualities. This despite the fact that I’m a guy and I know lots of men (maybe most) who have absolutely no clue what the term “emotional availability” might mean. Or how to invoke it.

These particular traits are consistent with the guiding philosophy of my life, namely: I believe in being present. In expressing this belief, I’m talking about something a lot deeper than Woody Allen’s quip of “showing up is 80 percent of life.” No: I intend something decidedly more profound — of much greater difficulty level — than simply being physically located in a particular place at a particular time.

In truth, I believe that being present is the secret of life: that without the ability to be present, I’d really be missing out on what the total human experience has to offer. Being present takes energy, though, so it’s likely the reason that most people avoid it, don’t practice it, and just generally find some other way to go about their business.

The way I see it, being present is manifested both in my relationship to self and my relationship to others.

In my relationship to self, being present means that I’m aware in the moment. I’m tuned in to my emotions. I know that I’m breathing in and out. I have a keen sense of my surroundings. I sense all that’s going on around me and what kind of meaning I’m making of these events: realizing that my experience is not necessarily “reality.” Being present means that I’ve left all previous moments behind...and that I’m not wasting energy anticipating future ones. It’s living in the here and now. It’s making the most of the time I have been given. It’s a paradigm that guides me to take advantage of every single instant of this preciousness called life.

I also believe, however, that the highest level of being present takes the form of being available for someone else. Being present for another may take the form of simply silently sitting. It surely involves total focus and really listening when they speak. It means not interrupting. It’s immediacy: it means seeking deep understanding of the other person’s experience in the moment. It’s being curious about them and setting aside all judgments. It’s eye contact and empathy and softness. And maybe the occasional touch. It means being available for another person to share themselves. Totally. With complete safety. In my presence.

Being present is not “the truth,” though I believe it is “the way.” I believe that being present, for yourself or another, is the greatest gift you can give. Or receive.

Soundtrack Suggestion

Mornings in April 
Sharing our secrets 
We’d walk until the morning was gone. 
We were like children 
Laughing for hours 
The joy you gave me lives on and on. 
’Cause I know you by heart.

(“I Know You By Heart” – Eva Cassidy)

Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote seven (little known?) things about myself here in response to Pistachio’s meme-tag post. Now, yet another version of the game has overtaken the internet, this time on Facebook. This variation calls for individuals so tagged to produce a list of “25 things” about themselves.

Robert Lanham, of salon.com, writes that he was originally irritated by this new meme, but has since changed his mind. He now says, “once you stop being annoyed you realize that, at its best, it’s one of the more compelling -- and, yes, even oddly inspiring -- wastes of time to hit the Web in years.”

I was eventually tagged, decided to participate, and posted a list on my Facebook page yesterday. Here is what I wrote, offered here in slightly edited form.

Here are the original Facebook rules (meant to be published at the top of your “25 things” list):

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right hand corner of the app] then click publish.)

Please note (about this post): caveat lector. It’s very doubtful that I could write “25 things” about myself that are superficial or humorous. You may find that they are uncomfortably revealing and/or mildly entertaining. If you’re going to go ahead and read more, brace yourself...

1. My ex sister-in-law once said that every time she heard the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” she thought of me.

2. Which was pretty perceptive, since I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression all my life.

3. I’ve never had what you would call a successful long-term relationship. I was married for ten years, but it wasn’t a good place for me to be. During the marriage, I became addicted to Valium (for over seven years). Just to numb me to the pain.

4. After the marriage, I became an alcoholic. (Well, sort of true. I was probably an alcoholic from the time I took my first drink...at about age 16.) My last drink, though, was on August 13, 1983. I’m very proud of my 25-plus years of sobriety.

5. When I was five years old and in kindergarten, I rode the bus to school every day. One day, I didn’t get off at my elementary school, but stayed on the bus until the end of the line. Just to see where it went. It resulted in one exasperated bus driver. And a phone call to my parents, of course.

6. Ms. Anderson and Ms. Howard (can’t remember now if they were “Miss” or “Mrs.”) were my second and third grade teachers, respectively. They were primarily responsible for nurturing and encouraging my early interests in reading and math.

7. My first girlfriend’s name was Betty T. This was in sixth grade. She had a twin brother. And their father was the superintendent of schools. I hear she’s still alive.

8. During the 2006-07 academic year, I had an insufferable bully as my supervisor. I’ve never been all that good around abusive people, and this time it almost killed me. The more I stood up for myself, the more abusive the relationship got and the more physically sick I became. To this day, I think I dramatically let down all the people who worked for me and believed I could be an agent of change.

9. I was ordered, by a physician, to take a month off work during January 2007. I was in so much physical pain at the time, I wished to die; I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life on disability. That I’m now recovering is a monumental testimonial to the resilience of the human body (and spirit).

10. If I could make a living from my writing and photography, I would. Those are my true passions.

11 Given my love of books and reading, though, I probably should have been a librarian. (It was a librarian who tagged me to write these 25 things.)

12. When I was in grade school, I was drew a cow with a purple crayon. Which was harshly judged by my teacher. Everyone knows that cows aren’t purple. I was devastated. I felt like I’d had the crap beaten out of me.

13. The most elusive thing in my life is love. Or at least being loved back.

14. What I want most is to be understood.

15. I was once told, with intense genuineness, “Jim, I’ve never met anyone like you!” Which was both exhilarating and dismaying.

16. I have an enlarged prostate (BPH; benign prostatic hyperplasia). I’ve had 2 to 3 blood tests every year for the last 12 years to monitor my PSA (prostate specific antigen, the screening test for prostate cancer). It keeps rising. I keep the data on an Excel spreadsheet, and furnish my urologist with a least-squares plot of the line every time I see him. My last number was slightly alarming.

17. I’m not nearly afraid of death as I am of dying slowly and painfully.

18. The two most favorite weekends of my life were (1) at a rented cabin, by Lincoln City on the Oregon coast, during one Christmas, with J; and (2) at a borrowed cabin, north of Florence on the Oregon coast, one spring, with C.

19. As comfortable as I am living in the Bay Area, I am homesick for Oregon every single day.

20.I will never be a parent in this lifetime. If I had had kids, though, I couldn’t have done better than T, B, and R. Three of my favorite people on earth.

21. I would do anything for T, B or R. Anything. All they would ever need to do is ask.

22. Same goes for my good friend V.

23. I have written a [this] blog for over three years and never really developed a readership. Those that once read, have stopped. Interesting that I persist. Crazy, perhaps.

24. I’m a Macintosh person who has owned and used Windows machines for years.

25. I taught myself HTML and developed a website, in 1993, before most people had ever heard of “the web.”

26. If I had more energy, I’d seek to be a college president. I’d be excellent.

27. I’ve “dated” through the personal ads for years. My profiles have always been totally honest. And almost every woman I’ve met this way has engaged in some kind of false advertising in one way or another. (The most common behavior: lying about age.)

28. I was once told by a woman that I am such an intense listener, so “present,” that it’s scary: that this quality likely chases potential female partners away.

29. I love long, deep conversations, in person, preferably with a significant other. Yet, here I sit alone in Starbucks writing about myself for my Facebook page.

30. I’m pretty tired of living in pain every day.

31. I didn’t censor myself much here. If you read this far, well, how did you DO that?

32. It seems I couldn’t stop at 25. But I’ll do that now.

Soundtrack Suggestion

If you knew that you would die today
Saw the face of god and love
Would you change? 

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you’re down so low that you cannot fall
Would you change?

If you knew that you would be alone
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That would bring a pain that can’t be soothed
Would you change?

(“Change” – Tracy Chapman)