Category: quickies

A Quickie on the Quickies

PavowskiLeave a comment

What the heck am I doing here, anyway?

For the longest time, I sort of made my bread-and-butter on this site these longish, pondering deep dives on whatever.

But lately, I just don’t have the stamina or the focus for all that.

Maybe it’s being 40.

Maybe it’s COVID and everything else going on in the world.

Maybe I’ve just gotten lazy.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t have it in me to sit down and write 1000-plus words about whatever, so I haven’t.

But then, my thoughts about myself turn dark. Writing has sort of become a big part of my identity for the last several years, so to not write … well, that’s an issue, right? After all, I still want to write these little blargs. Even if they don’t mean much to anybody outside of my own skull.

So, maybe my long wandering posts aren’t in the cards right now. But could I do two hundred words? Could I dip my toes in a topic instead of cannonballing into the deep end of overthinking? Hammer out a few words instead of over a thousand on whatever’s in my head?

Yeah, maybe I could do that.

the lord of the rings GIF

So, this is me doing that. This is me putting words one after the other, moving the needle, keeping the momentum going … even if it’s only a teeny tiny bit at a time.

It’s something. And something, most of the time, is better than nothing.

Know what else is better than nothing?

Cat gifs.

nothing GIF

A Quickie about Geeks and Cups

PavowskiLeave a comment

Because I am a geek, my co-workers, colleagues, and students didn’t think it was odd that I got a Star Wars tattoo over the summer.

Because I am a geek, nobody thinks twice about my Doctor Who lanyard or the assortment of posters featuring fictional characters hung up in my office.

Because I am a geek, students are quick to include me in conversations about which Marvel movie is best or which superhero would win in a fight. (I don’t actually know. Marvel movies are great fun but I can’t say I’m super-invested in them, and I definitely for sure don’t know which one would win in a fight — except it would totally be Thor — and I double for sure definitely don’t know anything about the comics, which always disappoints them when they ask.)

Because I am a geek, I pay something of a price when it comes to discussions of real “man things” like football (American) or football (proper) or baseball or, lol, basketball. On these topics I root for my home teams and my alma maters, when I can be bothered, and know virtually nothing of the respective leagues at large.

And because I am a geek, when I lost my Star Wars cup, it was returned to me within a week.

The cup itself isn’t special — it features characters from the second-worst Star Wars movie, after all, and as such I wouldn’t care about it too much — but it was given to me by a student who said, earnestly, that I was like a father to him.

So when it appeared on my desk after going missing for a week, I was pleasantly surprised. I tracked down the colleague who returned it, who said “oh yeah, it said Star Wars, so I figured it was yours.”

REUNITED and it feels so refreshing

Geekiness has its perks.