Let me tell you something about myself. I am a dabbler, a dilettante, a dallier. I tend to take extreme interest in various subjects for varying but ultimately short amounts of time, but rarelyfollow through. I crave novelty and I have a short attention spa- Hey guys let’s ride bikes!

However, I still maintain interest in a broader sense. Take board games for example. I tend to move from game to game, never taking enough effort to truly master a particular game beyond being able to play adequately; I still do maintain a general love for board games though, and  will move on to  the next new game in my ever growing collection. Sometimes I envy the types of people who can really take their hobby or interest so seriously that they achieve that apex of mastery, such as professional chess players and gamers. I like learning about the extent that people go to to master their hobbies: watching professional Starcraft replays, reading about video game design philosophy, reading about the mathematical models behind role playing games and so on, but I never myself put that level of investment into my interests.

Let me put it this way: I respect geeks and diehards for their commitment and passion to their interests. In my eyes, the underlying motivator for a Star Wars nerd and a womens rights activist is not that different. They have something they are motivated about, and they would love it if other people had that same interest. The word “fan” is short for fanatic, after all. Something interesting I first heard about on the Major Spoilers podcast (which I throughly enjoy, because even though I may not know much about all the comics they talk about, their passion about their hobbies really shines through and keeps me interested) is the concept of the “T”-type personality. The “T”-type personality has superficial knowledge about various subject areas, but has one or a few select areas where that person has deep knowledge about. I surmise that most geeks  would be of that “T”-type personality, as that deep knowledge will be related to something they are passionate or “geeky” about.

What is a “geek” nowadays? I love learning about words and language and etymology (not to be confused with entomology, which is derived  from the Greek entomos; etymology is derived from the Greek etumon) and it’s interesting to me how the term geek has evolved. Geek used to refer to so-called carnival freaks, and then to socially inept academic-focused individuals, to technologically focused persons, and now can refer to someone who just has an inordinate amount of interest in a certain field. We have TV geeks, camera geeks, comic geeks, film geeks, sports geeks and maybe somewhere out there is a geek geek: someone who has an inordinate amount of interest in other geeks (i.e. serial killer material).

What was my original point? As you can see, my writing tends to follow my interests and thoughts: jumping from topic to topic with no real purpose or direction. One of my goals in starting to blog again is to learn to edit myself and organize my thoughts. Let’s see how long I can keep this up. (That’s what he said!)  In any case, there are always bikes we can ride.