Shhhhhhhh.

I am currently hiding from all people and responsibilities.

My experiment of expanding my presence continues:

www.dreynet.com

It has been a long day. I had at least three days today.

I had already planned to take the day off in order to navigate the bureaucratic morass that is the Texas Department of Transportation. In Texas, if you want to get a Driver’s License, you must own a car. That car must be registered in Texas. Before getting registered, the car must pass an inspection. Each step of this process is cash only and requires a bunch of identification and other paperwork.

I had accumulated all of the proper documents and withdrew a fat wad of cash and then headed out to face these trials. I was defeated almost immediately by the vehicle inspection. I knew that two of my oxygen sensors needed to be replaced and this had never blocked an inspection in Albuquerque. Not so in Texas. The repairs would cost hundreds of dollars.

This, coupled with the fact that the A/C needed repairs (for $2000), prompted my decision to forgo this tedious process and just buy a new car. New cars came with Texas registrations built in, so all I needed to do was get a driver’s license.

I came home, did some research, found out that I could not afford a hybrid or a new vehicle of any kind. I then hunted around on CarMax and found a few prospects. They all looked good on paper and were in my price range. So I went down there to have a look at the vehicles in person. I really like SUVs, so that was what I started looking at.

My car buying methods are fairly mystical and involve sitting in the driver’s seat to see if the car speaks to me. There is a lot of gut instinct as well. When I sat down in my new car, I knew immediately it was the right one. I looked at others after it, but I could tell we weren’t a match.

I had to say goodbye to my trusty Rodeo. It is one of the few material objects I have a bond with. We had been through so many adventures and hardships. But I had to let it go before I pushed it too far.

So I am now the proud owner of a PT Cruiser! It looks like a sleek, burgundy scout ship, at home dodging asteroids and delivering contraband to the rebel forces.

I feel like an era has ended and new one has just begun.

I am officially boycotting the societally-sanctioned responses to “How are you?”

The answer is, “I don’t know.” This answer will be true and at the same time concise, freeing you from the burden of hearing any prolonged exposition.

Similarly, I am through with “How was your day/weekend/week?” If you’d like to see how I spend that time or measure its quality, just come over and hang out. Watch me do things. Then tell me what I did and how it was for you. Because I certainly am not keeping track.

Numbers change places. I have no other evidence that anything is happening.

On Decemeber 31st, 2005, I had this to say:

“I don’t make new year’s resolutions. I just like to believe in things enough to make them happen. So this year I think I’ll publish a game and fall in love and be more still and be more me.”

All that happened in 2007 instead of 2006.

This year I would like to expand upon those concepts and turn them loose once again: “I’d like my game to grow, for someone to fall in love with me, and to be one me.”

Let’s see if that works out better.

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

- Neil Gaiman

Sometimes that XKCD guy is like a seer, peering into my life.

Click on the image for the larger view.

Since I finally had dental insurance, I decided to find a dentist in Austin. A few weeks ago I had an initial exam and I had to come in today for a filling. I had a previous filling on one tooth and somehow decay had snuck in under the filling, somewhere below the gum line. My new dentist said the old filling needed to be removed so that he could start from scratch, cleaning out the decay and putting in a filling with a better seal.

This involved slicing my gums open, peeling the flesh back, doing the filling and then stitching everything back together. I was then instructed not to speak for about 48 hours or to chew anything for the next few days.

I had the Landmark Forum in Action seminar to go to later as well as a date tomorrow night. The old me might have thought that I had a reasonable excuse to back out of these commitments. The new me found it an interesting challenge to communicate with everyone by writing on a notepad.

The actual mechanics of the Forum aren’t all that important. What is important to me is the impact on my life.

I went into it afraid and distrusting of men. I was never going to let a man get too close to me as they were inherently dishonest and possibly violent. That’s gone. Most of my friends in Austin are male. I have no qualms about approaching strangers and engaging with them about anything.

I went in to the Forum convinced that I was broken, deep down. I believed that I was ugly, unattractive, grossly incompetent, and talentless. I thought I had everyone fooled, but it was only a matter of time before I was found out. So I reigned in my creativity and my participation in the lives of others. No need to get their hopes up or to accelerate things so that I would fail them sooner rather than later. I apologized for my talents, I downplayed everything I ever made, and I sabotaged relationships to avoid anyone finding out these dark secrets.

Of course, these dark secrets were all made up. They were things I told myself  as a way of coming to terms with events in my childhood and later life. They became my reality and I never thought to examine them as anything but.

Now I know that I am wildly creative, extremely smart, quite attractive, and worthy of loving and being loved.

Personal growth is neat and all, but the real value is the impact one can have in the lives of others and the world in general.

I had pretty much written off my family. I felt like I had failed them as a son and a brother and I was embarrassed by how little connection I had in their lives. So I told myself that they were bound up in their own problems and that they resented me for having an easier life, so I just go on and live it without them. That was easier than trying to make a difference.

But I realized that I made up all those things about me and them too. That wasn’t reality. It was an invention to explain why I was doing what I was doing. So I created the possibility of a closer reconnection with my family by calling them up and having a genuine conversation. Some of you are really close to your family and this doesn’t seem like a big deal. I haven’t seen my family in years. I hadn’t spoken with my sister in many years. I hadn’t had a real conversation with her since I was in college. I thought she hated me and I was afraid to ever create an opportunity to confirm it.

My sister is one of the strongest women I know. She has faced more medical problems than a lot of entire families combined. She (and my mom and nieces) deals with scenarios that some of you will only see on COPS or the evening news. She struggles to raise three children. She somehow finished college and got her degree during all of this. Where I would have given up and bailed or just shot myself in the head, she has forged on. When my life seems overwhelming and impossible, I can look to her and know that it *is* possible.

I probably would never had tried to begin to re-establish connections or tell my sister who she is to me without going through the Forum.

And this is only a start. The real work lies ahead.

Landmark Education transformed my life in a way that no self-help book, therapy, religion, or philosophy ever has. I don’t want to devalue any of the personal inner work I have done in my life. But compared to the work I have been doing since the Landmark Forum, I think I was just entertaining a lot of neat philosophies that had no lasting impact on my life.

My friend Deborah told me about the Forum last year and I will admit I was highly skeptical about the things she was telling me. Not that they weren’t real, but just not real for me. I already knew about the concepts she was telling me. I had done lots of work on myself already. I was beyond such programs. She offered something that seemed too outrageous to be real and I didn’t believe it. And I was completely, utterly wrong.

I finally attended the Forum here in Austin. I went into it very jaded about what was possible, but at the same time optimistic. I really did want transformation in my life. I really did want to live as an optimal human being. But I wanted it on my own terms and in my own context. And that is not what the Forum is about.

People talked about the Forum like it was The Matrix: no one could tell you what it was really like; you had to experience it for yourself. I thought, “This is bullshit.” But now, on the other side of things, I know exactly what they meant. The experience is highly subjective. I have seen, read and considered many mind-blowing things, but nothing as miraculous as what I experienced during the Forum. It really did feel like I had been unplugged from the Matrix and witnessed a completely different plane of reality.

People will talk about Landmark in this weird, mystical way. What I saw there was the most hyper-rational, scientifically rigorous examination of reality I had ever known.