Captain Obvious is a Wise and Insightful Fellow

It occurred to me a couple nights ago that you may be wondering what I was doing with myself during my year away from this blog. Well, for one thing, I did some vocational counseling. I loved it. Among the things I learned:

-- I like writing.
-- I like it when things are funny.
-- I like an audience.

You may be wondering why it took professionals to help me see what any one of you could have told me back in 2006. So I'll be a little less flippant now and tell you, on a deeper level, what I learned.

Lesson 1: That stuff we long-ago dismissed as silly isn't silly. You know how you wanted to be Evel Knievel or Dorothy Hammil or Luke Skywalker when you were a kid? Did you spend your summer hours on your driveway, pretending you were them? What did you enjoy about that -- the thrill of physical risk, the pretty pink skirt, almost kissing your sister because you didn't find out she was your sister till Return of the Jedi? Did you enjoy competition, wish for an audience, or love rounding up the younger kids next door to be Storm Troopers? There's something worth noting in all of that, and at your core, you still carry around most of those traits. Today, you may drool at the idea of extreme sports, or like getting dressed up for a party. (If you're still trying to kiss your sister, though, I recommend moving out of the family house NOW.) You may assume everyone in the world daydreams about what you daydream about, but it's not true. I, for example, have zero desire to take my bike of any sweet jumps. If you do, then you can acknowledge that desire as a God-given (albeit insane) trait, rather than dismissing it as a silly childhood pursuit. It doesn't have to remain in your childhood, either. Who says you can't hit a mountain biking trail, just because you're older and (hopefully) more mature and (possibly) decrepit?
When I was a kid, one of the things I wanted to do most was be in musicals -- singing, dancing, acting -- "doing it all." Once I hit sixth grade, I was giving myself to tromboney activities to the exclusion of nearly everything else, but what remained the same was this: I am a natural performer. Whether anybody likes what I do is another matter, but even my coworkers at my decidedly non-showy office job can attest to the fact that no matter how you slice me, I'm still a ham.

As you might guess from the fact that I numbered the above lesson, I learned more than one thing throughout the vocational counseling process. However, I don't want to flush my writing career down the toilet with a case of carpal tunnel from trying to cram a year's worth of lessons into one blog post. I feel a Post in Installments coming on. Besides, I wouldn't want to tax your attention spans;-).