We are sincere to service to you!

Yes, that was the title line of an email I got from a company that I bought some charging cords from. And just to emphasize their sincerity, the body of the message included:

DearFrank

We provide lifetime warranty, any question about our porduct, please feel free to contact us directly. We will serve for you wholeheartedly.

Let me just note that these cables cost a bit under $6, and I have no intention of ever asking for service on them, because I value my time such ($2/minute) that if I'm on hold or talking to their customer-to service-to-you-representative for more than 3 minutes, that amount of time is worth more than $6.

Here's the first email I got from them.

I should also note that August is Psoriasis Awareness Month. So anyone who reads this and was previously unaware of psoriasis, you are now informed.

I'm sure it's the official month for other things as well. There are only 12 months and so many things! I've had breast cancer awareness month drilled into my head so many times that the idea that awareness is any kind of issue at this point seems ludicrous. Maybe breast cancer doesn't receive the attention it deserves for some quarters, though I kind of doubt that, but I don't think awareness is the issue. It's more along the lines of "do I care?" And that's okay- many people, myself included have had their lives touched by breast cancer and do care. I'm just wondering if they should be focusing on something deeper than mere awareness.

I was about to write that awareness is easy, and it is the easiest part of marketing- the first step in the sequence of Awareness-Interest-Trial-Adoption that takes you from knowing that something exists to making it part of your life. But if recent history has taught us anything, it's shown us how fleeting attention can be. Oh, and by the way, I hereby promise to never use the phrase "if history has taught us anything" again. But i'm wondering if the current age of distraction has changed the balance here- since it's harder to get real attention, maybe the bridge from awareness to interest has become smaller. Oh, and I also promise not to use "age of distraction" again either.

Finally, I haven't yet written the next installment of my reboot story, but let's just say that I've gotten involved in an important project at school, which is a first for me. One of the results is that it is all but impossible for me to walk down a hallway without someone wanting to say something significant to me. I have no problem with this; in fact, I really like and appreciate it and have even gone so far as to attend meetings as a result. The one thing I need to keep in mind, though, is that it now takes me twice as long to get down a hallway or in and out of the building than it used to. A weird little artifact.

Rebooting, part one.

Before I start, this is funny. Natasha Aponte got her Tinder matches to meet in New York City, all thinking they’d be going on a one-on-one date. My favorite line included the phrase, "men called Jimmy."

I know I haven't written much at all for the last couple of years. There are a number of reasons for this, and I won't insult your intelligence by saying it's because I'm lazy or I have nothing to say. Neither of those things is remotely true. There's also thinking some combination of "I need to make this funny" and "I have nothing funny to say." Neither of those are true either, though those are more in the realm of false assumptions than simple untruths. What happened is far more complicated than that, so let's take a peek under the hood, shall we?

There are two thing that come immediately to mind. First is that I've changed a lot. I started writing in 2006, and what happened then was that I realized that people found my observations interesting and funny. So it was a way to connect in ways I was unable to in real life.

I've always been most at home in situations where I know that I don't fit in, because then I know where I stand. It's the same reason I try to keep classrooms cold; if I try to keep it comfortable for everyone, some people think it's too cold and some think it's too hot, which generates time-wasting discussions. If it's too cold, everyone is in agreement and there's nothing to talk about. As for my social quirks, for most of my life I felt on the outside of things (thank you Dear Evan Hansen) to the point where it was my default.

And my weird way of perceiving and processing things made writing from that perspective fun. I've always felt like I'm other. Whatever my circumstance is, I'm not of it. I may be in it but I'm not of it. It very solitary, which is great for observational writing, but not so good for relating. But over the past dozen years I've begun to feel more like I'm actually part of the things that I'm objectively part of. I made a decision a few years ago to make an effort to connect with my colleagues and my students. So I don't feel quite as much like an alien, with proper emphasis on "quite as much."

The second thing is harder to tease out. The details are personal (not sketchy or compromising, just personal and about other people- I don't share information that isn't mine to share), but some stuff happened that shook me loose from my comfort zone and put me in a completely untethered mental state. I learned a lot from this experience, which I can best describe as losing all reference points and going merely on gut feel and instinct (is that redundant? Are those two things the same?) and how it feels. but the thing that stuck out most is my inability to tune out. I can't not notice and I can't not understand and I can't not care. In the past, that's a been a mixed blessing at best and hurts like hell at worst. But it led to what transpired this past school year. Which is part 2.