The Year Of The Nerd

Nerds are, well, nerdy.
Nerds huddle around piles of trading cards with made up creatures on them. Nerds hunch over a computer day and night and the thought of talking to an actual human being, let alone a female one, makes their palms sweaty and their legs tremble. Nerds still haven’t learned proper hygiene.

At least, all that is true in middle school.
There is a shift that happens, I would say in the later years of high school, where we all become nerds to some extent. Yes, maybe there are those few who still exist who have no sense of hygiene, that (at the age of 27) stay up all night playing video games in their parents basement, but for the rest of this discourse, I am not referring to them.

Nerds are obsessive.
If you were to study a herd of nerds in a middle school for some time you would see that their attentions continue to come back to focus on something outside of themselves (in contrast to the “cool kids” whose focus is aimed inward toward themselves or inward at those circle of friends they have).
And as you grow older, you see this tendency more and more in the people around you.
In high school the same obsessive behavior can be seen in almost all students. Teenagers devote their lives to the study and devoted love of musical instruments, sports, and art.

Jocks are just nerds with a cooler name.
The love and devotion they have for the sport or sports they play reflect the same obsession seen in all nerds.
The downfall, the enemy of the nerd, is just that which changes nerd to jock, cool. It is this cool that distracts from the wholehearted pursuit of the goal.
The cool factor is the instigator, causing the rifts between those who were once friends. Cool causes dissention among teammates.
The difference between the cool and the nerd is that nerds strive after a goal, and their merit comes from their ability to realize their goal and is not dependent on others.

Cool is a drive for the goal perverted into pride.
Cool needs that recognition, merit or praise, and gets it, not by achieving his goal, but by asserting himself over others. In the pursuit of cool, the once pure pursuit of the goal is distorted; attention is distracted from it and misdirected.

My goal then is to be the nerdiest nerd who ever nerded.
I need to focus on my goal, and not just pursue it but deny the urges that seek to build a false sense of accomplishment and prestige.

I want to be excellent at what I do.
I don’t want to advance at the expense of others.
I strive to achieve nerd-dom.

Making Friends Is Tough

I recently moved to Wichita, KS.

My wife and I moved from Colorado, to Kansas. I know, crazy.

But we did it.

My wife and I moved out here so she could take hold of an amazing opportunity to study ballet at one of the top schools in the nation.

We left all of our friends behind.  Its sad, but I manage.

We set off to make new friends.  This, as I soon realized, is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

What makes it so hard? The friends we left behind.

I love those people.  Not only do I love those people, I am convinced that in the town of Grand Junction, CO, that they are the best people.  That out of everyone in that town of 100,00+, our friends were the best people we could possibly spend our time with.

I’m sure if you knew them you would agree.  They are the most talented, loving, hospitable, easy to talk to people you could possibly know.

This leaves me at a loss for what to do.  I haven’t, in the month that we’ve been here met, or even seen anyone like we knew in Grand Junction.  And I’ve tried.  We have met people, gone to church with people, double dated with people, and they’re all good people, fun, funny, but not our old friends.

I have been grocery shopping, or walking around Wal-Mart, looking for people that could be a potential Natalie or Caleb.  And I even know how ridiculous that last statement is, but I miss our friends.

I think I am becoming very judgmental.  With the friends that we have made, I have wondered weather we should keep being friends with them or look for friends like I know must be out there.

I say I know they are out there, but I don’t know.

And the more and more I come to think about it, I don’t want to find another Dustin, Mary Kate, Neil, Wade, or anyone like the Biocic’s.

Really, I would be glad to meet them. What I mean is I don’t want to replace them, as if I could.

It’s a new adventure in our lives.  I cling to the great memories that we have made with friends.  That’s an important distinction I don’t want to pass over.  Friends, not the friends we used to have in Grand Junction, still friends.

I’m a person that puts all of my energy into the task in front of me, but that’s changing.  I now realize that because of that way that I was so focused on the now, I have fallen so short on remembering.  I’ve been terrible at keeping up with friends I have had in the past.  It’s a hard transition, but I’m learning.

Slowly, but I’m learning.

8 Concrete Textures

I’ve taken to wandering around the city in the afternoons with a camera.

Heres some good concrete textures for you, download the highest resolution images in the zip at the bottom of the post.

Download a .zip of all 8 textures here.

A Cartographer’s Font

A Font To Call My Own

I have no job. I’m waiting to hear back from several interviews but they said they wouldn’t let me know until early next week. So what do I do with my time? Create a font based on my handwriting of course.  I’ve had Typetool by Fontographer for a while now, and now I actually have time to learn it and use it.

And without further ado, Scotosaurus!

Click here to download Scotosaurus