(Phaysis)

So I got shown up.

I had the strange fortune the other evening to share my table in a crowded coffeeshop with an interesting woman. She needed a place to sit, she asked, I offered the other half of my table. I noticed that her laptop was festooned with a menagerie of Drupal stickers, Drupal being a website creation framework that I’ve looked at for my own needs but turned down on its apparent complexity.

“Strange,” I thought. “She’s a girl, and she apparently likes Drupal!” The chauvinist in me short-circuited for a minute as he tried to reconcile the fact that technically-minded women do exist. This is the modern age, mind you. “Well, then. That’s kinda hot.”

I tried to pay her no attention and keep to my side of the table, being a “nice guy” and all, but the opportunity arose and I had to break the fourth wall. Turns out she’s a marketing girl (a marketing girl!) and she’s fanatical about Drupal. “Full retard,” she said. Worked at several consulting firms that did projects in Drupal, and is now an independent marketing consultant, building sites and blogs for clients, doing SEO and all that Web2.0 stuff. As it happens, we know mutual acquaintances. This town is small, small.

So I confessed to her that I tried looking at Drupal for one of my sites (Glass Door), and found it hard to work with, and that I balked at the need to get my hands greasy in PHP code to customize the site to my likings. She gaffed at that idea, said that it’s so easy to work with. You just install, select your options, and bam it’s customized; no need to write a single line.

I’m humbled. If a non-technical marketing and sales person can grok something that I cannot wrap my head around, I’m doing it wrong. Sounds like I need a major mental reset.

I had the highest hopes, as did we all, for this year. It started with promise, with a houseful of friends over for a black-eyed peas and cornbread dinner I hosted on New Year’s Day, 2006. The humble, earthy flavor of the peas remind us of prosperity through humility.

Springtime brought me a few brief amorous moments; winter thaw, spring hopes, nothing took root, but I didn’t mind. My dry season was over.

July, things went south. I got ill, spent all my time at home alone. One of the hottest, driest summers on record, and my life went cold. When the animal is sick, he seperates himself from the herd to heal. And I healed, physically.

The latter half of 2006 found me on my own, alone. Sure, I’m as much to blame, but there is no motion without desire, no comeradery without kinship, no confiding without confidence. So much I want to say, so much I carry, no one will hear of it. It’s my own weight to bear.

And now I am fully humbled — or humiliated by the demons of my own making — and my prosperity still is not forthcoming.

So on the end of 2006 and the eve of 2007, I stare at my screen, typing the same damned words everyone else says on each new year: may 2007 bring me health, prosperity, and kinship.