I feel like continuing, at least for a little bit, my thoughts on Crazy Moments™ (again, abbreviated "CM" for the rest of this entry). I realized that I didn't really so much define a CM as just provide an example (albeit my most recent one).
So, let me try and, if not define a CM, at least try and put some parameters around one. A Crazy Moment™ occurs when I (you?) have a conscious thought about making a decision that will dramatically alter my (your?) life in an unexpected and unplanned direction - possibly a 90 degree or 180 degree turn.
Given that definition, I think it pretty obvious that my thoughts about chucking it all and moving myself and my family to New Zealand definitely qualifies as a CM. Then the question turns to other CMs that I've had in the past.
Here's where it gets a bit disturbing, actually. It's disturbing because I can't remember too many of them; damn few, in fact. And that's frightening for a couple reasons. It means that either I've forgotten a lot of them (thus showing that I am, indeed, getting older and my memory is now failing :-)) or, even worse, that I haven't had that many CMs worth the title.
I'm not saying that I can't remember any, mind you. I remember thinking very seriously about moving to Japan. It was right after I'd been there on a business trip and I had the incredible feeling that Japan was somewhere that I might be able to "fit in". [In retrospect, I think there was a very strange dynamic at work there. In Japan, I would be just another "gaijin" (foreigner) and so, by definition, an outsider. But at least I would be an outsider in a place where I was supposed to be an outsider, which is, I suppose, a form a "belonging".]
Similarly, after a trip to northern California, I was thinking that there would be a nice place to live. Needless to say, since I'm still in New Jersey as I write this, I didn't follow through on either one of the previous move CMs.
I did have a thought, which I think was much more mania-induced than pure CM, a few years ago about how to get a bunch of folks involved in some interesting software development and use spare cycles. While I did follow-up on that, it didn't go anywhere. [Most likely it didn't go anywhere because the company was, unbeknownst to anyone, getting ready to start the first round of layoffs to reduce the number of spare cycles available, but who knows for sure?]
And then, finally, there's my marriage. It wasn't a CM in the sense that I got married (after all, that's a reasonably expected thing to happen at some point in someone's life; similarly our having a child). It was a CM, though, in who I married and how I met her. My wife is Russian (in case I hadn't mentioned this before) and we met (gasp!) through the Internet. The term that's colloquially used (but I disagree with for any of a number of reasons) is "mail-order bride". Of course, I didn't order her through the mail - INS regulations require an in-person pick-up :-).
I went that route because I'm horrible at meeting people (and largely always have been). I'm torn between wanting to just crawl into a corner and be left alone and wanting to be the center of attention. Usually, the corner wins, especially if, for whatever reason, I'm not the center of attention. So, to a certain extent it was an "easier" approach. I got to meet (and ultimately marry) someone who was interested in meeting and marrying. I'm not saying that this approach is for everyone, of course, but it definitely was at least partially a CM.
And that's about where I run out of CMs that I can think of. And, even there, 2 follow-throughs, 1 of which was a success, is not a great record to my mind. So maybe calling something a CM is just another way of saying daydream. Or maybe, with this latest CM, I'm just getting ready to really start my mid-life crisis. After all, I'm probably due for one any time now.
Author: ben@tmk.com