habitually probing generalist

This is something I wrote last November when I was redesigning my personal website.  I had to move it from my previous school/employer’s server to the current one.  It also needed some serious updating and redesign.  It is currently live, but not really public, and theoretically at least non-spiderable. 

It’s not so hot, and still needs work but gets none since, oh, about the time I started blogging.  If you must see it, feel free to contact me and I’ll decide whether or not to give you the URL.  Much, but certainly not all, of its content has found, and is finding its way here.  Anyway, some short thoughts on "classifying my life."

24 Nov 04   I have been working on redesigning this site lately and as such began thinking about the need to restructure it yesterday.  "How do I divide my life," I asked myself?  For some reason "Past Life" came to mind almost immediately.  As I began to think about what constitutes past vs. current—since so many things are processes—I realized that this was a most dangerous category to embrace or even imply to oneself!   Much of my life often feels this way (past); except, it is all part of me.  I may be forgetting much of the detail—fine or coarse—but it is still in me; that from which I am constituted.

What exactly is past?  The Army?  I may be forgetting more detail about it than other things, but it is clearly a part of me.  My marriage?  It is over; but I am better friends with Mary than I probably ever was.  My children?  Certainly not!  They are my proudest accomplishments in life; that is, if there is any way I can take any credit for them.  Travel?  I hope not.  Pictures of flowers?  No, I may not take many pictures anymore but they are still my favorite subject.  So, what exactly is past?

Then, there is the issue of a dangerous idea embraced or implied.  I may regret many things in my life, but they are certainly part of me—maybe the most important part.  I do not want to do some things as I have in the past.  Forgetting them or moving them to some mythical "past life" would most likely allow me to make the same mistakes.  I may anyway; I will not know until I get a chance to try again.  But relegating them to the dustbin of my "past life" is almost a
guarantee that I will.

Maybe I just need to restructure the site internally; maybe I don’t need to make it explicit?  I did after much thinking, consideration, and distress, decide to categorize by three major categories:  Intellectual
life; About Me; and Music.  It should be crystal clear for anyone, particularly those who know me, that this categorization is so artificial as to be almost meaningless!  All three are so completely interrelated for me, and as me.  But, categorize we must.

Been discussing categorization and classification in library school recently.  Took a very quick look (as we do with anything actually interesting) at categorization theory.  Luckily for me, I have a broad
education that includes much philosophical, psychological, sociological, and anthropological work of relevance to this topic.  This is one reason the dangerous implications leapt so quickly to the fore.   I would have got there quick enough anyway, but this current focus just made it that much quicker of a realization.