Allow myself to introduce…myself

September 5, 2006 at 12:40 pm (C'est Moi)

So, as of yet I have no idea why I’m doing this or how long it will last. A little background:

I’m 24 years old and work for the State of Florida as a behavior analyst. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it can be, but right now I am mostly a paper-pusher. One who files, writes reports, files, sends e-mails about reports not written and sometimes gets to attend meetings (yes!). 

I went to college with aspirations to be an international business lawyer. I didn’t really know what that meant, but in my mind it was a really powerful person who attended lots of meetings and had phone conferences to set-up mergers and close “big deals”.  I also thought that minoring in Japanese would be especially helpful to this profession. It only took one semester of business classes and failing intro Japanese to realize that my picture-perfect profession was not how I pictured. I quickly switched to psychology because I liked the intro class I had taken over the summer.  I didn’t really have a plan in mind until I met Jesse Dallery (swoon!). He was my Applied Behavior Analysis professor and boy was he cute. Have you seen that key chain “If it weren’t for boys I’d quit school?”, well, that’s me. I’m really not fond of classes so there has to be some bonus to not only get, but keep me there.  So, Jesse taught me the basics of behavior analysis, and I loved it almost as much as I loved him. I found out that he taught a graduate level class in which he would sometimes allow advance undergraduates to enroll. I finally had a plan. I took every class I could in order to have a class with Jesse again, and it worked. Only, when I walked into that graduate level course, Jesse wasn’t nearly as cute as I remembered him being two years prior. Oh well, at this point I had devoted my life to applied behavior analysis, and I found that I rather enjoyed the science. Flash forward to now. I feel trapped. I have been pigeon-holed into this particular area of behavior analysis and it is NOTHING like Jesse described. He spoke of a world of abnormal psychology, treating phobias, addiction and OCD. Here I am having actual meetings about how to teach mentally retarded people to masturbate appropriately, without inserting paper into their vagina or paper clips into their penis. I mean honestly, sometimes I sit and think about what other “professionals” talk about at their meetings. I guess it makes for interesting stories at happy hour.

So, I did the “right thing”. I went to school and got a degree in something practical, but it’s not what I’m passionate about. I have this drive to do something creative. I want a job where every day is a new challenge. So, with this goal in mind, my best friend and I are attempting to start an event design business. Yes, we’ll probably do weddings, but I don’t want to be a “wedding planner”. I look at it as so much more than that. I want to see my ideas come to life and be the one in charge of making it happen. I know it sounds so incredibly corny, but I’m really excited about the prospect.

That gives you a general background as far as where I am professionally right now. As far as other important information:

I’m married. I’m sure my thoughts on marriage, sex and relationships will be a central theme to this blog as I have plenty of ideas on those topics, thanks in part to my many courses in sociology. I have some radical ideas when it comes to relationships, but you’ll have to keep reading to learn more about them.

I love the gays. That’s right, I said “the” gays. They are their own breed of people. Accept it. I have two gay best friends, however, I feel i’m getting cheated when it comes to some quintessential facets of the gay on straight relationship paradigm. More on that later as well.

I think that is all I will disclose for today. By the way, the blog name, “when smart people act dum(b)”, is referring to me. I spent most of my life attending a “gifted” school and in some ways people can probably tell that I am “intelligent”, however, I will probably spout off some of the dumbest things you will ever have the misfortune to read.