The photo below was shared with me about a year ago by a longtime friend. He informed me that he took it in June 1994. I do not remember the occasion but I do remember the hair, and that alone tells me it was from 1994.

The photo was taken at a party in his and his girlfriend’s apartment. I lived in the same complex as them at the time but I was soon moving “uptown” in New Paltz. (Three blocks away.) I believe that at the moment he was snapping this, I was asking him to be a future roommate with me the next school year, as no one had yet agreed to join me. (I was not an easy roommate to endure and two decades later, I got mine. In spades.) We were in graduate school, literature students, and my memory of our parties is unreasonably romanticized.

I loved that floral necktie more than it loved me, as it never held a knot that suited my fidgety liking. I have been the frayed death for many ties. And I certainly needed a haircut. The unruly hair—look at that thing on my head! It’s getting caught in my right eyebrow!—contradicted the intent of the tightly trimmed goatee, or vice versa, but I presented the world a lot of mixed messages about me in more ways than my grooming back then. I am 25 in this photo. An interesting life is ahead.

This is me in 2014. My girlfriend took this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About a week ago, Michele at Steps Times Two awarded The Gad About Town a “Lovely Blog” award and I have not taken the time to thank her. Thank you. The reason she gave, on her blog, was, “Although he’s already been nominated, I have to add him to my list.” I love that. Thank you.

It is the seventh award this blog has received since joining WordPress in January.

In the blogging world, there are some rules of etiquette in the form of paying forward the awards attention. Here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for the award.
2. Display the award on your blog—by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget.”
3. Share 7 facts or things about yourself.

In no order: A. Upon doing something new, I complain every time. B. Strawberries are my favorite food and I wish they had protein so they could be a complete meal for carnivorous me. C. Being in recovery makes every day feel like an awards ceremony. D. My love of the number 4. E. When it is fall I think that spring is the best season, and in spring I think that fall is. F. When asked to name a favorite book or movie, I usually blurt out like a nervous tic an answer that may have been true two decades ago, when I looked like the above photo, but without thinking. So I re-watched “The Maltese Falcon” after naming it last week, once again, as a favorite movie. It is still good. G. I whine.

4. Nominate bloggers you admire.

I am going to repeat something I wrote earlier this week. I have been participating for the last three months in responding to our WordPress service’s Daily Prompt, which has helped spur my most prolific period of writing since graduate school. (This prolific-ness is a good thing, too, because I am working on a terrific project, due out soon, with another blogger.) Most of the writers with whom I have been communicating regularly, several of whom ask me questions and give me applause every single day, I met via that service. My subscribers have doubled and so has the number of blogs that I subscribe to. Go to the Daily Prompt any day and you will see the several dozen blogs that I read and often like every day. Steps Times Two is really good. Michele is a teacher and a poet and a good, honest writer. I have also been reading Curl Up and Dye, written by Amy, who is exploring love and art in various manifestations, and very deeply.

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This was going to be the first sentence for today’s free-write post, but then I changed my mind: “I want to learn how to meditate.”

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 23 asks, “Our ten-minute free-write is back! Have no mercy on your keyboard as you give us your most unfiltered self (feel free to edit later, or just publish as-is).

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