Dec 19, 2006
Tag — I’m it
And by “it” I don’t mean Person of the Year — I reject that title. I’m absolutely not Person of the Year, even en masse. I probably did a bit more than the average social-web user in 2006, sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think the whole “you are Person of the Year” is the biggest copout ploy to sell rags Time’s probably ever concocted. (Yes, I’m a Time Warner employee.) I was trying not to write about this but I guess it seeped through the cracks.
Anywho, it’s blog tag — no, not that kind of tag — and Veronica tagged me. So, on to the five things you probably didn’t know:
- I’m an exceptionally slow reader. Or at least in my mind I am. Even though I was tested in school for advanced comprehension, it still takes me forever to read things.
- In a former life I was a sysadmin, and in a former-former life I peddled vintage clothes to hipsters at a shop in Brooklyn.
- I’m not really a first adoptor, at least not usually. Especially not since companies decided it’s a perfectly fine business practice to release beta software/hardware and just update it later when they iron out the kinks.
- I have near crippling stage-fright. Well, anyone who saw me on Attack of the Show could probably tell. I even sometimes get nervous when starting to record the podcast, I have no idea why; I’m trying to work through it though, taking as many speaking gigs and making as many appearances as possible. Maybe one day it’ll go away.
- A few of my all-time favorite bands (in no particular order): Stones, Devo, Magnetic Fields, Bowie; band that always makes me cringe: Heart.
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup: 
Ahh, the Magnetic Fields make me smile.. as I weep. Which is good, I think.
Slow readers salute. I consider myself a fake reader. I often scan passages of text in public to make myself seem normal and then read it later on when nobody’s looking.
I prefer the term, “careful reader.” A great teacher once taught me that to really learn and understand something, more important than reading it, is re-reading it.
There have been surveys consistently showing that people are less afraid of dying than they are of public speaking. Good for you to keep working through it. You might try a cognitive behavioral approach to your speaking engagements, if you haven’t already. Although originally developed for depression, it works equally well with anxiety where there are specific situations. See, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_therapy#The_ABCs_of_Irrational_Beliefs
Wow, very informative Larry, thanks!
Hey! You forgot to tag other people.
…or maybe you didn’t.
Hey I got tagged too so its fun to see what others are saying. Sorry to hear about the stage fright, good luck with that. You are absolutely right, you are NOT the person of the year and neither am I but I know who is for me.
[...] whatever, Merriam-Webster disappoints with the same kind of linkbaiting as Time Magazine naming YOU (read: us) as person of the year. But there’s only one take I want on “w00t” being word of the year: that of [...]