The First Step to Now

Somewhere on the way to becoming a super productive entrepenureal software development expert I got sidetracked.

Way back in late 2001 a George Will column , of all things, created what was the most radical change I made in the aughts. For those wondering how radical that might be let me point out I got divorced, changed careers (and changed back), and moved from Connecticut to Texas in that time frame. So, George Will must have inspired something pretty radical. Are you ready for what it was?

I quit wearing shirts without collars when out of the house for anything other than exercise.

Doesn’t sound radical does it? In fact it sounds down-right boring. I removed from my life great shirts with geek sayings that established me as an individual and instead sheathed myself in the grand conformity of the starched shirt and collar crowd. Okay, it is more the the knit polo shirt crowd most of the time but you get the idea.

So, if I embraced boredom why do I call this such a radical change?

Adulthood isn’t what it used to be.

But, then, you knew that just from looking at how grown-ups dress down. Time was, children enjoyed dressing up like adults. Now adults increasingly dress like children. In airport concourses you see them, men wearing jeans and tee shirts and running shoes, holding the hands of small boys dressed similarly. Small wonder they play similar games.

Wearing a collar isn’t about not wearing tee shirts. It is about adulthood. It is the first childish thing I put down. That I put it down at the ripe old age of 35 and was still doing it much earlier than my contemporaries says a lot about American adulthood or lack there of.

In the end that is what Dark Etiquette is about. It is about my struggle to find adulthood in broad cultural terms in a time and place where adult is a synonym for sex and swearing. It is about finding those things that define putting childish things aside and taking my place in the world as myself. It’s about living life on my own terms.

Even if it means I can’t put those terms on a cool tee shirt.