Me…

[arthur_p_dent]

As advertised, this is the first instalment of me talking about, well, me.  Each week I’ll pull something from my list of interests and write up something about it. Feel free to comment on, ask questions about, and/or discuss anything you like along the way.

(Quick side note before I jump in - after this week this will be a Wednesday post. I’ve been “unavoidably sidetracked” the past few days, but I also didn’t want to let another week go by before starting - I’m a fantastic procrastinator.)

I suppose the most logical place to start, considering the pseudonym I’ve chosen to use here, would be with “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. I think what drew me into the story in the first place was how much I related to different aspects of many of the characters. You’d probably assume that I’d relate mostly to Arthur - funny story, I chose to use Arthur P Dent almost entirely because the spelling was easier to remember than Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

I am most akin to Arthur at the beginning of the story. Very (for lack of a better word) ordinary. He was not adventurous, or a risk taker. Content mostly to go to work, pop over to the pub for a pint, or just relax at home with a cup of tea. It wasn’t until after the destruction of the Earth that he ‘came out of his shell’. However, many would argue (and I tend to believe also) that Arthur never really changed - he was still the same person, but under a different set of circumstances. 

Vogons. Now if you want to see some similarities (*chuckles*). Not that I’m blindly ruled by bureaucracy all the time, but I do lean heavily towards i-dotting and t-crossing. There are other things too - for instance, I’m a terrible shot with just about any weapon. Oh, and Prostetnic Jeltz and I share a bit of a sadistic side - what with tying people down and subjecting them to a little torture. ;)

And then there’s Ford. A loyal friend, even if he is a bit of an odd duck. But also, someone who keeps some of who he truly is hidden away from others - which only makes sense when you’re an alien.

You might ask, what about Zaphod? Anything relatable there? Nope. Not a damned thing. Extroverted, gregarious, carefree, no thought for consequences - talk about polar opposites. But even though the character is wildly and comically exaggerated, I do regret not developing some amount of his traits when I was young. Circumstances forced responsibility onto my shoulders at a very early age, and I never really learned how to interact with people, or to relax or have fun without having some kind of plan. I’ve been trying to work on that, but there’s several decades of ingrained habits I need to change to get there. 

So not bad for a first post. To be honest, I hadn’t really recognized most of these things, fully, prior to writing this. And I guess this is kind of the goal here - not just to tell a story, but to learn where that story came from. So far, pretty glad I decided to do this.  =]

Comments

[dustbunny105]

A very good first post, I agree! Especially since writing it helped you work out what you were writing about. It can be quite the journey, figuring oneself out. Good to see that it's a journey you're already getting something out of and I hope that is consistently the case. I, for one, enjoyed reading these insights and look forward to reading more :)

[arthur_p_dent]

This was a pretty good one to cut my teeth on, for a number of reasons. I don’t know how many future topics will be quite this introspective - some will be far more anecdotal. But that’s ok too, because not everything has to be about something.

Thanks for the support. =]