People tend to categorize things by how many ‘hats’ one wears, or how many fingers you have in pies.

In a world of specialization, I have specialized in not being a specialist – which, unfortunately, confuses people. Asked recently what I do for a living, I was caught off guard. Should I speak of having made a living from Software Engineering? Should I go with writing? What about land management? Real estate? Connecting people who need to be connected outside of the cultural ruts that exist in Trinidad and Tobago? Agriculture? Photography? Even recently, someone got stuck on the fact that I had been in the military even though my service and reserve service ended around 2006 (I think).

So my response was, “I think for a living.” That’s consistent, but it brought more confusion. I wonder how other polymaths deal with this?

It wasn’t a solid answer to the person asking, and I was revisited again by the demons of a society that defines you by where you were born (doesn’t work for me), by where you live (pick a place, I may have been there), by what you do for a living (see above), who you’re related to, what ‘race‘ you are, what religion you are, etc.

I don’t fall into categories as much as people attempt to shove me into them. I suppose part of the problem is that I gave up on categories somewhere in my 20s. It started before then, because even then I didn’t really fit – but I was not yet tired of being uncomfortable in my explanations.

All of this came to mind as I renewed this domain, where I’m uncertain where to write what. My technically related writing with a more local (Trinidad and Tobago) twist ends up on TechNewsTT.com. My more personal writing goes on RealityFragments.com.

And I suppose now, everything else goes here – as I have done historically, as you might see had there not been losses of data over the decades of my owning this domain name.

A strange world you live in.