[Feel free to skip this entry — setting up future entries with some questions]

Two kids, bundled up in the cool north Alabama winter weather, ride by on an ATV.  A father and daughter ride by on their bicycles.

Do you attempt to control the number of people who want to love you or love the people around you?

Do you accept that whoever wants to like you and/or your presence, your mannerisms, your actions, your work, your friends, your ideas, your passions, your dislikes, can and will like all that without your permission?

So, then, what is poverty?

If no one told you you were poor, would you know it?  If you didn’t have all the stuff that nonpoverty purports to provide — telephone, television, motorbikes, automobiles, paved roads, public transit, sanitised water, pasteurised milk, meat byproducts, mass-produced clothing, literacy, manufactured medicine, Internet 24/7 — would you feel any less yourself?

Are you naturally predisposed to move around?  Are you athletically inclined?  Or would you rather sit and minimise your physical movements, passively involved in the world around you?

What are you primary activities?  How do they compare to your subculture and the population at large?

Do you stand more than sit?

Do you sleep more than sit?

Do you spend more time eating while sitting or standing?

Is your physical activity integrated with your primary activities or do you set aside time to “exercise” because your primary activities are mainly sedentary?

Should radio/TV/Internet call-in shows no longer accept calls from drivers using their mobile phones?

What is a hobby?  When does the line blur between hobby and occupation?

On a personal note, why have I, who grew up attending and actively participating in weekly religious rituals, found group-based religious ceremonies fairly uninteresting in my adulthood, no matter how familiarly old-fashioned or modern they have been? [Answer: because none of them allow me to silently meditate upon the solemnity of reason for the process; rather, I am forced to stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, sing with and listen to others, interrupting my train of meditative thought.]

Poverty of possessions is not a sin or a crime.  A short life expectancy is not, either.

Being organic beings (as opposed to all those inorganic beings out there [wink, wink]), we are subject to the frailty that flesh and blood makes us.

The thousands-of-years-old question: does civilisation make us less or more of what we once were?

A two-story house under construction one street over gives the occupants of the second story a clear view of me sitting in front of the window in my study.

I don’t like being watched.  No particular reason why or, rather, a multitude of reasons why.  First, I like to change my personality frequently and don’t like people watching me during the transition.  Second, I change my chameleon personality to adjust to people around me and when unknown people are watching, I’m unsure what specific traits I should best display.

As a person who likes to record his personalities and observations via the process of writing, I am often wearing the cloak of a personality I’m trying to understand before describing it with words.  Letting strangers watch the intermediate stages of personality development is not something with which I’m comfortable.

In this day and age, I value my privacy during the moments of character development.

Should I?

Is privacy a right best enjoyed in poverty or wealth?

If people want to like or love me even when I’m wrapped up in a new character coming to life, should I stop them or let them see what they want, despite the incomplete message they may receive (and I’m all about projecting a message, or the semistereotype that most of us, as characters in our own drama/comedy, display on a daily basis)?

I am behind in my thanks, including to: Stain/Miranda at Beauregard’s (now back in business); Jordan at Publix; Mr. Donut; China Cook; Joe, Harold and Jenn at KCDC; Taylor at Krystal; Tuesday Morning; Michael’s; multiple Internet service providers and Web content developers; Richard J. Quintana of Missing Link Records (thanks for selling me a box of Deutsche Grammophon records for $10); Fred Bread.