Back to the Muse

It’s mid-January and I’ve spent the early afternoon huddled in an East Village coffee shop. An avenue away, on the Bowery, march the ghosts of idols passed: musicians, poets, philosophers whose words have served as the requisite muse that young people with even an ounce of creative yearnings dream about. As I enter the fourth decade of my life, I feel divorced from that youth. Abandoned by the muse. Aborted by the creativity I’ve always imagined birthed inside of me.

I am living on 54th and Lexington in the heart of Manhattan, yet sometimes I feel so detached from the city I’ve adopted as my home. I have a great job, one that provides in excess the extraordinary life that I live. But I miss these words that I used to love. I miss that feeling of inspiration. So, in 2012, my 32nd year of existence, I yearn to get that back again; back to the words, back to the muse.

Of course, I’m not sure what that will resemble. I know that I do not plan to fellate myself in blog form; I’m not looking to create meladrama out of my first world problems through this faux-communicating and self-aggrandizing medium. I’m just looking to put words to paper, albeit in a digital form. I’m looking to capture my personal creativity in the dollup of digital amber. That’s all one can ask for these days, isn’t it?

Goodbye….

This blog was created by me back before he ever thought that he would make any money from the internet. Since the first post (which has long since been hidden), this blog represented who “George” was as a person, his many interests, and his growing career. Change – however – is inevitable. This blog has wrestled with that change over the last few years. Only recently, has it became obvious that I have outgrown it. I still love it in so many ways, I keep telling myself that I will return to it. And perhaps I will. But my creative energies have somewhat shifted. The long form, often emotional narratives are few and far between. They lived concealed in their analog siblings or possibly lay unwritten in the crevices of my imagination. I just can’t simply write them anymore. And so, with that, my artistic expression has shifted toward simpler devices – a Tumblr blog where I spend more time reacting rather than creating – or, twitter, where I capture my daily thoughts and conversations with friends and acquaintances alike.

I want to keep this site alive – which is something I have never done with blogs before. The delete key has erased from the web so many of my thoughts, writings, poetry, emotions, stories, and I couldn’t do that to this blog. It meant to much. Everything I ever did on the web lead me here, and now I want to leave it – both as a memory of who I was, and for the possibility that I will return to it. Please – if you’re so inclined – continue to follow me on the sites listed below. If not, I understand. Thank you for reading….

Tumblr: http://www.georgegsmithjr.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/georgegsmithjr
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgegsmithjr

George G Smith Jr
8/7/2011
George G Smith Jr
8/7/2011

Walk This Way

Thinking about Who You Are…

Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows opens Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings with the humorous, if not revealing, lyric “I am a Russian Jew American, Impersonating African Jamaican.”   This line has been on my mind since I heard it the other day – even if the song that it’s contained in is sub par at best. Have you ever sat down and really thought about who you are? I am a mixture of race, a conundrum of education and dreams – a chrysalis of potential. I am a writer, a dreamer, a worker, a fighter. I am none of those things. I am techy and nerdy, loud and verbose, intelligent and naive.

I do my best impersonations of someone who knows what they are doing. I fumble through every day life with a success rate that some people envy. I don’t sleep – even when I’m sleeping. I’m a reformed night owl turned morning person – 5am alarms; showering before my roommates gain consciousness.

I am procrastinating although it’s a work day. I am a workaholic.

I’m lonely yet surrounded by people. Alive yet sometimes dead tired. I’m addicted to information – reading RSS feeds, blogs, twitter, wikipedia, news articles, text messages, game scores, imdb, stock reports, critiques, commentaries, editorials, e-zines, etc etc etc…….

I am someone that’s changing daily. Someone who doesn’t know what tomorrow brings. I am in love with a girl. I am a hopeless romantic. I am fearful of commitment. I am out of tune, out of luck, out of site and out of mind…

I am all of this and none of it. My identity is lost somewhere in the rhetoric of “I am.” Most people, ultimately, can’t be broken down into simple labels, ideas or concepts. They are simply people – with the infinite possibilities refracted through the prism of each moment.

The internet is all about defining who you are.  You can register your About.me page and tell the world what they want to hear.  You can go to threewords.me and crowdsource that definition. People make a living off of crafting “personal brands” and carefully crafted personas but in the end, what does it all mean? Can we truly define people in three words? In a single page? In a single blog? Does the definitions we create for ourselves truly define us, or simply reveal the truths in the spaces in between?

How do you define yourself? Do you take the time to have an honest introspection every now and then? Do you let others create their own definitions?

Me Write Pretty One Day

“Writing is pain. I’m not here to make it less painful for you. I’m here to take you to new levels where you will experience deeper and different kinds of pain.” – Pat Mouton, Liverpool High School English

I started writing this post 15 days ago, when the most influential teacher in my life Pat Mouton passed away. Without her, this blog wouldn’t exist. It’s arguable if I would have even made it to college. She challenged me and helped me during a very traumatic time in my life and for that, I’m forever in her debt. The fact that I’m at a loss for words about the death of the woman that gave me the power to use them is ironic….and poetic, in a way that I think Mrs. Mouton would appreciate. Thank you, Pat – for everything you gave me and the countless other students who you touched during your time as a teacher.

Paint it black bright

I moved into a new place last week and, as I slowly start getting settled, I am in the process of deciding what colors I should use. It’s a tough process but one that I will ultimately document on this blog. (Me? Painting? Seriously!)

I need to regroup with my roommate Taryn to go over a few final details, but I think the goal is create a pretty cozy and fun experience in the living room. I mean – the layout is pretty sweet. You go down the spiral staircase into the room. There’s a small alcove and room for a couch or two. There’s not much natural light – so, at the suggestion of Josh, I’m investigating putting mirrors to spread some of the natural light.

It will be a work in progress. I will start sharing pictures soon. We have a few couch crashers here so I want to do a bit more cleaning before I start documenting the process.

Oh, Alessandra…

I am in love with Alessandra Torresani.

There’s really nothing more to write than that.

But….if you want me to write more, I can talk about how this non-Battlestar Galactica watching guy has really taken to the show Caprica. The episodes are compelling and interesting. The plot lines seem immense – you’re not sure where they could go and yet they are buttoned up as well. The characters are three-dimensional – you feel their emotions, you seem things simmering underneath the surface. These are things that one does not usually find in television programming. Add in the captivating Torresani, whom I have slowly fallen in love with thanks to her beautiful visage being plastered on Subways all around the city, and the Caprica universe has found a new fan.

Positively 47th Street: Brian Simpson and The Roger Smith Hotel

New York has always been a hub for people to gather and collect.  Neighborhoods formed based on ethnic and social realities.  Places are dubbed hot and cool often based on their cross streets.  So much of New York is about how and why people get together.  In the 1960′s, Greenwich Village erupted with the Folk Movement.  While Bob Dylan and a handful of others may be the names that people remember, it in fact drew from a cast of thousands – all coming together for reasons that centered around one idea:  folk music.  It’s a simple concept – give people a place to enjoy their passions, and they will congregate.  Yet, this simple concept is extremely hard to pull off.

The Roger Smith Hotel is pulling it off.  On Twitter the other day, I called Brian Simpson of the Roger Smith the David Van Ronk of the New York Social Media scene.  Van Ronk was dubbed the “Mayor of MacDougal street” and while “mayor” might have a different connotation in the social media world thanks to Foursquare, Brian has served many as a conventional one might.  Brian has helped cultivate the Roger Smith to be the Social Media haven.  The other night it culminated in having over 50+ people at the Roger Smith checking in on Foursquare.  Brian was there, somewhat in the shadows, watching as multiple events that centered around Social Media took place.  DigitalSomethings was upstairs.  A Tweetup downstairs.  Watching them mix and marry into an amorphous cloud of people, you can’t help but feel like something special is in the works.

Now, I’m new to town.  I haven’t known the regulars in the Social Media scene here for that much time.  I just know that the Roger Smith has a reputation from those in town, and a mythos to those out of town.  It probably feels like what places like the Gaslight, Gerde’s, Cafe Wha? and the Folklore Center must have felt like to the folk crowd.  As social media, mobile, and location based technology becomes motivation for offline events, what other venues and hubs will develop?  The Roger Smith is one of the first ones that I discovered.  I don’t need to keep track of check ins to see who is the “Mayor” of that place – and maybe even of this New York scene in general….

Reintroducing myself to Blogging

I started December off with the lofty goal of writing the Best of ’09 Blog Challenge. It was an utter failure. I barely got through half the month of challenges before I gave up, posted two half fleshed out retrospections of the decade, and again had radio silence. Why? Why couldn’t I do the one thing that has remained consistent throughout the last twelve years of my life?

That’s when I realized that forcing myself to write something became like homework – and that was never why I blogged in the first place. A lot of people in the blogosphere are talking about how this next year is about hustle and hard work. I totally agree with them – except I’m not going to apply that to my blog. I’ll hustle where it matters – my job, my social life, my family – but, in the end, this blog was never meant to be a complete resource on things like social media, marketing, or the various other topic I write about here. This was supposed to be the complete resource on all things ME: George G Smith Jr. There are so many things that being “George G Smith Jr” entails, and this blog is going to become more representative of it. After all, I blog because I simply like sharing my thoughts with the world. That’s why I started, after all….

I remember my first real foray into blogging happened way back in 1997. I visited my friend Tracy, who was a freshman at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She had this snarky roommate Rebekah (I almost believe snarky may have been originated from Rebekah). Rebekah was probably the first true internet geek I ever met. She introduced me to the South Park Christmas Video (remember when South Park was just a viral video and not an amazing television show?). And she introduced me to her website – the now-defunct Rebekah.org. There, she wrote about everything and anything. She was actually quite dramatic, seemingly stirring up trouble here and there – but it was compelling. So I started my own. My friend Kim also started blogging regularly at the time. This was almost 13 years ago – before words like blog even existed. I haven’t stopped since – even if it went from geocities to tripod; livejournal to blogger to typepad to wordpress. All those venues, all created for the sole purpose of sharing my thoughts with the world.

So this year – my goal is return this blog to it’s roots: which is simply me writing what I feel like it. I guarantee my traffic will go down. Maybe I’ll return to the ranks of being invisible – just another blogger in a sea of millions writing about the mundane and not-so-mundane parts of their lives. I think I’ll find a better balance in my life this way. I think I’ll discover and rediscover the things that made me love this space. The things that make me happy that Vassar student housing, a teenage crush on Tracy, and ethernet combined to form Rebekah Jude Allen – the mysterious pale girl who I never met again and yet played a somewhat big role in my digital life.

So, 2010 is a chance for me to start back to the basics. A chance to reintroduce myself to the world of blogging:

“Hi – my name is George G Smith Jr. I’m 29 years old and I just moved to New York City. This is my blog….”

Ignite Boulder: How to Master Debate

Here’s the video of me from the last Ignite Boulder – where I gave a presentation on How to Master Debate: