And that title has nothing going for it.

Once I tried to tell someone that I didn’t talk about my family often or the size of the family from which I come. I then started laughing, out loud and mid sentence, because fuck you, me, that’s exactly what I do. If we just met, and I don’t bring up the fact that I’m one of eight kids in the first three or four things I say, I think you’re full of shit and bumblebees.

Third glass of wine. We’re doing alright.

No. I actively define myself by my relation to a large family. I don’t have any relevant experience or knowledge of the subject, I just know it’s true, like Newton’s laws of physics or Beethoven’s symphonies or wine.  Write that on your $40,000+ Bachelor’s Degree in psychology: “I’m up to my coccyx  in unalienable student debt, but Stephen knows a thing is actual.”

I made that sentence longer so you would think about the stupid thing you did incurring debt when you have no work experience or any experience at anything, ever, except standardized testing and wasting all of your creative potential on perfecting useless routines, you stupid dumb full of idiot.

“I think I have my life figured out.” -every 20 year old.

But really, I define myself by my family. It’s alright. One day I’ll be a real person, but when you tell people you’re one of eight kids…  …you get used to a certain reaction, I suppose. The first thing I’ve noticed that other large families (read: greater than four children) understand is number. Your number in the family is the first thing that matters. Seniority matters because the closer you are to the top, the greater percentage you theoretically own a house while your parents are on vacation.

Superlatives become paramount. You can’t ever be similar to someone because by Odin, you’re really trying to be your own person and the only way to be that in your parents’ eyes (so you think) is being the only one at something. For me, I’ve been crowned with the dual honors of “tallest” and “most annoying (when he feels he isn’t getting enough attention).” Naturally, I became a writer.

These kinds of tension mellow out over the years. You start to find out that your siblings, older and younger, aren’t trying to make your mutual parents disappointed in you. It’s cool your younger sister was an English major, I mean, you were an English major first after all, so there isn’t really a competition. Everyone remembers that you came first and graduated first and that it’s your birthday.

But it’s also your first real social circle, and you never forget the lessons you learned from coping with annoying siblings or forgiving siblings for being annoyed with you. The family is a microcosm of society, and you’ll take the rules you learn from your brothers, sisters, and parents into the greater theaters of the world. And that comes with tremendous benefits, such as a greater capacity for patience and empathy because of all the metric tons of bullshit with which you’ve dealt, as well as deficiencies, such as being one of two English majors.

My point is, if you’re the wrong type of person, and some or many of these conditions apply, it’s easy to become obsessed with one possible element of your character. You might even view yourself as a character, instead of a person. But I think everyone does that, as per the Ben Franklin effect.

Hire me, cracked.com

Me, I think I’m clever. I always have. It’s unfortunate because if I spent half the energy I used for proving to other people that I’m clever into clever things such as, I don’t know writing shit maybe?!, then well, yeah, that would be better. But people get blinders when they see the shortest road to the greatest gain. They lose perspective, and perspective might be the most important commodity after our time and attention. You are, after all, what you worship.

Wishing I was the clever person who had come up with this tagline.

I don’t think being clever will make me happy, but, for whatever reason, I think that believing that others think I’m clever will. My ego is the size of Montana. I don’t know if I really want to be smart, or if I just want to be seen as being smart. I’m the kind of guy who would solve a Rubik’s cube at a party and claim “it’s not so hard after the first layer.”

That was an actual experience.

But I have faith in the Cosmic All and its ability to deliver unto me swift kicks of the ass variety whenever my ego reaches Texas levels. The universe was set up in ways that won’t tolerate a moderately educated asshole like me spouting drivel about Steve Harvey or wine.

All of this leads to something I’ve been feeling for some time. The more I look over this blog, the more I find myself confronting some kind of pseudo-intellectual outburst. The plebeian press? I was high off reading the same book by G.K. Chesterton for the fourth or fifth time (it was The Man Who Was Thursday, which is still the best book I’ve ever read). I wanted to be populist but intelligent, middle of the road but sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel.

And now, I don’t think that’s me. I’m not Chesterton. I’m not Stephen King or Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. That would have disappointed me some years ago, but now I’m grateful for the fact that I’m messy, sometimes incoherent, and full of more piss than vinegar. I think I’ve kept true to the intention under which this blog was created, that the value of doing something isn’t defined by its response. Climb the mountains because they’re there.  The march of time proves that I’m not the boy I once was, I was never the intellect I believed myself to be, and nothing guarantees my success on a me-centric world view.

The name “theplebieanpress” is good. Clever, even. But it’s no longer me, and that’s okay. In less than a week, I’m being flown to Dubai. I will be submerged in a vastly different culture, while at the same time being dropped back into the more familiar and infinitely more scary grounds of teaching. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m spending money I don’t have. I’m trying to arrest my personal spending to little avail. My debts weigh on my mind daily, and I feel like I might need someone to cosign on me treading water.

And everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

This, I know. I’m not the person I used to be. I won’t be the person I think I’m going to be, but the steps I take now, in advance of whatever dark and looming future awaits me, will bring me closer to someone I want to realize more than any other passive response. It’s my intention that I catalog the transition to my new life in the United Arab Emirates here on this blog, partly because Wine-Stephen wants only the best for Not-Wine-Stephen. Also, because I know, regardless of my continental arrogance, there are still those who care enough about a clinical narcissist like me to want updates. And for someone who thinks they’re the main character in the greatest story ever told, I would genuinely hate to disappoint my audience.