A More Thorough Introduction

I thought it was time for a little further introduction to me and my life; I find that "first posts" at new venues tend to be a bit clumsy because... well, we basically have little idea what we're doing.

So now that I've been exploring Steemit for a couple of weeks... let's get more personal!

So yeah... it's "denmarkguy" because I was born and grew up in Denmark, and it is also the name I have been using online since the mid-1990's. Although I have lived in the USA since 1981, I remain a Danish citizen. Never really had a strong compulsion to become a US citizen... 

I first came to the US in 1981 to attend University. Originally, it was just going to be for a year... but I ended up staying and eventually getting degrees in Finance and Marketing, with a minor in English. That all took me about five years. I was never very disciplined about school; always had a tendency to just take classes that sounded interesting and then worrying about whether or not they fit my degree at a later date. 

I think I may still hold some kind of record for changing my major after having started my last semester...

I suffer from "Too Many Interests Syndrome" which is not really a thing, but my way of saying that I may be afflicted with what society likes to call "Adult ADHD." I'm not sure. I pretty much skated through grade school and was never formally diagnosed because I had no symptoms of the "hyperactivity" part of the diagnosis... I was basically a sleepy dreamer who'd look at something on the chalkboard and three minutes later be quietly looking out....

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... where was I?

I was never really the trouble maker, never the fidgety kid who was bouncing off the walls. I managed to get through school with mostly A's and B's... I think in large part due to being a chronic doodler. Somehow, if I was drawing geometric patterns in my notebook, I could also "hear" the teacher and whatever was being said sunk in. The geometric patterns eventually came to form the basis for my creative expression/art later in life. But that's for a future installment of this tale.

For the sake of accurate disclosure, we didn't exactly "live in Denmark" all the time. There was a lot of travel, thanks to my dad's job-- he was head of a manufacturing company and a bit of a crazy inventor, so he would assign himself to go all over creation to help bottling plants set up new equipment and improve their processes. France, Germany, Switzerland, Jamaica, Kenya. Trinidad & Tobago, the UK, the Netherlands and a few others.

The 'rents divorced when I was about 11, so I went to live with my mother. When I was 13, we moved to the south of Spain... which earned me the rather unusual distinction of having lived in a dictatorship; this was Franco's Spain. Some years later, I spent a couple of years at boarding school in the UK... quite possibly the least favorite time of my life.

I never was much of an activist or anarchist or rebel or "alternative" type person... in the sense that I didn't go out with banners to protest things, or bomb things, or live an "underground lifestyle" or tie myself to trees in the face of oncoming bulldozers. Instead, I have tended to be "one of those people" who just did whatever seemed right, regardless of what popular opinion was. Meaning that sometimes what I'd choose was totally mainstream, and sometimes it was utterly bizarre.

A friend and I once ran into a tornado (just a little F-1) just to see what it would be like. Yes, we wore coats and padding and helmets and aviator goggles... but who DOES that? It was a weird experience. We were uninjured, but I had dust in my lungs for about a week.

I discovered very early in life that I don't tend to think like most other people. 

That's hard to explain... I feel that the main reason I have always struggled to understand people is that I tend to view most stuff through a "global" lens of perception, rather than a "personal" one. As a kid, I was more concerned with why everyone couldn't get along and be kind to each other than whether someone was bullying and picking on me, individually. 

I think I failed at Korporate Amerika because my orientation was cooperative rather than competitive. Even in this moment-- having spent two weeks tooling around on Steemit-- I am more concerned about how this can become a great social site for "alt minded" people everywhere than I am about what I can personally gain here. 

I started an import business (with a good friend) in 1985 and did "sort of OK" with it, but eventually packed it in because I found myself being in charge of troubleshooting and managing people, rather that doing something I enjoyed. 

I'm an introvert. That doesn't mean I don't like people, it just means that I quickly get exhausted by social interaction. I am also a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) which does not mean that I am one of those "sensitive snowflakes" who needs to find a "crying room" every time something doesn't go my way. What it actually means is that I am affected by Sensory-Processing Sensitivity. It's a thing. Google it. 

Short version: I experience stimuli (light, noise, smells, textures, touch, feelings) rather more intensely than most people. It's not a defect, it's not an illness, it's not a syndrome... I'm not on drugs. I just arrange my life a little differently. 

Incidentally, it's one of the niches I study and write quite a lot about-- and have for almost 20 years. 

What else? 

Mrs. Denmarkguy and I have actually known each other since she was eight and I was thirteen. Of course we went our separate ways and briefly would connect every few years or so... but didn't actually find ourselves both unattached at the same time till 2003. We've been attached ever since. It's pretty awesome.

We both like to create life after our own design and we've finally managed to come up with our version of "work" in the form of Patchwork Economics. She's a Life Coach, and a world class psychic, and a web designer, and a writer and occasionally puts on self-development and healing workshops with one of her close friends. She's also a textile artist. 

I'm trying to persuade her to test the waters here at Steemit. Back in the very early days, she had one of the ten most read blogs in the US, as well as being the publisher of an award winning literary 'zine. 

Anyway, I write, I trade in rare postage stamps for collectors-- a childhood hobby turned micro business (a whole separate story there), I walk on the beach and find "unusual things" (beach glass, old pottery, driftwood, strange rocks) which I sell to artists and jewelers who work with "found objects," which is also a whole story onto itself. 

I have another creative outlet (mentioned up above) that involves painting geometric patterns on beach stones. That's one more whole story unto itself-- I'll get to that someday-- might even put some of my pieces on Peerhub, just in support of the community. Anyway, it's part of how we support ourselves. 

We used to go to festivals and fairs with the stones, but since the middle of last year we've had a small art gallery here in our town... that's something we do together, as well. It's kind of an "alt" art gallery where we feature both artists having their first gallery experience as well as very established artists. That's also a whole story onto itself. 

To use a trite cliché, I am "spiritual but not religious" but that's not exactly accurate. The truth is that I find the search for "God" or "not-God" is just not a burning question in my life, and never was. I can go either way, but neither way occupies much of my bandwidth. 

I am more interested in exploring truth, existence, meaning, life and freedom on a greater scale than just "my personal bag of goods." I want to know and understand how people arrived at their closely held perspectives, not just that they arrived there; I want to hear about the journeys... which is why I also blog and write about those journeys.

I think Steemit is a pretty awesome platform for writers and free spirits... it reminds me of "social blogging" from many years ago... something I miss; something that was largely destroyed when Crackbook stole the social parts from blogs. 

I don't really know anything about cryptocurrencies above and beyond a basic understanding of Bitcoin... but I think this is a great "soft entry" for more mainstream people to become familiar with this kind of alternative economy.

Well... I think that's enough for this evening. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming!