20150103.0941

I would seem to have missed the commemoration of Asimov's birthday (although I might not have missed the day, as it was not completely recorded...), and I find myself somewhat conflicted. On one hand, the work that the Good Doctor did is the important thing about him--the words he wrote are what remain and what have inspired many. I am not part of his family, after all. But on the other hand, I have long been a reader of his, and I am a nerd, and it is part of that that I ought to attend to the minutiae--which I have not done. There is a sense of diminishment, somehow, a sense that I have not done as I ought to have done, that I am somehow less because of it.

That such a feeling would befall me makes some sense. I have mentioned, here and elsewhere, that I am very much a nerd. Enthusiasm, as I note in earlier comments, is typical of nerdiness, and enthusiasm often manifests as attention to small details, a passion for getting things exactly right. As such, failing to get things exactly right becomes an indication of lessened enthusiasm, thus of lessened nerdiness--and when a label has been applied consistently and pervasively, it becomes a component of identity. Threats to identity do not sit well. (I am aware that there is substantial peril in reducing identity to labels. That I still do is a part of the social conditioning imposed upon me, tacitly and explicitly, throughout my life, and there is little I know how to do and can do to overturn it. There are...other things bound up in it.)

At the same time, the utility of the "nerd" label (assuming, of course that labels retain any usefulness in general) is diminished. A Cracked.com article about which I comment in another venue usefully dismantles the definition--and while I am aware that there is some trouble in using a post to a comedy website to support an argument, I find the basic point put across to be largely valid. Nerdiness is not what it used to be (if it ever was, admittedly). For me to be at odds with what a nerd is "supposed" to be is not necessarily a failing, both because the supposition is bad and because not being a nerd remains desirable.

I am left without a clear direction in the matter. Some part of me suggests that I ought to let it pass by as something of no importance; again, I am not part of the Good Doctor's family, so the dates of his birth and death should not be what matter to me. I certainly have enough other things to which to pay attention. I know myself well enough to know that the matter will stay on my mind, receding perhaps into the distance, but still marring the landscape of it in some way I cannot yet foresee, altering the scenery and the view for the worse.