My name is Alan Brooks and I live in Woodstock, New York. I’m very interested in things that will help me stick to my 2014 New Years resolution to learn something new very day. So if you have any good ideas, or just something you’d like to challenge me with, let me know at chips at panix dot com. I’m game for anything, but if it involves travel I have to be able to get there from upstate New York, and whatever it is has to be affordable.

Alan Brooks

Why me?

I am uncommonly-nay; fiercely-average. On a scale of averagenous I’m a third standard deviation outlier. I’ve played sports my whole life but am still the last one picked for any team, be it hoops, soccer, tennis, football, baseball, hockey or solitaire. I play guitar, uke and hammered dulcimer, all badly. I’m 56 years old and just published my first book (which, all that said, is pretty darn good if you’re into fantasy, sci-fi or tattoos: Indigo: Ink to Blood.

I lived through the dot-com boom without ever getting rich, and through the dot-com crash without losing my shirt.

I’ve been around the world, visited dozens of countries and have studied languages and yet my second-best language (Mandarin) still falls short of conversational, and I generally try to communicate with non-Americans by mimicking their accent (the less said about the results of this, the better).

In short, I’m the perfect candidate for a year of self-improvement. I have some long-term goals for the year as well, but I’m not posting about them here. At least not yet. This blog is simply for those one-day projects to bring me closer to that Robert Heinlein ideal. Once again, I invite you to give me something to learn. Have a great 2014 and may the year teach you something valuable.

Namaste.