What I'm Doing at #SXSW (and for the rest of my life, dammit)

It's not until someone demands an explanation that you truly realize what you are doing. It's as if in the entire planning process no one uttered it into the innocent air of unspoken realities. It's just this thing that's in your head and it grows and grows until it finally flops out like a root too big for its pot:

We're here gathering high fives to raise money for the Austin Children's Shelter.

You hear that out loud and then you yourself have as many questions as the person asking. And you're relieved that it all makes sense...it makes sense in the way things make sense at a giant festival in the age of the Internet. It makes sense the way searching for a recipe is called "googling" or a well thought out quote is a "tweet." It makes sense in the way that creatives banging on the walls of convention have hoped it would one day make sense. How many people have been carted away in the name of crazy because their sense was way ahead of everyone else's sense? Or simply different. Only if they'd been alive now. They'd be heralded as geniuses and have half a million Karma points on Reddit.

I'm happy I live in an age that that makes sense, and because we do, a young man with a giant counter on his back gets a nickel donated to a good cause with every high five he gets. And people are all about the High Five Guy. To think that they can make a tiny difference by slapping someone's hand (and oh the irony of the hand slap going from chastizing to charity) makes all the difference as to whether they care or not.

It's funny, though, how this coming together so well has me coming to pieces. I think that's a good thing, to be dismantled and have to build yourself again...or maybe just leave it in pieces. No more need for a facade of any kind of togetherness; just laid out and open and honest and doing the things I should have been doing years ago--or that I did do years ago--but with the confidence that it can all make sense...or doesn't have to at all.

You just have to do it. (he says to himself)