Last night, I walked into the middle of a room filled with people I didn't know. The party hadn't gotten started yet, even though I thought I had gotten there fashionably late. 15 pairs of eyes followed me into the middle of the room. Someone walked over to me and handed me a cat.

"It's your turn to dance with the cat", he said.

It was one of those moments. One of those, "oh fuck me", kind of moments. The kind of moment where you want to do it, but you don't, but you should, but they're watching, so you will, but you're too nervous, now you're taking too long, and they're still watching.

These moments take me back. Way back. Back to sometime in 2004. My high school prom. I was standing on "the wall". Not having a date or anyone interested in dancing with you meant you were to spend the duration of the dance along said wall pretending to enjoy yourself.

I was still very much a nervous and shy kid. How I got through high school befriending so many people and being both nervous and shy, I will never know. I was at the prom. That was a big step for me, but still had only made it as far as standing along the wall. Even being asked to dance several times, I stood my ground. Intimidated as fuck.

About an hour into the dance, a song popped into my head. I don't remember what made it pop into my head. It just did. And it changed my life.

Are you gonna live your life wonderin' standing in the back lookin' around?
Are you gonna waste your time thinkin' how you've grown up or how you missed out?

"There's no way I'm gonna just sit here and watch everyone else have fun. I gotta stop being such a pussy", I thought to myself.

I'm on my feet, I'm on the floor, I'm good to go.
Now all I need is just to hear a song I know.
I wanna always feel like part of this was mine.

"I've wasted most of high school trying to go unnoticed. Look where it's gotten me. On the wall. At prom. Alone." The song spoke to me. It said to me everything I had always told myself, but never followed through on.

I picked myself up off the wall, took a deep breath, and walked over to the girl I wanted to dance with the most. Her date had ditched her for some other girl and hadn't danced a single dance. I built up all the courage I could muster and faintly blurted out, "would you like to dance?"

"What?", she replied over the loud music.

I got nervous. After having made my move and asked this girl to dance, she wanted me to repeat myself. I darted my eyes to the girl sitting behind her... and repeated myself.

"Would you like to dance?", I said to the girl sitting behind her. She said yes, so it was kind of a mission accomplished. The night ended up being a pretty memorable one only because I made it.

Jump back to last night. Me. In the middle of the room full of people I don't know holding a cat and being told to dance. "Oh fuck me", plastered all over my face. 15 pairs of eyes still watching.

A certain song popped into my head...

...And I asked a cat to dance.

I've been on Xanga for a while. I guess you can say I'm a bit of a veteran. With my many years of internet wisdom, you'd think I would've perfected the art of the profile picture. That is far from happening. Some people can make it look so effortless. A quick snap shot, a bit of photoshop (or mspaint if you're crafty) and bam, a pretty interesting profile pic.

Here are a few of my past profile pictures.










This one was specifically for MySpace. You remember MySpace, right?






What makes a good profile pic?