My Favorite Number 5

A stranger, a teacher, or a friend asks you to close your eyes and pick a number between 1 and 10. What number do you pick? For me, I will always choose 5. What if the range is 1 and 1000, what number would I pick then? Yes. I would choose 500. What if we shrink that range - say 1 and 500, what would I pick then? I would pick 250.

I will, without fail pick the center number. I will take the middle road. Something about being in the middle makes me feel safe. Though safe may not be the applicable word in every given situation. For guessing a number between 1 and 10, I guess what I am doing is preparing my answer for the possibility of being wrong. In most cases, I will only be ever so slightly off, and being only marginally wrong is better than being super wrong... right? However, in the scenario of choosing a number, there is no right or wrong answer unless the context is provided, and even then, even in a number guessing game - marginally wrong is the same as "super" wrong. There is no difference, there is only wrong.

With a little self-reflection, I now realize the number 5 represents my approach to life, an in-the-middle, safe approach that doesn't guarantee spectacular results but should provide some level of safety and stability in life. My profession as a software developer was decided on not because of passion but because I figured out early on, in high school that there will be a need for software developers/engineers and a job in that field within my foreseeable future would be only a matter of effort to secure.  In the pursuit of guarantees, I put aside many of my aspirations as hobbies or shelved them as dreams. Ideas to be lived out during my sleeping hours, only a fantasy to help escape the world should I ever feel overwhelmed or anxious. Granted some of these hobbies were shelved due to parental reasons as well... regardless, my life path became a predefined one, with a relatively known beginning, middle, and end.

By writing this blog and taking the first step toward my aspirations I hope to inspire myself to reach out toward the dreams I have long put away in my mind. To make my fantasies real. To produce and write a somewhat decent and maybe viral song, to write an emotionally captivating film (of any duration), to give life to a character either animated or live action, and from all this make my passion for storytelling able to provide an outlet to giving meaning to my life for me. This is not to say I will achieve everything I've detailed here but at the very least I should try right?

By writing this post I am taking my first step toward changing my favorite number from 5 to 10.