ashe dryden

per·spec·tive

noun /pərˈspektiv/ 

True understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion

"As some point I realized that the majority of what I was listening to was made by male artists. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're really only getting a single perspective from your music then. So I made a decision and took a year and stopped listening to music by male artists. I intentionally sought out a more diverse range of music from a more diverse range of artists. I've since started listening to music by male artists again, but I'm glad that I took the time to give myself different perspectives on something that affects me so strongly." - Bec White (roughly paraphrased from a few months back)

I don't know that I've had another conversation that has stuck with me for so long. It's interesting, too, that I keep finding that it connects to other conversations with other people.

We had our first 1up group meeting the other night and someone brought up the fact that it was interesting that all of the things each of us was studying was programming (or at least tech) related. "I think it'd be worthwhile to alternate between programming topics and maybe something from the humanities. Study writing better tests and then learn about Roman architecture or French cuisine." The second that was said I thought of my friends Steve and Bernard. They both read a lot of humanities stuff and quote things pretty regularly. They're both great people to go to if you want a tl;dr version of someone's philosophies accompanied by a reading list that will keep you busy for a while.

While I don't necessarily feel like my music selection or my food preferences need a shakeup, there are definitely other areas that I do. I tend to read a lot of the same sort of books (social science fiction, historical fiction, gender/sexuality/race/sociology non-fiction) and blogs (programming, cycling, vegetarian food, social justice), hang out with the same demographic of people (around my age, generally programmers or people in the queer community), and do a lot of the same kinds of things (knitting, museum-going, cycling) on a regular basis.

Considering I initially picked up knitting because I needed a hobby that wasn't computer-related and I wanted to have a hobby where I could meet more women (when you're a programmer, 90% of the people you speak to on a regular basis tend to be male), you'd think that the idea of this would be more obvious to me. I'm working on putting together a list of things I want to try or learn about so I can add more balance to my life - meet different people, give myself a different perspective to look at things from, and expand what I know.