Happy Fun Cog

Reading Too Much Into Things

2008-07-05T20:50:00.002-05:00

I have this almost obsessive habit of looking at a small thing and interpreting from it lessons on a larger scale.

I was just sitting at my kitchen table, jotting some thoughts in my notebook; the table has become my writing desk by default while I work valiantly (i.e. procrastinate) to organize all the shit on my actual desk.

I brought my laptop to the table from the other room and, in the process of putting it down, knocked over a glass of milk. The table, of course, was covered in a variety of electronic devices (iPod, digital voice recorder, speakers for the laptop, etc.) and, in case you're just joining this millennium, liquids are bad for electronics. But you'd never guess that from the way I reacted to the spill.

One of the first things I did, after rescuing the iPod, was to start cleaning up the milk that had dribbled on the floor. This was while most of the electronic stuff was still on the table and, by that point, getting wet from the milk. I grabbed a few more electronics, dried them off, then went about cleaning up the milk on the table WHILE STILL MORE ELECTRONICS WERE SITTING IN MILK.

The moral of the story, dear children, is that I didn't take a step back and assess the situation. I didn't think, "OK, what needs to be done first? What are my priorities?" Instead, I just worked on whatever my eyes fell on next. I thin this unorganized approach has a significant (and negative) impact on my work life.

Too Much of a Good Thing

2008-07-05T14:55:00.002-05:00

It's a holiday weekend here, and me being me and not having a social life, I'm trying to spend my holiday by being productive. I bought some new work clothes and was thoroughly creeped out by how fucking young everybody working at the Express store was. Then I vacuumed my car, and stopped at Legal Seafoods to treat myself to a nice, healthy-ish lunch; I consider "healthy-ish" to be a sign of progress because it wasn't too long ago when my meals consisted almost entirely of pub food, friend eggs, or macaroni and cheese.

While I was at Legal Seafood, I had a number of Diet Cokes. I forget how many. I'd had 2 Diet Cokes before leaving home (12-oz cans) and consumed around four or five Diet Cokes (8-10 ounce glass) for lunch. Then, on the way home, I decided to treat myself to a green tea smoothie from one of those healthy-ish franchise stores. Then, upon returning home, I popped open another can of Diet Coke. It wasn't until I started pulling down that last Diet Coke in my gullet that I noticed my heart racing, and made the obvious connection between all the caffeine I'd consumed and my racing heart.

I've always lacked the ability to draw a straight line between the things I consume and their effect on my body. In some cases, like with alcohol, the connection is clear enough, but what I lack is the awareness to think, "OK, if I have two pints, I'll be socially lubricated AND able to hold a conversation with pretty girls." Instead, I finish those two pints and think, "Wow, I feel great! I'll have a third pint." Then, "Wow, if 3 pints make me feel this good, imagine how awesome I'd feel after a fourth pint!" Then, of course, my jaw stops working and instead of talking to girls I just stare at their rack and drool. Which they always think is suave.

We have these neat little coffee machines at work where you put in a 'flavor packet' into the machine, pick the size option from the electronic display that best matches the size of your coffee cup, and press the button to get your coffee. For a long time, I was using two flavor packets, yet only equating it as one cup of coffee because by picking the smaller size option, I was getting two packets worth of coffee into my cup.

It wasn't until a friend pointed it out that I realized I was in fact drinking double the amount of coffee that I thought I was.

In conclusion, I'm real smart.

Lessons Learned

2008-07-02T20:17:00.002-05:00

In the IT department of where I work, someone will occasionally have the right idea of having a 'lessons learned' session after each major project. This involves a meeting or even just a teleconference where people have a (theoretically) neutral meeting to discuss what was done correctly, what was done incorrectly, and what lessons can be learned for future endeavors. Even though this method seems to have unfortunately fallen by the wayside in recent years, I've gradually incorporated it into my personal life. Though I drift into pointless and ruthless self-criticism far too often, I do like to think that I can recognize my mistakes and learn from them without somebody beating me over the head with them.

I was just watching a movie that I've wanted to see for a while, but I ended up stopping the movie about halfway through because I could feel some sort of emotional issue trying to break through; it's a strange feeling, but I'm happy to be at the point where I can recognize if something's bothering me (as opposed to just feeling unsettled and trying to deal with the undefined negativity by getting drunk or stoned).

At the moment, I'm struggling to wrap my head around something that I've been learning over the past few weeks at work. I don't want to go into trying to describe the whole situation because that could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs.

I think I have a problem with being aloof. Or, not being aloof but acting aloof. I've been dealing with a situation where I'm definitely out of my league in terms of technical knowledge. In fact, over the past few weeks when I've been struggling with it, people I trust have pulled me aside and told me, in short, "Don't try to solve this by yourself. It's way too complicated." I understood this when when I heard it, but promptly hit a wall: I'm very confused about how to do things in some other way other than by myself. I'm not good at coordinating efforts because I always feel like I'm imposing on people when I ask them to do something.

I just... I close myself off. I can't explain it beyond that because I don't understand it beyond that. I just get stressed out about dealing with people and the top priority I have when I'm dealing with people is to stop dealing with them one way or the other. I don't ask questions I should ask or don't push issues I should push because the only thing I want to do is stop talking with them, hang up the phone or walk back to my cube, put on my headphones, and relax in my solitude.

The problem is that my job is now at a point where things are too complicated just to rely on my brains and the few people I can trust/talk to as a way of getting by; I HAVE to start working with people and communicating with them better. But the ability to think this through and have these thoughts seem to be limited to when I'm at home. When I'm at work, I just slip into defensive mode and I have a hard time getting myself out of it.

Old Journal

2008-06-29T18:32:00.002-05:00

I just found an old notebook that I wrote in when I was a senior in college. There's about 70 pages of writing. I just read the first two pages, and it's scary to realize how I'm dealing with many of the exact same problems now as I was then, in perhaps an even less lucid manner.

The Mechanics of Human Interaction

2008-06-27T17:16:00.002-05:00

I have always viewed the act of successfully interacting with other people as something of a mystical act. I come from a family where my parents, especially my father, didn't go out much or socialize. My dad, as far as I can tell, has no friends, at least in terms of talking with or spending time with outside of work. In short, I had shitty role models in terms of socializing (note: this is one of the great things about therapy - you learn to blame other people for all your problems) (note note: no, not really).

Over the past few months, starting in mid-February, I've developed a very close relationship with a great girl who works on the same floor as me at the cubicle farm in which I waste my life. I think the majority of our relationship, up until the past month or so, was tinged with heavy amounts of flirtation and repressed wanting on both of our parts. We've retreated from that level of intensity, however, as she re-convinced herself (through verbal repetition) that the emotionally distant guy that she's with, her first and only boyfriend/lover, is in fact her life partner. Did I hide my dismay well there? Good.

Still, we remain good friends and she has been an powerfully positive force in my life, motivating me to do things like move away from the apartment where I'd been wasting my life for the past 5 years, getting new glasses, turning my new apartment into a place that actually feels like home, etc.

Nonetheless, I've started to visualize what life would be like without her, and it wouldn't be pretty. As much progress as I've made as a person and as an adult over the past few months, she remains my only actual friend here. I've been through this before - when I moved into my previous apartment, I became close with one of the guys living there. That didn't turn out well. I relied on the guy for all my social contacts and events, and when our friendship atrophied so did my entire social life.

I was just thinking today about how I've never really developed the mechanics of human interaction. Once I left college and the structured social environment that it provides, I pretty much stopped having friends. I kept the ones that I had in college (and high school), but I didn't make anymore. There's no one that I met in New York, where I lived in my first year out of college, that I still talk to. Of all the people I've met in Boston over the years, there's no one that I talk to outside of work. This isn't a statement of self-pity, just fact.

I simply never put myself in situations where I can meet new people. Well, that's not entirely true. For example, I've been playing in beer league softball this summer, which is great fun and has the potential for setting the stage for development of friendship.

But in terms of dating... man, I just have no idea where to go to meet women. I mean, yeah, I guess I could go to bars to meet people, but... I don't know, maybe it's because I have this aversion to making my motivations clear, and I think if I go to a bar and I start talking to women that it will be like I just dumped a big vat of eau de desperation on myself. It's silly, but I have this deeply ingrained sense of needing to obscure who I am and what's on my mind from everyone. Yet... yet...

JESUS CHRIST. Is it that simple? All those situations that I've trained myself to avoid, just go ahead and go there? I mean, why should I care what strangers think of me? Anyone who's going to think less of me for trying to meet people is the kind of person that I don't want to be with anyway, romantically or platonically. Holy shit. Is is that simple?

Bite Me

2008-06-25T13:07:00.002-05:00

You know what sucks? Having to spend as much time on a 10-sentence email as you spent as writing papers in college (slight exaggeration) because you know that your co-workers are so obsessively sensitive to any perceived slight that you have to neuter every question so they don't go running to our manager and crying that I'm being a big meanie.

Potpourri

2008-06-25T09:16:00.004-05:00

First of all, as for the title of this post, I have no idea if that's how you spell that word.

There are a lot of things going on and while I've been meaning to sit down and write on this here blog, I keep finding other things to do. Sometimes, such a thing is honestly just a matter of timing and/or energy. But other times, it's a red flag that indicates activity in a certain part of my psychological makeup, the desire/need to not think about certain things in order to maintain some kind of status quo.

I'm writing this from work, but one of the things that I'm trying to focus on right now is actually doing work at work and not just fucking around, so I'm going to just throw some short stuff out here.

I always misspell the word "sandwich." Always.
I've been ruminating for several months about getting back into martial arts instead of paying $45 a month to a gym that I never go to (I fucking hate the stationary bike) and apparently has a rule that the front desk can only be manned by girls with dyed blonde hair and dent-proof makeup. When I actually went and looked into the marital arts options available in my new town, I found a branch of the school I used to go to when I lived in Cambridge. I've got a pit of paranoia that they're not going to welcome me back, but they still have the most available class time of any of the dojangs around here, so I'm going to check it out.
I stopped taking Ritalin. This is a big, big thing for me. I've been taking Ritalin daily since I was 19, and it played a big role in my college life (going from shitty high school grades to graduating magna cum laude from an excellent college). But I've come to believe that I can get by without it. First and foremost, I believe that Ritalin was contributing greatly towards my constant anxiety; I don't think it was the source, but it sure as hell was making it worse. Plus, my shrink (and this is a rough summary) said there are two kinds of ADD - physical and psychological. Supposedly, I have the psychological kind, and I now feel like I have the mental and emotional tools necessary to get by without the pills.
I want to be in a relationship. I'm ready to be in relationship. For too long, I've defined these feelings as just wanting sex, and so it all got tied into my inherent dislike of casual sex (I'm just learning this about myself; I'm more... moral than I have long believed). But I was so caught up in my own illusions and my own need to say and feel bad things about myself that I completely missed the true nature of the problem - that I just haven't been ready for a relationship. I've still got a lot of things to think about, but now I'm starting to understand that it wasn't just a matter of me being socially stupid or inherently self-destructive, but rather a matter of me understanding on a deep level that I just wasn't ready to be emotionally intimate with someone. But I think I am now. I'm ready.

I've got a lot of things to figure out about my future, in terms of job, money, what I want to be when I grow up, etc. But now, more than ever, I feel ready for it. I feel ready to start moving onward and upward. Godspeed, Jack.

Working Zone

2008-06-12T17:29:00.002-05:00

My mind has already notified me that this would be one of those posts that's really hard to write, for one reason or the other, so for the sake of actually producing a post, I'm just going to squeeze this one out like a reluctant turd before the beginning of a road trip.

I was on a teleconference today at work and the head of the department re-assigned a task I had in my hand to someone else because he wanted to make sure it was moving forward (more or less his words). I was just playing baseball on Playstation and the mental picture of the moment just popped into my head. I hadn't thought about what had just happened, that I'd just experienced a public vote of no-confidence.

I always forget how much it sucks when a big punch of anxiety hits you and everything tightens up. And I also always forget to cut down on my caffeine level, which adds some blue to the flame.

I'm not good at my job, at least not lately. I can't focus on anything at work for longer than 10-15 minutes, and that's probably the highlight of my productivity.

I can mentally circle this any way I want, but what it comes down to is that I don't like my job. This is not a secret to me, but for a long time I've counseled myself with the idea that this type of experience/attitude is like a placeholder for when the real thought comes along, that I'd figure out what I want to do with my job as part and parcel of a larger enlightenment that would be my reward for mentally getting my shit together.

And while I'm a big fan of perspective-shifting thought processes, especially the Big Bang ones, they're not something to be waited for. So why is it that I just can't concentrate at work? I don't like the job, yes, right, no secret there. But there's a difference between not liking one's work and getting the job done, and not liking the work and being so possessed of distaste and resentment that you cruise through everything on minimal effort, to the point when other people start to take notice.

I have ADD, but that can't be used as an excuse because I got it under control when I was at college and got good grades.

Is it the emotion stirred up by therapy? This is entirely possible, and has been suggested by others. I haven't really put a lot of thought into it, mostly because I just now started seriously turning it over in my mind.

There's probably no absolute truth, no clear lines dividing Factor A and Factor B. But I need to figure out at as much of it as I can; these struggles at work have been building up for a long time and I have to deal with them and determine how much of it is actually a struggle and how much of it is actually me just imagining a struggle.

For example, I just emailed a friend of mine who was on the call and asked if he thought it meant anything that my work had been re-assigned and my friend emailed me back asking, "Were you at the meeting? He asked for someone to take ownership and there was a long silence before your co-worker spoke up and volunteered."

A Dream

2008-06-07T08:11:00.003-05:00

I had a really weird dream this morning. I'd already woken up once in the morning, with my body still set to the weekday clock, so I think the fact that I had just gone back to bed before I had the dream meant that it came during a period of non-heavy REM; I usually get intense dreams when I fluctuate between sleep and waking up like this.

In the dream, I was walking up a hill at night with a college friend of mine, someone who I hadn't seen or talked to since college. My friend saw a cat lying hunched up on the grass nearby and, thinking it may have been his cat, approached it, calling to it by name and reaching out with his hand.

At that point, the cat sprung up and went bezerk. I remember seeing that the cat's tail had been ripped off, with only a disgusting bloody hole where it had once been. I remember thinking, "Damn, that cat got in a fight with a raccoon." The cat was screeching in pain and madness, throwing itself around in disjointed fury like a bull trying to throw a rodeo rider. As it did so, pieces of flesh began to fly off the body as well as innards from a gaping wound in it's stomach.

Finally, the cat died, lying on the ground in a bloody heap, looking more like a piece of distorted, pink art than a formerly living animal. In my dream, I deduced that the cat had been mortally wounded earlier, but had been lying very still on the ground in an attempt to keep itself together and live a little longer. By reaching out to it, however, my friend had forced it to move, opening the floodgates of blood and pain that the cat's stillness had been holding at bay. And once that happened, the cat, on some instinctual level, decided it would be best to push the wounds and bleeding further open, all the way to the point of death. The cat, while having suffered the mortal wounds at some earlier point, had committed suicide before our eyes.

A week ago today, in the real world, I found out that a guy I knew from college had killed himself. I wasn't particularly close to him, and, while sad, I've shed no tears for him. Yet the event has been flitting around the edges of my consciousness like a dark cat moving through evening shadows. I've thought about suicide a lot in my life, mostly in adolescence but continuing to a lesser degree through college and into my adult life.

At some point, I think I was 20 or 21, I finally realized that I would never actually go through with the act (though if my family had kept a gun in the house when I was a teenager, there's no doubt in my mind I would've done it). Still, my mind kept drifting in that direction. I came to understand it as representing an emotional process, as a way to vent my frustration and sadness to myself in a way that I could never do it in real life. As such, the idea lost a lot of its power and significance over time.

But now, hearing about somebody I knew actually go through with it, I feel humbled at my luck that I never went that far; for years, I was angry at myself for being too cowardly to go through with it, too weak to do something with the pain other than carry it like a weight on my shoulders and in my chest day after day. Yet now I understand that what I thought was weakness was actually strength, the strength to keep moving forward and keep facing the next day and the next, whether out of stubbornness or a secretly-held belief that things will get better. Whatever the case, I'm still here, and I'm glad for that.

Aluminum Foil Underwear

2008-06-03T20:04:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking a lot the past few days about my anxiety levels at work, which, as always, are fairly high.

There are a lot of good reasons for me to be anxious at work - in my department, we often go through phases where a period of 2-3 months is composed entirely of (avoidable) crisis after (avoidable) crisis, spiced with miscommunication and simmered in resentment.

Yet, blessed with a clear head after a relaxing and meaningful vacation, I've taken a larger view and have come to realize that my stress and anxiety are still there when the crisis have gone. Why? Because I occupy my mind with resentment and envy towards others, and that's during the times when I'm not constantly worrying about the way that people are judging me and my performance at my job. This is a reflection the fact that I can't give myself any credit. I spend so much time looking for my own flaws and chastising myself that I completely diminish the things that I've accomplished or the value that I have in other peoples' eyes.

Because of this, I'm in a constant state of defensiveness. Every compliment to someone else on my team is an insult to me because, hey, if someone's not complimenting me then THEY ALL MUST HATE ME AND OH MY GOD SECURITY IS COMING TO TAKE ME OUT OF THE BUILDING AND ALL THE GIRLS ARE LAUGHING AT MY SMALL WEE WEE.

Or something like that. Though, truth be told, I also enjoy using "wee wee" as a euphemism for "penis" because it just seems... subversive.

But I digress. A significant portion of the stress and anxiety I experience at work is self-imposed. This is mildly true for most forms of stress and/or anxiety, but in my case, in this context, it is the undiluted truth, a raise-your-hands-to-the-sky-can't-you-feel-God's-love truth. What happens is that I get stressed out and uncertain of my value at work, so I soothe my worries by distracting myself with the internets which in turn leads to less work getting done which feeds right back into the anxiety. It's one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things, sort of like when Jesus Christ said, "And lo, my name and the values of love and forgiveness I teach will soon be turned into ideological weapons wielded by power-mad patriarchies throughout the world, and also result in the shittiest genre of rock 'n' roll ever. So sayeth the Lord."

So... yeah. Stop taking self so seriously, enjoy your accomplishments, positive thoughts begits positive experiences, wee wee is a funny word for penis, etc.

My Rights Are Being Oppressed

2008-05-27T09:48:00.004-05:00

This morning, as I spoke with my shrink for the first time in over a week, I sketched a vague outline of the series of self-improvements that I wanted to make in my life - you see, every time I have a good vacation or some kind of experience that temporarily shakes me loose of that which moors me to the slow-burn depression that is my daily life, I have these visions of a new life that could be reached by doing X, Y, or Z. These thoughts are sincere, and heavy with truth, yet I rarely or never follow through on these ideas, at least not to the point where any sort of lasting change in my life is achieved.

So as I spoke with the good doctor, I emphasized my desire for a sincere, simple framework to actually move forward with my life, something that would put me in a position to make lasting changes in areas of health, mental and emotional connectivity to the world, etc. The doctor then suggested that I stop drinking during the week.

Stop drinking during the week. Is this guy serious? I mean yes, the benefits would be obvious and multi-fold, and I have long identified my unquenchable thirst for beer as an obstacle in my life. But actually stop drinking during the week? Who the fuck is this guy? This is America! Somewhere out there, there is a pill or a politician or a self-help book that can help make me a better person without me actually needing to sacrifice any vices or wants.

This sonofabitch actually expects me to stop consuming large quantities of beer on a regular basis if I'm sincere about change! Of course I'm sincere about change! Look at how many exclamation points are in this blog post! But to actually expect me to make SACRIFICES? To ask me to show some DISCIPLINE? You, sir, are a tyrant of the worst kind! Oh, yes, you cloak yourself in the guise of mental health but I see through you, and the foul, unthinkable lies you expect me to swallow so you can trick me into giving up one of the most basic rights that I as an American, nay, I as a human being have! The right to drink however much beer whenever I want it! You can have my microbrewed ale when you pry it from my cold, dead hands! (emphasis on the plural, as I prefer double-fisting)

More To Come

2008-05-26T19:02:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to assure all two or three of my faithful users that I'm still here - I just got back from overseas and am running around cleaning my apartment and trying to fortify my newly-renewed soul against the daily death that is the corporate life, as well as taking care of... certain bodily needs that cannot be dealt with while at others' houses.

The Brain Giveth, and the Brain Taketh Away

2008-05-14T19:57:00.002-05:00

As I was packing for my upcoming trip, I realized that I couldn't find the spiral notebook that I'd taken on my long weekend home recently (for my nephew's baptism). I was feeling a lot of anxiety and anger because I'd felt genuinely moved by a lot of things that happened that weekend and had written them down in that notebook. I was, and still am, angry at myself for not being able to find the notebook, but this got me thinking: I lose or misplace virtually EVERY notebook that I write my thoughts in. I make absolutely no effort to keep track of them - in this case, I carried the notebook with me for x number of weeks in my bag, to and from my job, to and from wherever, even though I knew that I wanted to keep track of what I'd written down.

To do this once or twice is understandable. But every time? What it comes down to is that I don't... I can't phrase it.... it's not that I don't respect myself, necessarily, but it's like I can't stop disassociating myself from my own life. I write stuff down, but then always lose it. I can't stay focused on my job and while that has a lot to do with me not particularly liking my job or liking the implications of me staying at that or any job long-term, it also has to do with... it's like I don't want to settle into my life, it's like I don't want to live my life, don't want to be who I am.

Mercenary Flirting

2008-05-13T18:56:00.002-05:00

Normally when a waitress is being flirty with me, I go through an unnecessarily involved thinking process as to whether or not I should ask her for her number. But when you actually stop to thinking, asking a waitress for her number is like somewhat like hitting on a stripper while she gives you a lap dance, though I'd never draw anything other than the most indirect link between the two jobs. Nonetheless, it's a fool's errand to put any stock in flirting when one side stands to directly and immediately profit from any increased feeling of closeness, however temporary.

High Avoidance

2008-05-11T16:21:00.003-05:00

I've been avoiding thinking about something, and I don't know what it is. I had a very productive day yesterday, in terms of cleaning up my kitchen and getting ready to take a long journey to see Satan's spawn. Yet today, I've done nothing. I've barely even left my apartment. I haven't gone to the gym to exercise, I haven't done any cleaning, I haven't done anything except putz around and play the Playstation baseball game.

More significantly, my face is itching like made and I'm constantly bombarded by the urge to jerk off or drink or both. This is unreal. I feel like the best thing I can do at this point is just keep myself from doing something like getting drunk, and hope that the issue works itself out or that it comes to light in some way.

This is driving me crazy. My mind is totally scattershot. I thought of a number of chores I can do, but they all involve me getting in my car and driving to one of the massive shopping centers around here to get things, and I can't bear the thought of being surrounded by traffic or having to deal with crowds right now. I feel intensely anti-social.

From what I know in analysis, I know that there's one thing or a couple of related things that are on my mind but I'm just not letting myself face them consciously for one reason or another.

UPDATE: I figured it out. I figured out what it was. I'd called my parents as I do every Sunday, and especially as today was mother's day. I was chatting with them and my mother said, "Did you find some place to walk?" See, my parents want me to exercise, as I should. Diabetes runs in my family and I'm out of shape. So they're right to encourage me to exercise. But there is something so demeaning about my mother asking me something like that (and not for the first time).

It came to me while I was reheating some vegetarian chili. Maybe the fact that it was vegetarian was the segue, but in any case, my mom's question popped into my head with an imagined response from me being me screaming at them that it's my life, and that I'd rather destroy my life than to have them try to constantly take ownership by pestering me and telling me what to do. They're not trying to take ownership, of course, but the sense that they do is a natural byproduct of a lifetime of them micromanaging instead of letting me make my own mistakes. Granted, diabetes is nothing you want to make a mistake with, and I again acknowledge the validity of my parent's concern.

But up to that point, I'd been having a productive weekend. I got a lot of shit done yesterday, then today was doing my laundry early so I could be free to leave the house and run errands. Then, suddenly, I just felt like I couldn't leave the house. I didn't even want to get in my car to go buy a hammer and nails so I could hang pictures up, or even to the grocery store to buy bread and cereal. It was an intense experience; I just couldn't think my way out of it.

Once I replayed that conversation with my parents, though, and understood what it meant, all of a sudden the lights in my mind came on. In situations like this, I feel almost a physical sensation when my mind un-blocks.

The Tea Maker and the Koan

2008-05-10T14:59:00.002-05:00

Koan: A kōan (per Wikipidea) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chán (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition.

The Tea Maker: the tea maker is a burnished-steel device that looks like a double-decker coffee maker and currently resides on my stove-top. It has, in its short service two me, made some excellent tea, though the issue of whether it was worth $100 remains to be seen.

Today, in preparation for my journey 'cross the sea, I took my iPod in for repairs. I arrived at the mall about 30 minutes ahead of my reservation at the 'Genius Bar' (the in-store tech support at Apple stores), so I ambled into a nearby tea store.

I've been more conscious lately of the impact of coffee on my anxiety levels and while I didn't have anything specific in mind when I wandered into the tea store, I have had a lot of positive experience with tea dating back to college, especially in using it as an alternative to coffee. The store was manned by three or four college-age kids, one guy and the rest girls.

As I wandered around, I half-listened to one of other people working there, the guy, giving a sales spiel to two girls who were in their early to mid-twenties and were wearing enough mascara to deflect a small-caliber bullet. Based on this conversation, was obvious that he knew about teas. It was also obvious that he was flirting with them and visa versa - he was offering discounts, they were cooing at what a good sales person he was, etc.

While this was happening, I finished my tour of the store and focused on the various tea making devices they had available. I was approached by one of the young women, a quiet blonde, who asked me to let her know if I needed anything. I, with the powerful instinct to avoid all forms of unnecessary socialization, told her that I was fine when in fact I was looking for something, and could have used some input.

I eventually settled on a rather nifty automated tea maker. I saw the guy who'd been talking to the girls and asked him for his assistance in helping me take the tea maker down. It turned out that this was the last tea maker of this type they had in the store. Since it was a display model, I asked the guy if I could get a discount. He curtly told me no. This should have been my first clue. Not 5 minutes before, this guy had been grandly tossing about 20% discounts to the two women with heavy makeup, and now he wasn't even going to give me a discount that is virtually standard in all forms of retail.

As I'm checking out, I also buy some tea. I get some English breakfast tea and ask him for a recommendation on a decaff tea. He recommends, naturally, an expensive tea. Normally, I would balk or ask for something else because a request for a recommendation that just happens to lead to an expensive product is such an obvious ploy that even I pick up on it. In this case, however, the tea in question was a white tea, and I've always wanted to try a good white tea. I asked for two ounces. A few minutes later he slyly asked, "You wanted four ounces, right?" I corrected him, not really thinking about the fact that this guy had so far a) refused to give me a discount that is standard in detail and b) tried to bait me into upping my order of an expensive product.

Now. Nothing that I've described here is what I would consider to be a big deal. Trying to increase someone's order or not give a discount is standard practice in retail. Yet something about this situation got under my skin. As I drove home, I could feel a slow burn of anger spreading through my gut. It wasn't until I was in my kitchen unpacking the tea maker that it occurred to me.

What sticks in my craw, what my mind keeps coming back to, is the young woman who had offered help just a few minutes before I made my purchase. She was young and sweet-looking with honest and shy eyes that had a hard time maintaining any sort of prolonged contact. She was nice and showed good customer service skills, yet when my order was rung up it was not her name on the receipt. Instead, the capitalistic victory went to the loudmouth who couldn't be bothered to offer decent customer service to someone who was actually buying something.

OK, this is getting obtuse. I'm pissed because I feel like I fell into some sort of societal standard by seeking out the male, by seeking out the loud-mouthed braggart. I hate these people, yet I turned to one for assistance. The two women there, especially the one described above, were more my type and I turned away. Next time, I'm going to seek out the polite, the shy, the withdrawn.

I feel like this was representative of some kind of self-loathing, you know? I was conscious of the fact that the quiet blonde, were much more my type, yet I went for the asshole. Ironically, this is analogous to the type of behavior that make me so frustrated with and angry at women, where they deliberately (albeit not necessarily with full consciousness) pick 'the jerk' instead of the nice guy who they know will treat them well and with whom they'd feel mutual respect.

The tea maker is nice, though.

Peer Eating

2008-05-03T20:19:00.002-05:00

I was hanging out today with a friend from work. We've been watching "West Wing" for months now, watching every episode of every season on DVD; we're about halfway through the 6th season. We used to get together at her place once a week for the marathon and for dinner; now, since I moved to Framingham, we're averaging one WW session every two weeks.

After eating an early lunch at an Indian place near my apartment, I headed down to her place (in Boston) this afternoon. When I got there, she asked me if I wanted to have lunch. I said no, explained that I'd had a early lunch, and so on. We watched a few episodes of WW, then we took a break to grab some caffeinated beverages at a nearby drug store. On the way back, she pointed out to a hot dog/sandwich cafe across the street and asked if I wanted to grab some hot dogs. At this point, two thoughts should have occurred to me, though only one did. The first is that my friend obviously wanted to get something to eat; this is the one that did occur to me. The second is that I should've just said, "Let's get something for you, because I've already eaten." Instead, I agreed to hot dogs and I, like her, ate two hot dogs even though I wasn't hungry.

I turned this over in my head for a while this evening, both while I was still at her house watching West Wing and while I was driving home. I ate not because I was hungry, and especially not because I needed to eat, but rather to play along with the wants of another. There's nothing wrong with playing along with the wants of another; that's the nature of any positive relationship, be it friendship or romantic. But... shit, I'm having trouble phrasing this because my mind is fighting against it. I can tell I have internal resistance to writing about this because I'm starting to exhibit the symptoms of avoidance/distraction by feeling a lot of itches that require scratching, by feeling the overwhelming desire to do something like play Playstation or masturbating... these are all things that happen when my conscious mind moves into territory that my subconscious would rather remain off limits.

So allow me to follow a meandering path, which mimics the natural flow of my mind far more than any organized phrasing could. I was watching "Super Size Me" last night, and it got me thinking about my own eating habits. I've become more aware lately of how it's getting more difficult to lose weight via exercising and diet than it used to be; these are the things that come when you phase out of your 20's and into your 30's. I've been aware of this academically for some time but have never really applied to myself in any day-to-day sense of awareness. Since I moved to my new apartment and away from the temptation of my favorite Irish pub and sushi joint, I've been eating out less and, more significantly, drinking less (though the increase in exercise has yet to manifest itself).

After this slow build up of an increased awareness in health (that I was totally unaware of) "Super Size Me" stoked the embers into a fire and I started thinking a lot more about the things I eat and how much I eat. I do not have very healthy eating habits, and haven't for a long time. One of the worst parts of my eating habits is my overeating, a lot of which is caused by depression. However, and this is something that I'm just coming to realize now, a lot of it is also caused by peer pressure, by going along with things that other people want to do. I drink and eat because others want to, not because I necessarily want to. This was especially true for my old roommates, one in particular I used to go drinking with on an almost daily basis. That's not to say that I didn't want to drink; a lot of times I did want to. But there were plenty of times when I didn't want to, but because I'm so bad of saying, "No, I don't want to do that; let's do this," I just always went along with what other people wanted to do.

I think this is one of the reasons I ended up retreating from my old roommates and spending a lot of time in my room - because I couldn't say "No," I just distanced myself so completely that people stopped asking me the questions.

This is one of those topics that I wish I could wrap up with a neat morale or a lesson learned, but the fact of the matter is that a few hours after eating the hot dogs, my friend offered to make pasta for dinner. I was slightly hungry, and agreed. She cooked and we ate. Then she got up for seconds and I, with the lesson of the hot dogs fresh in my mind and feeling no hunger, asked for seconds instinctively, because she was getting them for herself.

Ya Know...

2008-04-24T21:15:00.003-05:00

As I sit here and do this bullshit online dating stuff, I bemoan the fact that I never meet women in 'the real world,' not in parties, not at bars, nowhere.

Then, when I still my mind and actually think stuff through, memories start popping up, memories of me distinctly and specifically giving the cold shoulder to women when an opportunity does arise, when the initiate conversation or eye contact or whatever; I'm not saying that all of these were potential dating situations but when you always react negatively to women interacting with you in social settings, well, that's going to make dating more difficult.

You know what the problem is? I am completely convinced that no woman, and least no woman that I find attractive, would look at me, as a stranger, and find me attractive. Now, I think I do have qualities that could lead to women finding me attractive once they get to know me. But could an attractive woman actually look at me and think that I'm attractive/a nice guy and try put feelers out or try to initiate something? No, absolutely not. Even as I sit here and write this and even as I sit here and intellectually understand that this isn't true, I can't deny that I still feel that it is true.

Focus

2008-04-24T19:01:00.002-05:00

I feel that some things are coming into focus. I can't explain it better than that. There has been an increased number of life-environment factors that I would expect to contribute to clarity, such as a decreased alcohol intake, non-existent pot-intake (for 3-4 weeks) and, of course, a complete change in scenery.

I've been working hard to improve things at my job - for the past week or so, I've been trying to focus more on the things that cause me be anxious and generate the instinct to distract myself. Well, not focus on those things per se, but be more aware of them. For example, if I'm in a situation where I need to write an email that I don't want to write because I'm afraid it's going to make me sound stupid, I have traditionally done one of two things: 1) waste time looking at crap on the internet or doing non-essential things until I get so anxious about the shrinking timeframe that I birth the email out of stress, or 2) I just don't write the email and erase the need to write it from my mind, wrapping the hope that it won't cause a problem in some lower layer of consciousness.

What I've been trying to do is catch myself at these moments and not necessarily force myself to write the email (per this example), but not allow myself to surf the internet or putz around in some other way; the goal is to have myself sit there and not allow myself to do anything else until I at least acknowledge what it is that I'm avoiding and perhaps ponder if there is a better way to do it or a better way to prioritize my time. In other words, deal with the anxiety by acknowledging it and trying to find a way to deal with it instead of just running away.

S'More

2008-04-19T09:57:00.002-05:00

I have internet access at home. I didn't realize how much I missed it. I spent about 20 minutes making out with the modem once it was set up, and would have gone all the way if not for the potential negative impact of bodily fluids on the electronics.

Oh yeah, as I was reminded by Drunkbunny's comment, the big thing about this move is that I now live alone. No roommates. Mmm. Let me repeat that again. No roommates. Personal space. No reality TV playing all the time. No more listening as roommates come home from the bar and turn the TV for yet more reality TV. It's amazing.

There's an element of my personality that always seems to minimize history or context or environment. For example, when I look at the past few years at my old apartment, when things had gone sour with my roommates and I was drinking a lot and getting stoned and playing Playstation baseball, I never stopped to think about what was making me depressed. I mean, I dwelled on a lot of the normal things (unhappiness with the job, no girlfriend, not meeting new people), but I never sat back and looked at the situation with anything approaching objectivity. I'd been miserable at the apartment for close to three years, more than half the time I'd been there, yet had never stopped and thought, "Gee, maybe I should think about something else."

Well, that's not entirely true. I did go through a brief period of time where I looked at new apartments and almost moved, but looking back at it I think that was more a matter of me responding to my sister's urging for me to move. Hell, she even looked up stuff on Craigslist for me (thanks, sis). And she wasn't the only one pushing the idea. One of my closest friends from college also urged me to move a number of times. Yet I never did.

This isn't a knock on my roommates over the years at all. It's just an acknowledgment of my blindness to the things that affected my emotions and impacted my life. I'd known on some level that my room was bad mojo for a long, long time, yet never actually linked that feeling to a clear thought and a plan of action. I think this is an important lesson for me to learn, because this type of blindness has occurred in other arenas, such as my job. When I left my company for my brief and disastrous foray into consulting two years ago, it was the same thing; I knew on some level that my job was stressing me out and making me miserable, but I never developed a clear thought process or plan of action. I reacted impulsively, jumping to a job that was a long drive away and an ill-fit. Were it not for the car accident that a) kept me from driving and b) totaled my car, I probably would've stayed in that job a lot longer and slipped further and further into misery.

I've wasted a lot of time in my life and made a lot of mistakes, but all in all, I've managed to end up in the right place more often than not.

Fazed and Conduced

2008-04-18T09:41:00.002-05:00

I don't know that "conduced" is really a word, but there you go.

I'm realizing that one of the problems I'm having with getting this blog back up and going is that I feel like there's so much on my mind that I feel overwhelmed by the idea of actually trying to get it down on paper/screen. And naturally, me being me, my approach to being overwhelmed is just avoid it altogether.

One thing I've been trying to teach myself lately is how to break things down into smaller parts and just start taking things one piece at a time, because apparently that's the only way I'm going to get things done. This sort of approach, of course, is filed under "Shit That You've Known You Should Do For Years But Never Did;" and that file is in turn filed under "Ways To Invalidate Your Thoughts/Feelings Because God Forbid You Should Allow Yourself To Feel A Sense Of Pride And/Or Accomplishment."

I'm also getting high-speed internet connection at my new place soon, which will make it infinitely easier to keep blogging on a regular basis.

It's weird. I've moved from the apartment where I lived for the past 5+ years; not only that, but I moved out of the city and into the burbs (where strip malls reign supreme) so for the first time since I graduated from college, I'm driving to and from work. While I'm excited about the possibilities of having a car (summer road trips to Vermont and Maine stand out in my mind), there are so many implications to this move that I'm having trouble processing it. I'll miss the neighborhood and people I left behind, but I had to leave them behind to take the next step in my life. I felt like I was living in a state of suspended animation, doing the same thing, day in day out. It was leading to deep depression, the kind of depression where I spent all my time in my room (though to be fair, the fact that my roomies turned the TV room into a temple of reality TV played a big role in my hermetic lifestyle as well).

So now, I find myself needing to reconfigure and redefine many areas of my life. It's exciting, but also overwhelming. My hope is that, just as I'll try to do with this blog, that I'll be able to tackle this 'new life' thing one piece at a time and that, hopefully, some time further down the road, I'll look back and see this as a starting point for something that makes me feel that life is worth living.

Checking In

2008-04-13T10:22:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted here. There's a lot to write about, but I'm fighting several different barriers.

First and perhaps most importantly, I've moved to a new apartment and a) I have no internet connection yet because the connection at my old apartment was under my name and there's a process to transfer it to someone else, and b) I have a lot of shit to do get my apartment together. In fact, the tasks often seem insurmountable.

Second, I've been undergoing a lot of re-evaluation since I went home for my nephew's baptism (I'm his godfather now), and I had a stirring experience at the church. Stealing a paragraph from an email I wrote to drinking buddy:

"We were in the church, and it has big windows that angle up to the sky so that, on a beautiful day, you are looking up at the sky and the clouds. This was obviously by design. Yet as I was standing there, looking at the clouds rolling by, I... I guess I was thinking about the things I'd done, like [REDACTED], and I... I prayed for forgiveness. It wasn't about invoking Jesus' name or anything, but just looking up into a promising sky and the way the clouds were drifting by, and feeling sadness for the things I've done (not guilt, not shame, but sadness) and asking for forgiveness. I think I was also asking myself for forgiveness, which is what I think Christianity is also about. When you ask God for forgiveness, you're also asking yourself. So I think that I've started the process of not obsessing over my faults while recognizing the emotional impact of the selfish way I've been living my life."

So anyway, yeah. I've got a lot of stuff to sort through, but I just wanted to get this post out because I tend to go through a lot of dry spells with posting, and it's easier to write when the ink is still wet.

Moving

2008-03-30T14:26:00.002-05:00

Hey, ya'll, I'm in the middle of moving to a new apartment/city (still in the Boston area). I'll write more stuff soon.

An Odd Night

2008-03-15T17:30:00.004-05:00

Last night was a weird night, and I've been putting off writing about it all day, so I'm going to go ahead and try to jump start the process.

Yesterday started with an odd and emotionally intense email conversation with a girl from work that I've mentioned before. To be more precise, the email was odd BECAUSE it was emotionally intense. This girl (I'll call her "WG," for "Work Girl") and I have become fast friends. She has a boyfriend so there's no hanky panky between us, but both of us are startled (in a mostly positive way) by how close we've grown in such a brief period of time. Anyway, apparently WG's boyfriend is now making it clear that he's not comfortable with how much time we spend together. They live in a different town, about an hour away, so she stays in Framingham two or three times a week with her parents to save gas, instead of driving an hour each way 5 days a week. We hang out after work about once a week, usually on Thursday.

We exchanged emails on Friday morning, trying to understand where we are, the really deep conversation we'd had the night before (we hung out for almost 7 hours after work, talking the whole time) and how we deal with the fact that it's starting to bother her boyfriend, with whom she's very much in love and committed to.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I don't talk to women in an emotionally genuine way very often, so this email exchange put me in a very weird mental place. Not a bad place, just weird. And it was made weirder by the fact we didn't actually finish the conversation.

Then after work, I went on a date with a woman I'd met through an online dating service. The first time we met, last week, things went pretty well. I don't know what the difference was, or how the experience could've been so different, but last night was one of the most pointless dates I'd been on. Not bad, just pointless. I don't know if it was because I specifically made sure I didn't drink too much (I had three pints on the first date, but only two 12-oz glasses the second time) because I wanted to keep my head clear, or if it was due to a conversation I had with WG on Thursday night in which she forced me to admit (well, "forced" is a strong term - she only broke two of my fingers) that I wasn't really physically attracted to this girl; I kept saying that I felt mentally attracted to her and wanted to give it more time. This is keeping in mind, of course, that the worst relationship I was ever in was the result of a similar mindset, in terms of looking past the lack of physical attraction. That shit comes back to haunt you.

So I met this girl for a second time and there was absolutely no spark, no nothing. I was proud of myself in that I told her after we left the restaurant that I wasn't feeling a spark and that I wished her luck in dating and so on. Normally, I'm not this upfront about it because I hate feeling like I'm hurting someone's feelings. But I thought it was the right thing to do, if only from a personal growth perspective.

After the date, I went to one of the bars near my house that I frequent. I'm having a beer, eating a little food, when the bartender stopped by and said, "By the way, your next beer is from Jane."
I had no idea who Jane was. "Who's Jane?" I asked, accurately reflecting the question in my head with a verbalization that reflected the linguistic ninjitsu that only comes with having a degree in English.

The bartender pointed down at the end of the bar, at a woman with whom I went on two awkward dates back around Thanksgiving. We'd hung out a total of three times; the first two were alcohol fueled chat/flirt sessions at the bar in which this particular segment of my story is set. Those two points of interaction gave me serious hope that if I hadn't found a potential relationship that at least I had arrived at a point in which I could chat up a woman in a bar and end up with a girlfriend.

The third time we met, the only true "date" in the situation, put the kibosh on both of those hopes. Not only was it clear that there was no relationship waiting in the wings, but the manner in which things dissolved like toilet paper in the rain made me feel like my confidence and my ability to interact with women had been only a beer-fueled hallucination. After that date, Jane stopped returning my calls. Now here she was, buying me a beer. I was caught off guard, but felt obliged to invite her to sit next to me, which I did by pointing at the seat next to me. Thankfully, she declined by pointed at her watch, indicating that she was either waiting for someone or had to go soon.

Therefore, the tally for tonight goes: giving the "I'm not feeling a spark" speech to one girl, and having an odd interaction with a girl I'd cozied up to a few times in December (though that one landed me some alcohol, which was cool).

Then, after that, I had a 3-hour long drinking conversation with a lesbian lawyer who is getting a PhD in gender studies and got the lowdown on lesbians who use dildos. Apparently, there are these bars that lesbians go to where they’re all wearing dildos. Some of the lesbians (or transgendered men) wear dildos that are only intended to give the appearance of having a penis (which is called “packing”). Then OTHER lesbians are wearing dildos that are fully erect (i.e. strap-ons), and they use these to fuck the non-erect dildo wearing lesbians/transgendered men in the ass (in the bathrooms of these bars).

Apparently, the ass-fucking lesbians don’t get off from the pressure of the strap-on on their clitoris (which would’ve been my assumption), but rather just the visual/mental element of fucking a guy/girl in the ass.

And all the while, this lesbian, who's not really a lesbian (she calls herself "queer," wouldn't accept any other term), is touching my knee constantly, telling me that she finds me attractive, told me towards the end of the night that she wanted to kiss me.... all of this while HER girlfriend, the bartender, is just a few steps away.

So yeah, it was an odd night. One cool thing this lady did was point out some bad body language I was giving off (putting my hand over my mouth, leaning back, etc).

Good Shit, Bad Shit, and All the Shit Between

2008-03-13T08:55:00.003-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted recently, but there's been a lot of shit going on (thanks for DrunkBunny for prompting this post).

Quick recap of stuff, instead of my usual 10 page essay:

Soon after I wrote the post about my mother, I had a conversation with my mom in which I explicitly broached the fact that I don't feel like I have a peer-to-peer relationship with her, but rather a parent-to-child and that was something I wanted to change. It was a positive conversation, though difficult; the road is long, but the journey has been started.
As to the point that Doctor London and others made about the subjectivity of my perspective, and the importance of resolving these problems, you are right and I'm glad you shared your thoughts.
There's a lot of change swirling in my life right now, most of it positive. Despite the benefits of these new possibilities, I still find myself incredibly anxious because of these changes.