Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: diplomacy, facade, honesty, life, random, reality, sassy, tattoos, thoughts, women, work
Tonight’s drink: Smoking Loon Merlot.
I consider myself a generally nice person, but being fake nice is just exhausting. I’m currently in my own hotel room in Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C., finally starting to decompress from a full 36 hours with a co-worker.
This particular co-worker is actually pretty cool, compared to some of the people I could have made this trip with. However, like me, she can be controlling, neurotic, know-it-all, indecisive, stubborn, and passive. You would think that spending so much time with someone like you is a piece of cake, but it’s actually more exhausting than being with someone more your opposite. When you’re with someone who is different from you, you can easily identify the characteristics you don’t mesh with, and react or accomodate accordingly. This is especially true for those traits that annoy you. You sort of just swat the things off like flies, annoy the other person with your quirky ways, and let the two of you tumble along in a rolling yin-yang of contradiction. Somehow, a balance ensues.
When the things that annoy you about someone else are the same things that annoy you about yourself, a friction is created. The parallels rub against eachother like Oprah’s thighs, and generate a sort of heat-rash of frustration. And just as Oprah can’t get mad at her thighs for the irritation they bring her, so, too, can you not get pissed at your twin figure for being your bad side. Deep inside, you know you’re slowly rubbing them the wrong way, too, but all you can do is continue being yourself. You aren’t funny, because they’ve heard that joke before. You’re not cute, because they’re used to being the cute one. You’re not smart, because they’re used to being smarter. Your life stories are basically all the same.
There is one noticable difference between the two of us – she’s married. While this is basically the great divide of all women over 25, the difference is more the ultimate buzzkill than a conversation piece. Her next big goal is kids – my next big goal is a recreation of Sex in the City, a la me and Jenn.
Part of the problem is definitely my job. When you work as a manager in a non-profit, you have to accept that life as your own. I’ve grown to understand that the only work you leave at home is the work you don’t care about. I actually love work, so I have to do what I love, and what lets me be myself.
As I get ready to go to bed, I have the Miami Ink marathon on in the background. I love tattoos – I love getting them, I love seeing them on me in the shower, I love seeing them on others. Of course, the tattoos I have are hidden to the world, for the most part. This was mostly out of respect for my father, but also in consideration of my professional life. If I’m honest with myself, though, I want a job that doesn’t blink if I have a tattoo of a long, lovely pin-up on my forearm, and I put mousse in my hair to make it more voluminous. A job where the arts and a little controversy are just another day. A job with a little less diplomacy, and a lot more sass.
And no more of this one glass of wine with dinner B.S.
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: hangover, life, random, reality, thoughts, time, Vegas, wine
Tonight’s drink: Five Rivers merlot.
God, where do I begin. No, really.. God.. I could use some feedback right about now. The Vegas fog has lifted, and I’m back in the swirl of the real world. My bed is small, my outfits are not fabulous, and I have to do laundry and make my own bed.
Jenn said it best – Vegas is like a drug. The worst kind of upper, that drops you from 500 stories. But gradually, like a feather that isn’t in a vacuum. I came down slowly on Monday and fluttered to the bottom by Wednesday night.
So what does a Vegas hangover look like? It’s very, very quiet. No clubs, sterile environments, lots of water, sobering subjects, and people that do give a damn. Though I feel a little bit brighter at work – like no one can touch me. There’s something about Vegas that makes you feel like a goddess. You want to rock the heels in every location, and show off your midsection until it gets it own tanline. San Diego doesn’t have the same effect, as you may well imagine. The girls are pretty, but in a calculated way. The guys aren’t on the prowl, and the lack of effort is palpable. I’m left with a studio apartment and a half-bottle of merlot in which to relax and relive the week through flickr. How does time simply disappear?
Did you know that the way we keep time is based on an atom? Why can’t we use nuclear energy to harness that atom and make it worth its salt? Imagine the time bombs that you could create. Past, future, present – all in little radioactive shells. I’d throw them into third world countries to quickly bring them up to speed, or I’d sit on them, like an incubating egg, in my bedroom to take me back to the days when I could play dress up in my mom’s clothes. No diets. No boys. No work. No sex. Just summer and Easter egg hunts.
Regardless, I sit with an empty wine glass, and revel in the fact that I’m old enough to buy cigarettes, porn, and bottles of wine, such as that which is currently making me mellow. Maybe time has swept away my innocence and my Vegas, but it’s also churning up a slew of new adventures I haven’t even dreamed of.
I just have to believe that time is impressionable – otherwise, its pressing down on me.
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: distraction, friends, life, love, perception, random, reality, thoughts, vacation
Last night’s drink: strawberry Stoli and soda.
I took this vacation with the purpose of escaping life for a little while, and an integral part of that has been distraction. Although distraction can be a destructive force in the eyes of productivity and focus, it is a precision tool in the art of eliminating reality on a temporary basis. One single distraction will not wipe away the whole picture, though – you have to pinpoint which particular realities are to be canceled, and then hand-select the distractions that will do the job. I imagine them as the tools on the dentist’s little blue tray – a scraper, a little mirror, the little sucky thing that I love. Each one executed for a specific purpose.
Going out alone has been a sort of multipurpose distraction, successfully wiping away some of the lonliness of missing friends, some of the stir-crazies generated by my tiny apartment, and the lack of stimulation that comes with work. Going out alone has a high associated with it – walking into a bar by yourself requires some self-coaching and feigned confidence, but also a sense of comfort in yourself. It’s almost like a flash-centering mechanism. Suddenly the feelings of boredom and lull are replaced by the slightest hint of adrenaline, which then mixes with alcohol and crazy people. After you’ve pulled off the experience and found that you actually enjoyed it, you are reaffirmed in your independence, and in the simplicity of a life which often feels so overwhelming. Plus, going out alone forces you to live without the distraction of company. You can take it all in at your own pace.
One of the greatest applications of distraction is in the post-breakup/rejection stage, when you’re feeling like your nose is resembling Mr. Potato Head and you question every essence of your personality. Garnering male attention is like taking an especially delicious cough syrup for the irritation and bad taste left over from an ex. Sometimes, the attention doesn’t even have to be from especially delectable men to feel good – but the thrill of requited attraction takes it from cough syrup to Kahlua. Yum.
Vegas is probably the Mecca of purposeful distraction, which is why it is such a suitable destination at this particular time in my life. Vegas plus Jenn is a teleport into a new world completely, and I can’t wait to be beamed up. Although there will be more distraction tools at my disposal than I could ever use, I’m actually looking forward to getting back a little reality by being with my closest friend in the world. Life without confidantes is certainly real, but the end perception is that life is just real bad. It would seem that trying to distract yourself from a misperception results in a double negative, so that you’re no better off than when you started. Believe me, I’ve tried.
When reality distracts you from real life, though, you’ve really hit the jackpot.
