Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: friends, high school, life, memories, momentos, random, reminders, sentimentality, thoughts, yearbooks
Tonight’s Drink: Mondavi Merlot.
They say that the fall from the top is the hardest, but I don’t think physics always translates cleanly into the metaphorical world. I say that the fall from almost-the-top is way harder – the crush of frustration can feel like enough to kill, sometimes.
In college, we learned about a phenomenon where the better a nation’s quality of life gets, the more dangerous it is for it to fall. The highest standard, presumably, gives you some cushion to recover, though. Think about a 4% drop in employment in the US as compared to a smaller, less developed country. There’s more wiggle room at the way, way top, but the hump before it seems to bump up against a glass ceiling all its own. Of course, if the giant topples, though, you’ve got some serious problems to deal with. Whether or not the fall of an empire is inevitable is another blog post all its own.
It’s as if a higher standard brings with it less room for mistakes – like a higher level in a video game gets more challenging, and tries harder to kill your character. So where is the incentive to make life better, then? You grow, you make friends, you make enemies, you get your hearbroken, you get your dreams stepped on, you learn from your mistakes and pay for your good intentions. All in the name of the ends justifying the means. That someday, it will all pay off, and you’ll be happy. If you don’t topple.
My dad went through the garage a few weeks ago and happened across some of my yearbooks, school awards, trophies, etc. He paid a lot of money to ship them to me, along with a beloved sweater from something like eight years ago.
I went through everything last night, after a sickly 12 hours of sleep. I wiped the dust off the pictures, read the pre-summer musings of past classmates, looked at my face and my friends through the year, and all the things I had and hadn’t done. I made two piles in my living room: trash and keep. In the end, the only thing I kept was the sweater. I put it on and fell back asleep.
It’s amazing how important those things were to me, and the length of time I revered them for. But, turning the pages, shifting through the certificates, none of it meant anything to me last night. I had my memories that I wanted to keep – the rest of it, I never wanted to see again.
This seems a little contradictory to my excitement for our impending class reunion, but I had a great time catching up with old classmates at Chelsea’s wedding, and I can’t wait to do it on a grander scale with whoever actually shows up. It wasn’t the people or the education or the place that I can’t stand to think about now – it was that time, it was my head.
So I wonder, now, if my head is on straight. I make a concerted effort to clear out my clutter on a regular basis, and I’m looking forward to throwing out a bunch of stuff in these next couple of weeks when I move to my new place. But does it say something that I’m shying away from keeping things that should mean something to me?
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: dating, friends, life, love, men, random, relationships, thoughts, women
Last Night’s Drink: 7&7.
Anyone over the age of 24 should remember the “This is your brain on drugs” public service announcement with the frying pan and the egg. The insinuation is that your brain is a soft delicate mass that is irreversibly affected with drug use and, since you assumedly value your brain and wouldn’t harm it, you should value a drug-free lifestyle.
People are also irreversibly affected by the relationships they allow into their lives – arguably, at a level that is more damaging than recreational drug use. Dating and loving people inevitably leads to a string of broken hearts, baggage, and damaged goods, all of which permanently affect your brain at an emotional level.
Before you started dating, it was new and exciting. You just did it here and there, sometimes with your friends. But the more you did it, the more important it seemed to become. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough that you were dating – you wanted something more hardcore: a relationship. Once the relationships started, it was too late to go back to simply dating. Now, if you dated, you laced it with relationship cues, recognition of red flags, and hypercritical observation. It wasn’t just a good time anymore – it was part of your life.
Once you’re in a relationship, your subconscious knows that stopping will kill you, because the withdrawls will be so intense. Suddenly, you’re schizophrenic and paranoid about the slightest things – what did he mean when he asked, “how can you eat that?” – does he think I’m a fat slob? Or Why did that girl at the store smile at him – is he mouthing suggestive comments to ladies at Nordstrom while I’m not looking? You don’t know who or what to believe anymore, and your logic and composure have long since flown out the window. The egg is officially frying.
If the core of your relationship is good, though, your significant other will take you by the hand and lead you away from the superficial high of a new relationship, and into a methodonish sort of come-down of companionship. Here, you can exercise the roots of all your dating and relationship evils, and put the past behind you. You become healthier and happier. You become yourself again.
Your dating friends will say you’ve changed, but if they truly love you, they will stand by you and wish you well on your new-found happiness. Relapse is highly likely, until you find the companionship that truly supports you.
And that, like a new leaf, or a fried egg, flips you over.
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.
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: crazy, family, friends, hypochondria, lies, life, people, random, thoughts, vacation
Last night’s drink: Airborne.
Faced with the finality of the Friday before vacation, I was hit with a sort of rapid onset case of hypochondrial psychosis, which not only forced me to focus on every pain, twitch, sneeze and bruise on every inch of my body, but it also prompted me to visit urgent care in order to get antibiotics for what I finally concluded was an oncoming external ear infection. I was so afraid of getting sick on vacation.
After a quick once-over by the nurse practicioner, she told me I have a zit forming in my ear, and gave me a low dose of antibiotic pills to take away the germies before wishing me fun in Vegas (yes – I’ve been talking non-stop about my vacation; I am too excited to shut up). Of course, as soon as I heard the news I instantly felt better, so I’m not going to waste the supply. I’ll just stick some oxy in there and call it good.
As I was chugging my Airborne drink in a precautionary move, I came across Nancy Grace, which I recalled as one of the shows that the TV People at work told me to watch. Apparently, she’s supposed to be the Dr. Laura of television. Since Dr. Laura is one of my guilty pleasures, I decided to give it a shot. What I actually found was just a boring sensationalist with predictable broadcast ploys. There was one idea that came up during her show, though, that I’ve actually been thinking about a little bit lately: the whole concept of people saying, “He/She would never do that. Anyone that knows Him/Her knows that they would never do anything like that.”
Usually this comes up from friends or family of an individual who has disappeared, often a mother who has appeared to have abandoned her kids but is believed to have been abducted, but also perhaps as a suspect in a crime where no clues can be found. It makes me think about how well anyone really knows anyone else. I think if you surveyed 100 people, and you asked them if they considered themselves to be crazy, at least 95 of them would say yes, to some degree. The other five are probably just delusional, which qualifies as crazy in my mind.
People have too many layers to be predictable – you never stop growing, or learning new things, so you can never know how you are going to react to new situations or stimuli until they actually happen. And then – BAM – a new layer. Your family and friends know the layers that have existed, and maybe some of the new ones you’ve taken on, but they don’t know the ones that haven’t formed yet. So maybe the friends/family could say, “Oh… Bridget would never in a million years to that,” if they monitored her life 24/7, but there’s all kinds of crazy stuff out there (correlative to all the crazy people), and so you just never know what’s going to happen next.
It happens the other way, too. I’m sure you know guys & gals that you would never describe as a “kid person,” but I bet you’ve also seen at least one of those people do a 180 when the baby situation actually comes to be. People lie to themselves and eachother, and many are very convincing. But I think many lies are based on speculation rather than deception – like, what a lie is going to do rather than what the message actually is. If lying to yourself or others brings you comfort, it may just be a default stance until you’re faced with the truth and you have to make a move.
If we are all surrounded by lies, that would help to make sense of why, really, nothing seems to make sense. But then again, what do I know – except what I’m feeding myself?
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: friends, life, people, random, thoughts, work
Tonight’s Drink: Rex Goliath.
I felt better yesterday after I helped answer phones for donations to the fire victims. I didn’t give blood, but at the end of the day, I didn’t see what good it would do. Besides, I have that positive Rh factor – I would be a completely universal donor if not for that little plus sign. It irks me a little.
So… I’ve been seeking out ways to meet people like a hungry bloodhound. I’m thinking of organizing the company Christmas party; I’m reading the “Strictly Platonic” section in Craigslist; I’m even revisiting match.com, which already looks to be a bad idea. I’m even looking at taking a community class like cooking, or joining the women’s choir. Something. Anything! People, come to me!
I guess that the downswing of a regional disaster isn’t the ideal time to strike up friendly chit chat with strangers.
Alright – now that that’s done, I’m enjoying some Jeopardy and jones-ing for more re-runs of Sex in the City. It’s obvious to me that I’ve been starved of cable for quite some time. I’m relishing in every decadent syndication that hasn’t been shown on Fox or NBC. Also a plus to this addition is the fact that I can finally talk to other people at work about… things other than work. I don’t open up at work often, because I think my dorkiness is potentially debilitating to my career. I’ll have to agree with Jenn that being young requires you to maintain a facade of level-thinking in order to ensure that people don’t immediately start to notice your age. So now I can mask my personal self, yet free my character, by debriefing on Dancing with the Stars. It’s a start.
Man, I can’t wait for Vegas.
Happy Hour 