Happy Fun Cog

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
   

Per my previous post, a friend's dog was hit by a car today. I just got an email a little over an hour ago telling me that the dog was going to be OK. I don't understand why I'm so relieved. I never met the dog. But when I was writing the previous post, I honestly felt tears welling up in my eyes. I don't get that emotional about my own life.

Thanks for your kind words, Drunkbunny. I enjoy your pictures of Moose.

I have a friend at work. We've just started hanging out over the past few weeks, but we really click. The phrase that keeps coming to my mind is "We belong to the same tribe" (even though she's a different ethnicity and gender). We write emails to each other all the time; we have very similar taste in music and books, as well as a similar world view.

The speed at which we've become friends, and the closeness of that friendship, sometimes makes me anxious because this type of connection is rare for me.

Anyway, today my friend came by my desk and told me that her dog had been hit by a car, and that she was going home. That was about 2 hours ago, and my mind keeps returning to the issue. This is why having dogs, children, and falling in love is dangerous: because it makes you that more vulnerable.

In some ways, my anxiety is selfish because I don't want anything to detract or distract from this fast-growing friendship. On the other hand, I want so badly for this dog that I've never met, or even seen pictures of, to be OK. I hate this feeling, because I want to do something, anything, to help.

So dog, wherever you are, please get better. You are loved and you bring joy to people I care about. Get better.

My mom is in town for the next week. She arrived yesterday; I left town the day before. I'd received an invite for a weekend in Saratoga Springs from friends of mine and, considering that I had turned them down the past two times they offered, and considering that one of their beloved pets has been sick for a while, I decided to accept their invitation even though I knew I would miss my mother's arrival.

There's a question I've been asking myself, though, which is that how much of my decision to go out of town was really because of wanting to do the right thing for my friends, and wanting to give my mother a bit of a cold shoulder. She's here in Boston for a medical conference; or rather, she's attending a medical conference as a way to visit me without having to pay for hotel or airfare. This is old hat in my family, and not a problem.

What is a problem is that my mother didn't tell me about it until after she had signed up for the conference and made her flight and hotel reservations. It's also a bit creepy because her announcement of this conference came quickly on the heels of a visit my father made here (also via medical conference), a visit which constituted one of the more positive experiences I've had with my father in terms of talking, in terms of interacting with an adult, etc.

Given the timing, I can't help but feel like my mother's visit is at least partly motivated by a sense of competition with my father; as I've written about previously in my blog, my adolescence was marked by an emotional guerrilla war fought between my parents. My memories of these incidents are fuzzy (probably because I worked hard to block them out), but I have a distinct sense of my mom being the aggressor, of my mom being the screamer, the crier, the manipulator, etc.

It's not that I consider my father the innocent victim in a one-sided conflict (at least, not intellectually). But it was my mom who whispered bile and venom into my ear about my father, the man who I was supposed to look up to, the man anyone with knowledge of human psychology will tell you would shape my idea of what a man should be and what kind of man I should be. It was my mom who took an already shy man and drove him away from his family, into his den where he continues to hide to this day.

I try to feel compassion for my mother. I don't know how self-aware she is, but the fact that her own mother, my grandmother, was a burden on her and the rest of the family via poor health and a warped perspective of self and self-importance must be heavy on her mind as she moves towards retirement and old-age. I find it impossible to believe that my mother will ever forget how much her mother was despised by us all; but again, the big question is how she is processing this consciously, if at all.

It's already two hours past the point where I thought I would be heading back to Boston. A deliberate attempt to piss off mom? Well, she's not the only one who may or may not be processing stuff consciously. It's time to hit the road.

Last night, I was hanging out with this girl with whom I've become friends (she's in a relationship, so there's no romantic element to it), and I suffered from a case of something that I've come to call "The Icky Girl" flinch.

If I am in close physical proximity to a woman, especially a woman to whom I'm attracted, I become very jumpy. If that woman and I are engaged in good conversation and/or I feel like there's attraction between us, I will flinch or move away if the space between our bodies starts to shrink. For example, if I'm talking with a woman I like, even just platonically, and she closes the distance either purposefully or accidentally, I jerk away or break eye contact and slowly move away.

I wish I could stop it. Unlike other areas of social awkwardness, this one doesn't seem to be helped by alcohol. If anything, it makes it worse because I'm relaxed enough to allow myself to actually be physically close to a woman, which is what gets me into trouble in the first place.

In the back of my mind, I know that this is something that can only be dealt with by putting myself in those situations and just unlearning that reaction by wearing down the fear and anxiety until I can just accept the situation as is. But goddamn, I hate this feeling. It's like having a muscle twitch in my face, something I used to get in college when I was stressed. You feel this thing happening, and it's your body that's doing it, yet it feels completely removed from your body, your mind.

So this twitch, this flinch, feels like a badge of awkwardness that I carry for all the world to see, and I can't do anything about it.