Happy Fun Cog

I think I may have found a field of study that interests me (Communication and Rhetoric). It will take a lot of focus and faith, though, to push past the normal concerns, like a) abandoning my career and b) whether or not my brain is nimble enough to move back into the academic setting. Even if this isn't the right field for me to enter, it's a good feeling to find something that not only interests me, but doesn't require too much of a stretch in my imagination to see a degree in said field leading to a more fulfilling career.

OK, confession time. I've gone on 4 dates with a woman, and we're scheduled for a fifth. 3 out of the 4 dates we've had have been very solid. Great, even. I've felt a little ambivalence about my attraction to her, but that feeling always goes away.

Here's the thing: it bothers me that she doesn't respond to my emails in a timely manner, say within 48 hours. She has an iPhone, and I know she checks her email on it, so I just don't get why she takes her time responding. I know she likes me, likes me a lot, even. It's not a huge deal, but it bugs me.

A lot's happened in the past few weeks; for example, I went to Spain. And hopefully at some point I'll actually sit down and write about it.

But something happened tonight that really bugged the shit out of me. I bought tickets to go to a concert for a band that I like, and the ticket was for 7 PM. Well, I get to the venue and they say that the show doesn't actually start until 9. That kind of pisses me off because, had I known it was 9, I wouldn't have had to go through all the steps that I did to get there by 7.

But hey, I'm there, so I figure I'll hang out at the bar, drink some shitty overpriced beer and wait for the show. Then I noticed the real kicker: there were no fucking chairs in this place. Not a single goddamn one. Well, that's not true. There were chairs in the "VIP" section, but you had to have a special ticket to get there.

So let's go over this. You have a large club with 3 floors, and you remove all seating from the first two floors and then seal off the third from the general population. What the fuck are you thinking? Why do you do this? So you can cram even more people into the space? That's ridiculous. Hell, you even remove the bar stools that used to be there before you renovated.

The worst thing about it is that it made me feel old. I wanted to go around and break a few hipster legs so they too would look for a place to sit down and leave when they couldn't find anything.

I've spent several hours today going through some old writing I did my first year out of college, mostly freewriting, and I'm shocked at how good it is. I'm intimidated as well because I don' t know that I could do better now, or even as good. But then again, I was only a year out of college and my mind was still poppin' and snappin', whereas now the world has had a good decade to suck all the creativity out of me.

But now I have a goal - now that I'm reminded of how capable I am, I'm going to try to cut loose a little more in my creative writing and stretch for the good stuff.

It's a small thing, but I wanted to note the fact because so often I only note the negative. I had a good week last week. I went to tae kwon do 4 times, getting a fantastic workout at least one of those times ("fantastic workout" meaning "saturated with sweat and pushed to the edge of what my respiratory system can offer me"). I went on two dates - one of those dates was a third date that was unexpectedly awkward, given the quality of the first two dates. But I figured out what the problem was in my head and had a fourth date that recaptured the energy of the first two dates. Finally, I did two hours worth of writing exercises. Scattered over the course of the week it doesn't seem like a lot, but considering that this represents some of the most consistent writing I've had in the past 10 years, it's definitley worth noting. I feel like it's going to be a building block to even more writing, more hours per week.

So it's been a good week. Yay for me.

Two disparate thoughts, connected only in that they give me a sense of clarity:

1. I just came back from a sparring class at my tae kwon do dojong; there were just two students, including myself, and an instructor, so there was more individual work and discussion than usual. One thing that my instructor pointed out was that I tend to get stuck in retreat mode, that I can attack and retreat but I rarely counter-attack. I, like a lot of people, tend to get a little distracted and unnerved when I'm getting punched in the head and in those circumstances I always retreat or freeze up. I felt like this was one of those "A ha" moments, because I do feel like this applies to how I live my life. When I'm going through a tough time or I'm intimidated by or struggling with something, I always react by retreating, whether that manifests itself in being less social or in being very distracted and acting out by doing things like over-eating or over-drinking. I need to learn how to deal with difficult situations by not letting myself get intimidated or mentally locked up, and to move forward.
2. I'm reading "The Bridge of Sighs" by Richard Russo, which is a great book. There's a scene in the book where a high school teacher who is challenging his students, sort of a "Dead Poets' Society" thing only without the romanticism, states in class, "There is no God." For some reason, this really struck me, and I've been repeating it to myself. I'm very familiar with the idea of atheism, having first awkwardly embraced it in junior high, though I've never fully vested myself in it. And I'm not vesting myself in it now. But for some reason, the way it was presented in this literary scene gave me a feeling of lucidity, and I think it's because the concept of saying "There is no God" can be a strong statement of human suffrage in the face of the cosmos in the sense that we and only we are responsible for our lives, so we are fully empowered, and if there is no heaven then this is the only thing we have so we might as well enjoy it. It's odd, and I can't really articulate what it is about this one rather pedestrian line (albeit a line in a friggin' great book) that got my mind moving, but I feel much less tied down to assumed obligations and preconceptions about my day to day life... I really need to think this through. I hope I can hold on to this thought; I hope I don't slip into my normal routine of emotional distraction and mental static.
   

I can't tell if my chain is being yanked or if I'm being a nice guy. I'm having a kind of shitty day, and had an oddly tense conversation with one of the software developers I work with. He's one of those guys who I can never tell when he's being sarcastic. So we had a conversation about a small project and he made a comment about how I hadn't done any work on it before handing it off to him, and it just rubbed me the wrong way so I gave him a little attitude back... you know what? This is a pointless entry. This is my problem. Sweating over the small stuff.

The point is that I went over his desk to make sure we were cool, and in retrospect, that's what's bugging me, the fact that I felt like I wanted to make sure that we were going to be able to work together and that there were no festering problem, and that fucking sarcastic fatass is the one who's always making comments to me about my clothes not being ironed or other such shit. I'm pretty sure he's just joking, but it gets old, you know? We're not in high school anymore. Insults aren't jokes unless you're dealing with friends who know we're you're coming from, and I'm not his friend.

So fuck it. If he's going to be a dick, let him be a dick. Why should I bother putting in the effort to smooth things over if he can't have the common courtesy to deal with people in a professional way?

Ya know, I'm getting really sick of being a stranger to my own mind. I've gone on 3 dates with a girl that I met via online dating, and my physical attraction to her comes and goes as if I were trying to tune in a distant radio station. Sometimes, I look at her and don't feel a thing, physically or emotionally. Other times, I feel a strong attraction, both physically and emotionally.

The scenario is complicated by the fact that one of the most regrettable relationships in my life was one where I was not physically attracted to the woman but I went forward with the relationship anyway because I wanted it to work. We went out for 4 months before the relationship imploded. That was 6 years ago and I still haven't learned to trust myself.

I'm in a better situation now because I recognize that I have that problem and I think that I understand myself enough so that I won't make an emotional commitment without being sure, but it's so fucking frustrating to not be able to understand my feelings about this woman. It could be something like I can't maintain my attraction to her because I know she likes me back and I tend to be most attracted to unattainable women. Or it could be that the physical attraction just isn't there, but I'm trying to convince myself because I really want this to work because I do feel a mental and emotional connection.

I just wish I could clear my head on this.