this post rated W for “Wah”
Sometimes, after dinner, I leave the baby and the husband downstairs to their own devices (I usually hear yelling and screaming within a few minutes but luckily I’m able to ignore that until the cops arrive) and escape to my/our bedroom so I can nerd out on my laptop. You know, because I don’t spend enough time on the computer all day.
When I do this, the cat always comes upstairs and joins me on the bed and goes through this ritual wherein he walks on my keyboard, kneads my back, then curls up next to me.
I enjoy this time together, except for the walking on the keyboard because he invariably sticks his butt in my face and I don’t like him in that way.
Also, I don’t live in a doughnut-shaped room. I think I had the fish-eye effect on in Photobooth or some shit.
I received email from an old friend today, a friend with whom I’m no longer really speaking for reasons neither of us can pin down. It was emotionally charged and spewing of issues. And it got me thinking about myself and my flaws and the ways in which I’m a shitty person. I thought it would be a good exercise to sit down and write out the ways that I fail at life so I could look at them, confront them, own them. But that’s a daunting task. Perhaps I’ll spread it out.
Flaw: I take the notion that we’re all alone in the world to extremes, and think that I can’t relate to a single person in the universe. I’m a unique and beautiful snowflake, dammit. I guess on some existential level, this is true. We all think different things and have different experiences. But it seems incredibly arrogant to translate that into an excuse to isolate myself.
Another flaw: I reference concepts like existentialism even though I haven’t read a lick of Sartre since high school.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:51 am
wait, you’re a shitty person? way to let me know now, after i’ve become all friends with you and shit. jeez.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I saw that picture and honestly said, “Is that a picture of me?” My cat (only one of them) does that to me all the time.
Also – I prefer to thing as my self-imposed isolation as a self-defense mechanism. It makes me feel less like a shitty person. Rose-colored glasses, you know.
January 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Isn’t it always nice when someone from our past resurfaces, for no other reason than to regurgitate shit. Ignore them. Let it go.
January 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
First glance at the picture made me think you had on a fabulous sweater and were giving a weird thumbs up sign…
January 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
And I reference concepts like “motorcycles” even though I haven’t ridden in over ten years.
Youse only gots ta learn it once.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I had a year of those kinds of friend conversations last year. It sucks.
If I can make a fruity life coachy sort of suggestion maybe start with a list of ways that you succeed at life (cool marriage, cool kid, cool blog, cool web site where you work with friends, grad school, home ownership…) before you go looking at the stuff you want to work on. For me at least it feels better to do the work from a place where I have some worth.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Kizz – duh, exactly! Candy – you got it all wrong, sweets.
January 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
sweetney, duh, I didn’t let you know until now because I’m a shitty person!
Zoot, I may be borrowing your rose-colored glasses.
Thanks, Kizz et al.