Friday, April 11, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
I'm sorry...
...but I had to come out of my break (I haven't been seeing anyone else, by the way, I promise) to post this picture, because holy eff:
Monday, April 07, 2008
1AM Declarations
I've published things about myself on the Internet in some form or another for the last seven years. With each year, and each new blogging site, I've become more and more personal and, at the same time, more aware of what I'm writing about. I'm no longer putting stuff out there I don't want people to read about; on the contrary, I do a very good job at keeping a lot of things secret and censored.
In the past month, I've thought about this, especially since I haven't written about myself as much as I used to. Whenever I've tried to come up with one of those long, rambling yet well-written missives about something personal, I find that I'm kind of embarrassed about what I'm writing about, and instead I delete everything and post a YouTube video or a screencap of an AIM conversation I had with a friend.
I've become much more closed-off for a couple of reasons. One is that I've had more readers recently, with an average of 230 visitors a day. A lot of these come from Google searches, yes, but many of you out there are people who check my blog a couple of times a day. I know a couple of you because you're friends of mine, or, in one certain case (you know who you are), someone I don't wish to have contact with. My Sitemeter gives enough information about where people are visiting from, so I recognize friends from the companies and universities they work for. There are still a lot of people out there, however, who I don't know personally, and as much as I used to long for people to read my writing, it's started to make me kind of paranoid.
I've looked back on what I've been posting lately and it kind of makes me mad. I've always created a sort of character here, a version of myself who, well, does exist sometimes. Lately I've been writing with much more bravado than usual, probably to cover up how much I dislike myself and everything around me. Because, generally, I'm disappointed with a lot of things. Work is kind of shitty, because I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and look stupid a lot of the time. The love life is, basically, non-existent, and I've put a huge focus on that part of my life, I think, because I'm too fucking upset about things at home to deal with them.
I'm going home to visit my parents on Thursday, and I am both really excited and also really apprehensive. I've avoided writing about my dad here for a couple reasons, mainly because I don't like talking or thinking about it too much, and because my brother reads this frequently, and I don't want to upset with my pessimism. I'm really fucking upset about things these days, and I'm kind of terrified to go home to have to face things up close. It's hard enough to call home and have him audibly be sick - too sick to even talk very long - but it's quite another thing to have to see it face-to-face, at what might be at its worst point.
The worst part about all of this is that, despite having a ton of great friends who have listened to me bitch about everything that is going on right now, I feel like I am completely alone here. I spend five days at work without anyone to talk to in person, and then two long, usually hungover days on the weekends where I sleep past noon and wander around Lakeview, blowing my money away. When I do see people, it's brief. And frankly, I don't even like talking about my problems with them in the first place, because you can only make people uncomfortable by talking about your father's cancer so often before it gets old and tiresome. I don't know what I expect from people, because it's not an easy subject to talk about, and no one is particularly able to come up with brilliant, wise, and consoling things to say back to me. It's incredibly awkward.
I've been drinking a lot, too, sometimes five to six nights out of the week. Usually I manage to get really shitfaced at least one night on the weekend, as I did on Friday, and I manage to be so hungover the next day that I spend the following night alone and sober. Coincidentally, I stayed up until 3AM on Saturday watching Inland Empire, which probably didn't make me get a tighter grip on the everyday bullshit I'm dealing with.
I started seeing a therapist; I've been to three sessions so far. It's the first time I've actually felt comfortable in counseling, probably because for once I actually have some real issues to work on. Sure, there's my sudden awareness of mortality and growing up and shit, but on top of that there's the issues I have with relationships. I'd like to figure out what the fuck dating Theo did to me, why I get so much pleasure out of hating him and why, at the same time, I can't get past the fact that it still bothers me at all. I mean, I'm aware enough of the fact that he's a real shit (as my mother would say), someone who spent a lot of effort to fuck with my mind and make me feel bad about myself, and someone who will write me condescending emails because he still reads my blog and then have the balls to tell me to stop writing about him. And, worse, I'd like to wish I didn't feel like as big of a shit as him for breaking up with John, whom I loved and thought of as one of my best friends, who I can't talk to any more, which hurts me more now than it did two months ago, because right now, I miss him more than ever. And I'd like to know why I keep bothering to try to meet someone knew, when I keep finding myself following the same patterns over and over again, ones in which I start to develop feelings for people who, frankly, aren't people who are worth putting energy into liking at all.
Clearly, I have a lot going on. Half of it are things that are making me feel bad because I can't control them, and the other half are things that I can control or actions I've done that make me fucking angry at myself. And all of it is really goddamn exhausting, and, for the first time, these aren't things I can resolve by bitching about them online. And that's why right now I feel like taking a break from blogging is the best thing I can do, because I don't want to air my dirty laundry for the entire Internet to read right now. On top of that, I feel completely uninspired to write anything. All I really want to do right now is lay around, watch movies, and listen to sad music.
I wanted to end this with something wise, or remotely funny to at least lighten my mood, but I can't, because it's forty minutes after I started this post, and I am exhausted. So, know that I'll be back, I'm sure, but right now, I have to put this whole blogging thing on hold.
In the past month, I've thought about this, especially since I haven't written about myself as much as I used to. Whenever I've tried to come up with one of those long, rambling yet well-written missives about something personal, I find that I'm kind of embarrassed about what I'm writing about, and instead I delete everything and post a YouTube video or a screencap of an AIM conversation I had with a friend.
I've become much more closed-off for a couple of reasons. One is that I've had more readers recently, with an average of 230 visitors a day. A lot of these come from Google searches, yes, but many of you out there are people who check my blog a couple of times a day. I know a couple of you because you're friends of mine, or, in one certain case (you know who you are), someone I don't wish to have contact with. My Sitemeter gives enough information about where people are visiting from, so I recognize friends from the companies and universities they work for. There are still a lot of people out there, however, who I don't know personally, and as much as I used to long for people to read my writing, it's started to make me kind of paranoid.
I've looked back on what I've been posting lately and it kind of makes me mad. I've always created a sort of character here, a version of myself who, well, does exist sometimes. Lately I've been writing with much more bravado than usual, probably to cover up how much I dislike myself and everything around me. Because, generally, I'm disappointed with a lot of things. Work is kind of shitty, because I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and look stupid a lot of the time. The love life is, basically, non-existent, and I've put a huge focus on that part of my life, I think, because I'm too fucking upset about things at home to deal with them.
I'm going home to visit my parents on Thursday, and I am both really excited and also really apprehensive. I've avoided writing about my dad here for a couple reasons, mainly because I don't like talking or thinking about it too much, and because my brother reads this frequently, and I don't want to upset with my pessimism. I'm really fucking upset about things these days, and I'm kind of terrified to go home to have to face things up close. It's hard enough to call home and have him audibly be sick - too sick to even talk very long - but it's quite another thing to have to see it face-to-face, at what might be at its worst point.
The worst part about all of this is that, despite having a ton of great friends who have listened to me bitch about everything that is going on right now, I feel like I am completely alone here. I spend five days at work without anyone to talk to in person, and then two long, usually hungover days on the weekends where I sleep past noon and wander around Lakeview, blowing my money away. When I do see people, it's brief. And frankly, I don't even like talking about my problems with them in the first place, because you can only make people uncomfortable by talking about your father's cancer so often before it gets old and tiresome. I don't know what I expect from people, because it's not an easy subject to talk about, and no one is particularly able to come up with brilliant, wise, and consoling things to say back to me. It's incredibly awkward.
I've been drinking a lot, too, sometimes five to six nights out of the week. Usually I manage to get really shitfaced at least one night on the weekend, as I did on Friday, and I manage to be so hungover the next day that I spend the following night alone and sober. Coincidentally, I stayed up until 3AM on Saturday watching Inland Empire, which probably didn't make me get a tighter grip on the everyday bullshit I'm dealing with.
I started seeing a therapist; I've been to three sessions so far. It's the first time I've actually felt comfortable in counseling, probably because for once I actually have some real issues to work on. Sure, there's my sudden awareness of mortality and growing up and shit, but on top of that there's the issues I have with relationships. I'd like to figure out what the fuck dating Theo did to me, why I get so much pleasure out of hating him and why, at the same time, I can't get past the fact that it still bothers me at all. I mean, I'm aware enough of the fact that he's a real shit (as my mother would say), someone who spent a lot of effort to fuck with my mind and make me feel bad about myself, and someone who will write me condescending emails because he still reads my blog and then have the balls to tell me to stop writing about him. And, worse, I'd like to wish I didn't feel like as big of a shit as him for breaking up with John, whom I loved and thought of as one of my best friends, who I can't talk to any more, which hurts me more now than it did two months ago, because right now, I miss him more than ever. And I'd like to know why I keep bothering to try to meet someone knew, when I keep finding myself following the same patterns over and over again, ones in which I start to develop feelings for people who, frankly, aren't people who are worth putting energy into liking at all.
Clearly, I have a lot going on. Half of it are things that are making me feel bad because I can't control them, and the other half are things that I can control or actions I've done that make me fucking angry at myself. And all of it is really goddamn exhausting, and, for the first time, these aren't things I can resolve by bitching about them online. And that's why right now I feel like taking a break from blogging is the best thing I can do, because I don't want to air my dirty laundry for the entire Internet to read right now. On top of that, I feel completely uninspired to write anything. All I really want to do right now is lay around, watch movies, and listen to sad music.
I wanted to end this with something wise, or remotely funny to at least lighten my mood, but I can't, because it's forty minutes after I started this post, and I am exhausted. So, know that I'll be back, I'm sure, but right now, I have to put this whole blogging thing on hold.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Friday, April 04, 2008
On Elitism, Specifically My Own.
I rarely get unsolicited friend requests from people I don't know on MySpace. When I do, I usually add them because I think, "Hey, maybe they read my blog and want to be my friend!" I don't like looking like a total asshole, despite my self-awareness that, most of the time, I can a kind of jerk (at least when it comes to my Internet-protected bravado).
Occasionally, though, I get a request from someone who is just adding random people, and that's annoying. Especially when that person's pictures look something like this:
Note: I deliberately cut off this guy's face, although I'm rather shocked he doesn't have more pictures of JUST his torso.
Now, here's one thing: Abs freak me out. They don't look natural, and when I (rarely) see them in real life, they scare the hell out of me. So, sorry, your six-pack is unappealing.
Also? This:
I know I'm one of the thousands of hipster snobs who emailed / blogged about the NYT article about literary dealbreakers, and I feel like I should explain that I don't think I'd ever end a courtship with someone because they liked Ayn Rand. (Having said that: Would I date an Objectivist? Absolutely not.) Hell, I loved The Fountainhead, but in the same way that I love Valley of the Dolls: it's a guilty pleasure, terribly written, over-wrought, and it has a lot of rough sex. I think that everyone's allowed a few missteps when it comes to their cultural interests, because why would I want to date myself? I can't argue with myself, because I am always right.
But when the entirety of your cultural interests are made up of shitty things, I am not interested. And, frankly, those are the kinds of people who are more apt to pimp their profiles. If I can barely make out what your interests are because you have animations and videos and pictures of Kylie Minogue floating around all over the place, I think it's safe to say that, on a base level, I don't think a friendship would really work out between us.
Occasionally, though, I get a request from someone who is just adding random people, and that's annoying. Especially when that person's pictures look something like this:
Note: I deliberately cut off this guy's face, although I'm rather shocked he doesn't have more pictures of JUST his torso.
Now, here's one thing: Abs freak me out. They don't look natural, and when I (rarely) see them in real life, they scare the hell out of me. So, sorry, your six-pack is unappealing.
Also? This:
I know I'm one of the thousands of hipster snobs who emailed / blogged about the NYT article about literary dealbreakers, and I feel like I should explain that I don't think I'd ever end a courtship with someone because they liked Ayn Rand. (Having said that: Would I date an Objectivist? Absolutely not.) Hell, I loved The Fountainhead, but in the same way that I love Valley of the Dolls: it's a guilty pleasure, terribly written, over-wrought, and it has a lot of rough sex. I think that everyone's allowed a few missteps when it comes to their cultural interests, because why would I want to date myself? I can't argue with myself, because I am always right.
But when the entirety of your cultural interests are made up of shitty things, I am not interested. And, frankly, those are the kinds of people who are more apt to pimp their profiles. If I can barely make out what your interests are because you have animations and videos and pictures of Kylie Minogue floating around all over the place, I think it's safe to say that, on a base level, I don't think a friendship would really work out between us.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
I hate everything about this.
Could you imagine what kind of person would read this and say, "Oh, that's about me! I must write them back!" That person is clearly into 34-year-old men who LOL at their own poor attempts at making a move and the pathos of a missed connection posting in general. And Franny and Zooey, probably.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Entertainers bring May flowers.
I have been extremely busy at work for the past two days, so I haven't had time to even think about posting anything, but I DO have an article up on This Recording about Exile in Guyville, and I think you should read / listen to it, especially if you're my friend (which you must be).
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