Smug

So I ran into Social Entrepreneur again this evening. He got my e-mail and thanked me for writing him and not thinking he was an axe murderer. My response, 'Let's not get ahead of ourselves.' He laughed. Still unflinchingly not attracted to SE but I think we're going to get along. He's headed off to Aspen on business but he shall call me when he returns so I can show him around a city Google insists he's lived for at least as long as I have. I understand you need some time on target and pretext for extended social contact SE. I'm totally going to call you on it but I suspect we'll both have a laugh about it. Oh how fun.

Rants and Raves

It is not necessary to condemn Iranian President Ahmedinejad's speech at the UN. He is a whack job. You don't give crazy people even more attention, you don't dignify their stupidity with a response. You do exactly what many did while he spoke. They left and denied him an audience. Same thing with that douche bag moron in Florida who planned to burn the Koran a few weeks back. People over halfway around the world died protesting the intentions of that mofo. Really?

I consider myself among that class of citizens whose knowledge of current events is primarily dictated by what is on the front page of links on any given website I happen to be perusing. I am a fan of the short free paper they give out on mass transit, I rarely read The Economist, The Times, or Wall Street Journal unless they happen to be close to where I am eating and I want something to read. Every time I do, I enjoy it, feel smarter for no good reason, and wonder why I don't read it more. I rarely watch the news. I don't particularly care for it. I don't follow any of the pivotal debates that consume popular discourse for weeks at a time and I don't trust that I will be able to gain a fair or balanced coverage of that debate in any media but especially not popular media. My homepage is BBC because at least on the very front page I can expect coverage of the world and not just the UK like US papers usually do (cover just US news). Essentially, I'm about as well read as Sarah Palin.

It's a big world and I have never been enamored with any culture enough to really follow it's history, people, norms, customs to the extent it takes to be truly well informed. My knowledge on most things isn't even powerpoint deep, it's cocktail conversation with someone who knows even less than me deep. It's I avoid poly-sci majors deep. I'm the person for whom a little information is a dangerous thing but I am at least intelligent enough to realize how smart I am not. I'm going to go on the record and say many, many, many, many people are not. And for them and because of them I feel media has a responsibility to not incite or appeal to our fears and our lowest selves. That ignorance should not get 24 hour news coverage. The White House should not be issuing a statement or engaging in dialogue with a backward congregation of 20 people. If the media didn't give them a platform, they would just be an eyesore in their community instead of an eyesore for the world. If ignorance and fear didn't take over the debate over the 9/11 mosque, we might be able to safely have a place of worship and community without worrying about the safety of the congregation. The phenom of finding the dumbest eyewitness for comments on the news has insidiously crept into replacing actual news and information.

In other completely unrelated news, I was out walking the dog last night and some guy who said he had seen me around the neighborhood gave me his card and suggested we go out for drinks sometime. Not my first street solicitation and not my first, 'let me give you my card.' His card said he was President and CEO (another post for another time on why people have 2 titles that kind of mean the same thing to me) of something which didn't move me because all I could gather from the dark was arms that seemed a bit short for his body, a little girth (I'm one to talk), and glasses. But whatever. I finally googled him to see if he was president of his own hip-hop studio or something like that and turns out he's the real deal. Council of Foreign Relations, consulting with the Brookings Institute, doing development and aid projects in Africa...that real deal. President and CEO of something real. Holy crap.

So I felt bad because I had zero interest in having a drink with him until I saw him all over the interwebs being a "highly regarded social entrepreneur" (I think that means you know how to make money doing good works). Instead of being the usual disappointed that some random guy tried to give me his number or get mine, it was suddenly flattering that he had noticed me around, not mistaken me for homeless, and took his chance to get that second meeting. If he had been hot AND not sweeping cigarette butts and Starbucks cups into his dustpan as most of my solicitors are, I would have been intrigued and delighted right away. Now I'm intrigued but still not even a little attracted to him. Thanks to my girlfriend, I did not write him the spastic e-mail I might have trying to convey in my least rude way that I considered him a networking contact vice a romantic one. I just wrote a quick one line e-mail and gave him my number. So over to you, Mr. Social Entrepreneur.

Pure

We were discussing children because that's what women do, even when we don't have any. During the would you rather boy/girl question I surprised myself and pissed off the group by explaining that I didn't want to raise girls because I didn't really like being myself and don't want to bring a girl into the world with my genes who will struggle with the same things. It just slipped out and I didn't see it coming but it was a revelation of sorts. Perhaps its not the sadness that drives people to end their life, it's the promise of freedom from being a person you don't even really like. I defend against others, but save the worst assaults for use against myself. Why wouldn't you want to be free of that and further, why would you want to spin the barrel in a genetic roulette and risk bringing another person in the world who will suffer?

I'm pretty sure I brought down the collective mood with that one-no, I'm positive I did. But I didn't expect that to come out and was as surprised as they were distressed to hear that I didn't like being myself. So I came here to help me sort through this. I started writing last night and woke up this morning still processing. I decided between that, my messy room, my headache, and my stopped up toilet, that perhaps I would call in sick or at least make this a late morning. I showered, took another nap, got dressed, took Baloo for a walk, and then a man freestyle rapped for me.

Did you almost miss that? Yes, a man with pupils that might have been a little too small for the shady spot we were standing, started randomly telling me about his new album. My girlfriend remarked once that I make eye contact and the world changes. I haven't been able to break myself of that midwest habit but as long as it keeps bringing me people like Ethan, the socially-conscious rapper, I'll take the off-color solicitations and requests for money. He's a server at one of the local restaurants. I don't go there often so I was frankly surprised he recognized me but he did and he rapped for me. I can not imagine what anyone observing must have thought about what was going on. Jewish guy with a huge Star of David chain holding a pint of 2% milk rapping to a random lady walking her dog. He was very likely high but also very passionate. I envied that he had something in him that he believed in so strongly, he felt he could not fail. But the entire encounter was so bizarre, I felt God had sent Ethan to me this morning to remind me not to take myself so seriously. It was total crazy town. The title of his new album is Pure Infinite something. Pure was an acronym for something and he tried to make up another acronym for infinite on the spot for me. Seriously the entire encounter should have been filmed. So I'm off to get my drink on (coffee) and see if I can top Ethan for my street adventures today. I may not like being me but this morning I would not have been anyone else but the girl with front row seats for a freestyle rap about Obama and Afghanistan.

On Tennis and Why I Create the Misery Challenge

My girlfriend was talking the other day about how stressed she was at work. Her husband told her she really needed to quit because nothing ever changed for her at this job. (side note: I think she is lucky to have someone in her life who can tell her this and supports her finding something else) It is always the same pressure, the same environmental stresses, and new and different types of shitty management. The cruel irony is she's not even putting up with all that for a job she loves. I'm not either. So why? Why do I care what anyone thinks of me in a job I don't even like or think is as important as it is often built up to be? I don't know but I offered an analogy during our conversation that just because I didn't like to play volleyball didn't mean I wanted to be picked last for the team. But still, why even show up to play, feel shitty about myself because I'm not great at something I don't even like, and feel like an alsoran among my peers to boot? What is a person running from or towards that constructs a situation like that to work in?

Kind of like me and tennis. I'm not good at tennis. No one in my family plays tennis. I'm never going to be good at tennis. But I played for 4 years in high school. I didn't letter until my junior year and that was probably just to be nice since I just kept showing up. I was Rudy but no amount of practice and determination was going to make me an even adequate player. The first year I rarely saw the outside of the gym. The team would dress out and go to the court, I would stay inside with the other ungifted girl and practice trying to hit the ball the same way twice. Mostly we just chased our ball around the gym for an hour or so. She wrote in my yearbook that we were losers but losers with dignity. I don't even think I was allowed to purchase a tennis sweatshirt until my junior year and I quit at some point during my sophomore year after it was clear it was going to be another humiliating season and this time I would be alone in the gym as my loser partner had graduated.

I have no idea why I decided tennis would be the sport for me or why I had to have a sport at all. I am a book girl. I am a write shit in my journal girl. I still take pictures of the sky and close-up pictures of inanimate objects. I'm not naturally athletic and not terribly spatially oriented. I recall being frustrated and jealous and wishing myself everything different than I was at times. Yet I persisted. Why? Perhaps my problem is that I keep trying to fit into places I don't actually want to belong. Or put differently, I don't want the things I should, the things that are best for me. The things that are me. I keep going places and seeking challenges that don't play to my strengths or even interests. It seems as if I want to struggle for my happiness, carve it out of misery. I want to feel inadequate and work to prove myself to people I claim I don't care about and who I know for damn sure don't care about me. If it's not hard, it's not worth it.

It occurred to me my job is a lot like pledging a sorority except that every time I move, I become a freshman all over again, pledging with a whole new house of bitchy girls. I'm a professional pledge. I didn't even pledge in college and had disdain for girls who wanted to and/or did. But here I am seeking validation and belonging within places I wonder how I even got into and wonder even more why I tried to get in. I think I should add to my Philly bucket list an attempt to examine the layers of me that drive me to gravitate towards places or jobs within places where I will not be happy or more importantly, because we're allowed to make mistakes and discover something we thought was great isn't, why I stay when I'm miserable. But that will have to wait as I'm off to NYC again. Twice in a month...not typical me at all. It's nice not being typical sometimes.

Quotable quotes

From the head of the UK's MI5:

"In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure."

Our media frightens and disappoints me. What they do with information is the equivalent of deep fat frying vegetables. It does the same thing to our collective body as battered broccoli does to our veins.

I do love beer

If I weren't so lazy, I'd probably be an alcoholic. I just don't have it in me to chase that feeling everyday. I feel like a kid again when I'm soundly buzzed. Easy, light, and free with few cares in the world. I do what I want without wondering or perhaps not caring what everyone else thinks. I feel no pain and tonight, even my eyelids felt numb. It was the best buzz I've had in a while now and it might have been Lost Abbey but then again it might have been long day, long drive, empty stomach, and salad for dinner. Baloo and I had such a great walk on this wonderful fall night. My hips were loose and my gait was light. I did fear falling over when picking up Baloo's offering but it worked out okay. I did my cute cameo and weaved my way back home.

Making and Taking

Relative to my normal couture which ranges from shapeless selections from the middle age catalogue to homeless chic, I looked cute today. I walked the dog and then decided I would go to the bar and not turn on the computer or watch 48 Hours Hard Evidence or Mystery or any other spouse murdering dramas that seem to be standard Saturday night fare. You feel better watching relationships that really didn't work out when you are are all dressed up with no place to go on a Saturday night, I guess.

It's a lovely night, the humidity is low and my hair is cute. For all the time I am out looking less than stellar, I could stand some cameos out and about looking cute. But I'm here instead. I'm out of my dress and into my jammies and a little annoyed that I have to be "out there" to find someone to stay inside with.

I ran into a neighbor yesterday. They have a 1 year old daughter and many great reasons/excuses for not having people over or going on vacations but they do both. I don't have it harder than anyone else, I just insist on things other people don't. Like perfection. More to come on this when I have the words for it.

Completely and totally random

Because I'm here, I'm not trolling okcupid looking for something that isn't there. This week I drafted my resignation e-mail to friends and finally noticed that my boobs may have shrunk a bit even though it appears every other place of storage on my body remains ready for a long winter. I'm not one of those girls that gets upset with shrinking boobs, I'm just annoyed with the exercise of figuring out when to break down and buy new bras.

Every time the seasons change, I grow restless.

It is important to me that people trust me and consider me dependable when it matters. I value my father's trust most of all because he has it in so few people. I like winning the trust of wary people. I think it is because wary people (such as myself) just want to feel safe and when someone feels safe they rest with confidence, without worry or care like a baby. When a creature feels safe, they can rest.

Sometimes I just want to freak out on the street. Really rock it out to something I'm listening to on my iPod. Sometimes I want to bother strangers or tell a random person something nice I noticed about them. Sometimes I just want to tell someone, 'you look interesting, I want to know more about you.'

I need to start looking nice on purpose more so I don't feel so self-conscious when I do.

I want to get cracking on the Philly bucket list.

My Weekend: A Photo Blog

Birds at Central Park



Philadelphia Blight

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More Blight (yes, the word depression IS spray painted on that wall)



Brief Respite



Back to Blight



Home

Thank you Earl

Lovin this weather. Getting back into the swing of things with the trainer after a work/injury hiatus in August. Have that great feeling that comes with getting your sweat on. Still lumpy and oddly shaped in places but those places are strong underneath-way underneath-but whatever. If I ever have to revisit any of my previous ass kickings for a rematch, they will notice how much more it hurts the second time around on account of my increased strength and stamina.

Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather!

TBD...

I took the day off today. I didn't know what to do with myself. Work is easy. Leisure is hard because leisure is optional. I decided I would go see a girlfriend in NYC this weekend to give some structure to this time off, give me a task to concentrate on and a sense of urgency about laundry. This girlfriend maintains a pace of living I don't understand or relate to on any level. She has plans for the start of this long weekend that already take place in 2 states. While I understand New York and New Jersey aren't the same as New York and Nebraska, the itinerary is dynamic, ambitious, and chaotic to me. It's her pace of social activity that made me curious about her motives when we were in the preliminary stages of our friendship. She always seemed to have more than enough things to do and people to do them with and I a: wondered where I fit into all of that and why she even wanted one more friend and b: didn't really want the challenge of trying to fit in to all of that. I resisted in ways that in light of what a good friend she is to me now, I cringe at. But for better or worse (for her), she has me for a friend now. So when she told me on what I thought was an otherwise unstructured day during my planned visit that she and her husband are going to the US Open and asked me if I wanted her to buy me a ticket, I was inclined to just visit another weekend. If I was there and they suggested the same thing, I would probably be fine. As it stands, I think I will just plan to leave before they need to head out for the Open. I love her because I can tell her I have no interest in watching tennis and she will love that I have the nerve to tell her that. It's not really nerve. It's the honesty in our relationship that allows her to make it clear she has no interest in the Amish even though my soul twin (and mutual friend) wants desperately to make a weekend of all things rural Pennsylvania.

I wonder why she schedules so heavily and she probably wonders why it is so hard for me to commit to something as simple as coming up to visit. I have to think that for people like her and my best friend my reluctance to commit to things annoys them greatly and maybe even hurts their feelings from time to time. I don't know why I feel this way, why it is so stressful to commit, to plan, but it is. It just is. I make very few commitments, even to myself. It's difficult for me to make a hair appointment. I've been thinking about a massage appointment all day. Didn't call. It's hard to commit to even watching a movie. Most things get done eventually but I'm much better at spontaneous decisions and I've never really had a strong desire to plan fun things to do. I devote a lot of energy to just getting myself somewhere. Once I'm there, I evaluate my entertainment options. Usually I'm just giddy to have actually escaped the trajectory of my home orbit. The only thing I know about this evening is I will feed and walk Baloo. The rest is TBD and trying not to think about my appointment with the trainer tomorrow morning. Wish we had waited till Saturday to confirm the time.

The whole aimless day, thinking about work and knowing I have plenty to do there coupled with my internal frustration at not being able to enjoy time off or plan to be away so I can enjoy time off got me wondering again why I do things the way I do even though they often lead to discontent (and really long run-on sentences). I hate to disappoint people. Over the years it just became easier to promise them nothing. I am a now person. I make appointments with my trainer no more than 2 days in advance and more often than not, mere hours before our session. I was shopping with a coupon that expired at midnight on Sunday and I couldn't figure out if I really wanted the pants until 11:55. I was typing my credit card information like the wind trying to get the purchase in under the wire. I had been browsing the site and filling my shopping cart since 9 pm that night. I usually cancel appointments that I make more than a week in advance because something almost always comes up that trumps it. When I call, I know I have the time and do my darndest to sneak into a cancellation. Tues at 1:45 three weeks from now, I have no idea what I might be doing but I'll bet having that time spoken for will put a wrinkle in something.

Part of my world view accepts there is very little I can do to actually make things happen. I can put things out there with my purest intentions (for good or bad), but what happens next is completely out of my control. I think this philosophy is tangentially related to my resistance to planning things in that everything feels more out of my control when I plan ahead. I have no idea what will be going on in October so when I plan I give the universe something to fuck with. To fill with conflicting obligations, with stresses that compound as the time draws near. I have to try to mitigate all the life in-between the time I made a plan and the life that followed. When I do something now there's less time to consider the decision and all the ways it may conflict with yet unrealized future plans.

All the dense chewy explanatory prose aside, at the end of the day, I don't make plans because I don't want to. I want to do things, I enjoy them when I do. But I'm always miserable long before I feel good and I let that drive my behavior. Call it lack of discipline, call it uptight, call it you-are-lucky-to-have-any-friends, everyone I love knows this about me. I want to be better for me and for them but this is what we're working with right now. Maybe this quirk is fundamental Ava and unlikely to change. Maybe my would-be partner in crime will be the yin to my yang and we'll see the world and all my friends. Maybe I'll have my baby and write my book as Lodo suggested and though I'll have more reasons not to plan, I'll do it anyway because I'll want my child to feel a season is incomplete without a getaway of some sort. I guess we will see...

Can't get good help anymore

The cleaning guy is eyeing me lasciviously and apologized repeatedly for not letting me know he was going to be on vacation last week. Going to have to figure out a way to return the gift card. As classy and graciously as one can return a gift directly to the person who gave it to them. I'm sure it won't be painfully awkward. I'm sure I won't put it off for weeks. This morning he scoffed at a remark I made about needing a vacation. I thought he was being playful but I failed until now to grasp the irony of saying that to a man who worked two jobs; at his first one before I even leave for mine and at his second one long after I return home from my day of non-manual labor. Whatever dude. Fine, you win. I still need a fucking vacation.

Yesterday Baloo ran to greet the same cleaning guy and I noticed she was limping. I love her furry butt and I'm confident she will break my heart. She's my reason for coming home. She's my reason for going out. She's my joy and sorrow and wonder at being outside. I like to watch her sniff the breeze. I love the way she literally looks down her nose at other dogs with a dominant stare and erect tail. So much attitude in that petite lab package. Gotta keep her healthy. Things wear down and wear out but I want as graceful an aging for her as possible. That's my girl.

I was putting away stuff at work today and realized I've probably already written a novel's worth of words in just this last two years. Writing a book is far different than work writing but the thought made writing seem more possible.

My sister is horrible wear and tear on all things. She rolls hard, son. She rolls hard. So many broken and prematurely worn things in such a short time.