Yearly Archives: 2007

Defining Myself Through Others

I’ve come to real­ize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from oth­ers, albeit to a much small­er extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my par­ents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a com­ment about not being good enough, or unsup­port­ive silence. Their con­stant crit­i­cism led to low self-esteem and feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy. Yet anoth­er exam­ple of how they mind­fucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reac­tion. Remnants of my old, inse­cure self creep­ing up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit com­plete­ly.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks of you.

Christmas Wish-List '07

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updat­ed for 2007. This list is some­what short­er than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ate­ly wait­ed two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quick­ly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lens­es in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extreme­ly chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flex­i­bil­i­ty.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extreme­ly light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2‑Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar mod­el for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­u­al stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pret­ty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­ta­sy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite ani­me of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rent­ly have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phras­es.

    Found a copy of this for down­load.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the oth­er side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the deci­sion.

The Problem With Manual Stimulation

At the hair salon tonight, a new girl washed my hair. She went through the usu­al rou­tine, but before she fin­ished, she placed her fin­gers along the front of my hair­line, and with con­stant pres­sure, slow­ly worked her way back.

The water was warm, my hair was wet, and I felt the ten­sion going down my scalp. It was com­plete­ly sub­lime.

The edges of my lips start­ed curl­ing, but I could­n’t tell if I was help­less­ly smil­ing, or it was the stretch­ing of my skin upwards.

In the show­er tonight, when wash­ing out the stray hairs, I tried doing it on myself. It did­n’t feel the same, of course.

It was like that scene in Secretary, where Lee Holloway (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) tries to spank her­self with a hair­brush when explor­ing her sub­mis­sive ten­den­cies. I love the expres­sion of intent, and ulti­mate­ly let­down, on her face.

The prob­lem with man­u­al stim­u­la­tion is that it nev­er feels as good as when some­one else does it for you.

Bittersweet Paradox

bit­ing keeps your words at bay
tend­ing to the sores that stay
hap­pi­ness is just a gash away
when i open a famil­iar scar
pain goes shoot­ing like a star
com­fort has­n’t failed to fol­low so far

and you might say it’s self-indul­gent
and you might say it’s self-destruc­tive
but, you see, it’s more pro­duc­tive
than if i were to be hap­py

—The Dresden Dolls, Bad Habit

I was jit­tery and ner­vous all day.

Several new devel­op­ments have left me with a lack of res­o­lu­tion. People to meet, presents to give, pic­tures to take, respon­si­bil­i­ties to ful­fill. And as much as I try not to think about it, it’s in my nature to do so.

I still haven’t got­ten passed this feel­ing. Still don’t know if I want to. Still don’t even know what it is. All I know is that it’s mak­ing me man­ic.

Until I fig­ure it out, I’ll wal­low in it.

I can only write this at night. When I’m falling asleep and off my guard, sit­ting on my chaise, with the cur­tains drawn and the win­dow open to the win­ter air.

Now I feel like writ­ing, but I don’t even know what to say. Everything’s too jum­bled for me to decide whether I’m hap­py or sad. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s one because of the oth­er. Life, at the moment, is so bit­ter­sweet.

Wonderfully bit­ter­sweet, that’s what it is.