Monthly Archives: November 2002

Respect Through Self-Understanding

I real­ized a lit­tle while ago that I respect self-under­stand­ing much more than self-con­fi­dence. It’s such a pity, because many peo­ple I know have much more of the lat­ter than the for­mer. I use the words self-under­stand­ing in an almost con­tra­dic­to­ry man­ner, though one can be both. I see it as an under­stand­ing of one’s faults and one’s lim­its. I use these words in this man­ner because I find that one whom is blind to one’s faults is some­one who has lit­tle or no self-under­stand­ing.

When some­one has lit­tle self-under­stand­ing, it almost angers me. The igno­rance involved is a very dif­fi­cult thing for me to com­pre­hend. If some­one refus­es to admit to his or her faults, or per­haps is aware of them but refus­es to change them, then I see them as being very child­ish. And child­ish­ness, of course, is some­thing that both­ers me great­ly.

I usu­al­ly find that an open-mind­ed per­son is very aware of his or her faults. Perhaps I sim­ply asso­ciate a lack of open-mind­ed­ness with self-igno­rance, though I haven’t seen much evi­dence to the con­trary.

My expe­ri­ence with this idi­ot­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic has made me bit­ter. I seem to have lost much faith in the human race, some­thing that I real­ized even longer before this. It has left me alone, with few peo­ple I can tru­ly feel com­fort­able with, or respect.

Maybe it’s bet­ter this way.

Full-Time And Miyazaki's Films

My sched­ule has­n’t been too hec­tic late­ly (in fact, it’s been fair­ly relax­ing), but that will change with­in the week. I have two assign­ments due in six days time, which I haven’t start­ed yet. I should prob­a­bly start study­ing for exams, but that most like­ly won’t hap­pen any­time soon.

My work has expressed inter­est in hir­ing me for a full-time posi­tion once I grad­u­ate. Most peo­ple would be hired for a CS-01 posi­tion, but since I’ve been work­ing there already, and I would have a uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma by then, I would most like­ly be hired as a CS-02. There’s great dif­fer­ence in annu­al pay between the two, and a CS-02 has a pay range that’s sim­ply amaz­ing for a new grad­u­ate. It’s very close to my goal in terms of salary, some­thing that I believed that I would have to work a few decades to achieve. This makes me hap­py.

On the oth­er hand, Aaron’s con­tract won’t be renewed, which sucks because we’ll hard­ly have any time to see each oth­er oth­er­wise. He just seems to be too busy to do any­thing with. He’s the type of friend who would want me to tell him about any prob­lems between us, but I’m afraid that this isn’t real­ly his prob­lem. I don’t feel that I have the right to demand so much of his time, since I know that he’s a busy per­son, with impor­tant things to do.

I saw two more of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, called Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, and Princess Mononoke. I felt that both of them weren’t quite as good as Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but still reflect­ed Miyazaki’s amaz­ing writ­ing and direct­ing abil­i­ty. Somehow his ani­ma­tions are able to make me feel hap­py with­out feel­ing cheap. Both of the movies fea­ture the music of Joe Hisaishi, whom I feel is a ter­ri­bly good com­pos­er. He tru­ly cre­ates beau­ti­ful music which com­ple­ments both mood and vision.

So Much Reason To Stay Awake

I need to stop writ­ing for an audi­ence. It feels like I’m not being true to myself, that I can’t say what I want to say. Yet I do, some­how, in some equiv­o­cal man­ner.

The win­ter is so beau­ti­ful. Usually I study bet­ter at night, but when it’s win­ter time, and every­thing is white, I feel much more moti­vat­ed dur­ing the day. It’s as if God final­ly real­izes that the entire world is shit and cov­ers it with a huge bleached tarp.

I bought Dolly a new toy on the week-end, and she loves it. It’s got a soft ball cov­ered in fur on the end of an elas­tic string. She’ll try to take the ball where she wants by grab­bing it in her jaws, but when the elas­tic stretch­es past its lim­it, the ball will rip out of her mouth and make her go even cra­zier. She plays with it until she’s tired, then she’ll lay down on the ground below where the ball lies, and just try to bat it with her paws.

I’ve been work­ing on the new lay­out, and I com­plete­ly scrapped the metal­lic idea. Pictures just did­n’t seem to fit well in it. I actu­al­ly have the final design done and cre­at­ed in html for­mat. It allows for a bet­ter for­mat­ting of con­tent, though it will take me more work. I’m not com­plete­ly sure if I’m sat­is­fied with it, but it will prob­a­bly have to do since I gen­er­al­ly have lit­tle con­tent to work with.

Sometimes I start think­ing, and then I real­ize what a fuck­ing idiot I am, and that thought just sticks in my head. That hap­pened for most of today.

I have to set up two lap­tops for these high up execs at work. One of them actu­al­ly made a com­plaint about me and Aaron to my boss before. It’s hard to work for some­one with this kind of his­to­ry, but some­how I can just grin and bear it. I think that being sto­ic is some­thing that I’ve learned very well from my child­hood. An alarm went off in the build­ing too, and we had to evac­u­ate. My boss asked me if I want­ed to get some beer and piz­za, but I told him that I had too much work to do. The temp­ta­tion was almost too great.

I’ve gen­er­al­ly been neglect­ing my eat­ing habits and my sleep­ing habits, and my school­work, even though I half-resolved not to. It’s good to know that no one cares. At least it’s hon­est. I know that I need much more bal­ance in my life, and I think that it’s some­thing I can achieve. It’s just been so hard with every­thing going on. Pat thinks that I should take a week off work. After all, it’s the rea­son why he quit the job in the first place. But he had a high main­te­nance girl­friend, and I had a neg­a­tive main­te­nance one at the time.

There just seems to be so much rea­son for me to stay awake late at night.

The Question Of Kids

I just received (with­in 10 min­utes) a one page let­ter deny­ing my appli­ca­tion to become a Big Brother. It great­ly, great­ly sad­dens me. I wish I knew why they decid­ed this, but they aren’t at lib­er­ty to dis­cuss it. I actu­al­ly had to sign some­thing acknowl­edg­ing that if I was reject­ed, I would­n’t know why, if the orga­ni­za­tion chose not to tell me.

I’ll always won­der why I was not allowed this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I thought I’d be good at it, but I’m sure that this com­mit­tee of peo­ple know bet­ter than I. After all, I have lit­tle expe­ri­ence with younger peo­ple. I just wish some­one could under­stand how much this would have meant to me.

I won­der if it could be my matu­ri­ty. If it could be my time restraints. My rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. My being a good hater. Could it be that they feel my motives are out of self­ish­ness? Could it be that one of my ref­er­ences gave me a bad rep­u­ta­tion? Or sim­ply that I’m not the right kind of per­son for the job? I real­ly have no idea, since I believe that I gave an extreme­ly good impres­sion at the inter­view.

I always believed that my expe­ri­ence with par­ent­ing would help me become a good par­ent myself. Many peo­ple whom I’ve spo­ken to believe this of me as well. Yet, the idea of hav­ing chil­dren of my own still scares me. It’s the idea that I am in con­trol of some­one else’s life, when I believe that my own life will always be full of entropy. What hap­pens to my child if I ever got divorced? What hap­pens if I ever died? So many uncer­tain­ties make the whole idea very fright­en­ing.

I also don’t believe I have the capac­i­ty to love in this man­ner. It’s not a pater­nal emo­tion that I have been able to devel­op or learn. I have my rea­sons.

The sub­ject of kids has always been present in my rela­tion­ships, and it’s usu­al­ly been a source of con­flict.

About three years ago I came upon a site called WebMD. It’s a pret­ty good resource for health issues, and psy­chol­o­gy issues. One of their events was a chat ses­sion with a par­ent­ing expert, and I could­n’t help but try to ask a ques­tion that I had been ask­ing myself at the time. The tran­script can be found here (my name was jesterz_webmd).

At the time, I felt like her answer was quite uncon­ven­tion­al.

I had been brought up my whole life think­ing that I need­ed chil­dren of my own to be hap­py. I sud­den­ly real­ized that think­ing this way was not for every­one, and that not hav­ing kids could be as ful­fill­ing as rais­ing kin. It was then that I decid­ed that I most like­ly would­n’t have chil­dren of my own.

Then again, I was only 19 on the time.