Yearly Archives: 2003

My Congeniality Is Not Benevolence

I’ll always try to give every­one a fair chance when I first meet them. I assume the “gener­ic”, kind per­son­al­i­ty, which is pri­mar­i­ly used to make the per­son com­fort­able and open, enough to feel them out.

Unfortunately, some peo­ple mis­take this as friend­li­ness, when I real­ly could­n’t give a shit about them. All I’m try­ing to do is find out more about their per­son­al­i­ties and their lives because that’s what I’m always inter­est­ed in. It’s usu­al­ly the peo­ple who are social­ly dis­ad­van­taged who mis­in­ter­pret this, and believe that I’m inter­est­ed in friend­ship.

Usually when I sense some­thing I don’t like about some­one (which hap­pens more often than not) I’ll dis­tance myself from them and turn cold. This gen­er­al­ly means I have no fur­ther inter­est in asso­ci­at­ing with them. I’ll nev­er ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion with them, nev­er state my opin­ion around them, nev­er show emo­tion to them. Most can sense this and step back, pos­si­bly sub­con­scious­ly, and eas­i­ly because most haven’t invest­ed any­thing in the rela­tion­ship.

However, some­times some­one won’t get the idea and cling to the ini­tial mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. In these cas­es, I’m left with some­one who thinks I’m his or her friend. They’ll open up, tell me things, put their trust in me, when I don’t care (when I sense some­thing I dis­like, I lose all inter­est).

I’ve always won­dered if it’s just me being an ass­hole by wear­ing a kind per­son­al­i­ty sim­ply to sat­is­fy my curios­i­ty, or whether it’s the fault of oth­ers for mis­in­ter­pret­ing my expres­sions and actions. In the past I’ve always blamed myself and felt bad when some­one finds out that I’m not their friend, but I’m begin­ning to blame oth­ers. I’ve run into a few social­ly retard­ed peo­ple who just don’t under­stand any­thing about the dynam­ic set of social rules sur­round­ing them. I know now in some cas­es that it’s not my fault.

But this fact does­n’t alle­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tions.

New Laptop, Birthday Party, TT League

Apparently, my new lap­top is sched­uled for deliv­ery on Monday. I was hop­ing for Friday so I’d have the week­end to work on it, but I’m gen­er­al­ly only busy on the week­ends so it does­n’t make too much dif­fer­ence. Cristina’s hav­ing a birth­day par­ty at the Honest Lawyer on Saturday, which works out per­fect­ly because prac­tice on Sundays are usu­al­ly mid-after­noon. After the Halloween par­ty last Friday, I was too hung over to attend the Saturday prac­tice. I’ve been con­sid­er­ing enter­ing a team in the new­ly formed city league, but I would prob­a­bly need a fourth and I’d rather not social­ize with the avail­able peo­ple.

Mind Muffler

It always inter­ests me to learn how some peo­ple are changed so sud­den­ly in their lives. An inci­dent, whether it’s retire­ment, grad­u­a­tion, death, or any­thing of such a mag­ni­tude, cause some to have new rev­e­la­tions or epipha­nies. The fact that it takes some­thing as dras­tic as these sit­u­a­tions to affect some peo­ple seems seems a lit­tle odd to me.

Do these peo­ple not think at all in their dai­ly lives? Do they go through one day to the next with­out look­ing at the big pic­ture, with­out see­ing some sort of per­spec­tive?

I think I’m gen­er­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by such extreme events because of the fact that I try to find mean­ing in almost every­thing I expe­ri­ence (risk­ing pre­ten­sion). It ends up being that some­thing like the loss of a favorite shirt can affect me as much as fail­ing an entire uni­ver­si­ty course. I feel as if I learn enough about myself from both events. As a result of this, I some­times change on a day to day basis, although it’s gen­er­al­ly on a minis­cule lev­el and takes a while before it all builds up into any­thing notice­able.

Of course, this also means that very lit­tle ends up sur­pris­ing me. I’m rarely shocked by any­thing, and often feel like my emo­tions have been lev­eled off, per­haps numb or sim­ply accus­tomed to change. I don’t get dras­ti­cal­ly affect­ed any­more, and in turn, can think and act clear­ly accord­ing to my set of log­ic. The only thing that ends up over­com­ing my cere­bral­i­ty is hate.

And love.

The TT Characters

At the club yes­ter­day there was a woman who must have been in her sev­en­ties, who played a fair­ly fast (though unbal­anced) game. She liked to talk some shit against my lucky shots, which was pret­ty fun­ny, cause oth­er­wise she’s a sweet old lady with a slight British accent. I was also matched up against Barry, a para­plegic who was kick­ing my ass in his wheel­chair, after hav­ing played two hours of wheel­chair ten­nis. He plays much faster and more aggres­sive­ly than me, and can place his shots with amaz­ing pre­ci­sion. It’s real­ly help­ing me work on my fore­hand to back­hand returns.

I’m get­ting my abs back, espe­cial­ly the obliques. My right arm is rough­ly an inch big­ger than the left now. I’m think­ing that it’s all the weight trans­fer that needs to be done when smash­ing, espe­cial­ly against Dan. He’s like an artist on the court, aware of all vari­ables involved in a sin­gle hit, able to make the ball do what­ev­er he wants. It’s a plea­sure to watch him play.