Yearly Archives: 2003

Intro

To divulge is ther­a­peu­tic.

Many may not con­scious­ly know this, but they divulge nonethe­less, for what feels bet­ter than to express one’s prob­lems or opin­ions to anoth­er? Burdens fall on more than one per­son. Convictions become stronger. In a world full of talk­ers, we need a world full of ears.

But I choose not to bur­den oth­ers with my prob­lems. I choose not to make oth­ers feel bad, or wor­ry them with won­der­ing. I don’t give peo­ple point­less details about my life, or bore them with things they don’t want to know. So I speak to what always lis­tens. I write to what is always there. I opine to what nev­er judges me.

Everyone has a sto­ry to tell.

This is mine.

Gauge

Self-improve­ment has been a goal I set for myself for as long as I remem­ber, a sort of nev­er-end­ing quest that I hope to find ful­fill­ment in. It makes me hap­py to know that I have peo­ple to look up to, peo­ple my age whom I know. Being able to real­ize that even these peo­ple are human has helped me set more real­is­tic goals for myself, instead of some quixot­ic ideals I could nev­er hope to accom­plish. Not every­one is the same, of course, and while I may look up to one per­son for their morals, I may look up to some­one else for their con­fi­dence.

However, I judge how well I’m doing in my goals by com­par­ing myself to peo­ple with per­son­al­i­ties I can’t stand. I try to be as san­guine as pos­si­ble, sim­ply because I know some­one who brings down every­one he hangs around with. I try to be open to oth­er peo­ples opin­ions due to the fact that I know some­one who refus­es to accept any­thing but his own con­clu­sions, as open-mind­ed as those are. I try to have fun even when I’m los­ing a game, as dif­fi­cult as that may be for me some­times, because I know some­one who becomes angry when­ev­er they lose. I try to act affec­tion­ate­ly but appro­pri­ate­ly with peo­ple I’m involved with, sim­ply because I know peo­ple who are either too des­per­ate or too cold. I try to give as much space as is need­ed in my rela­tion­ships because I know peo­ple who are exceed­ing­ly high-main­te­nance.

Whenever I see peo­ple act the way they do, I try to find the good in them. Sometimes I find both good and bad, but I focus on the good, a thing which comes eas­i­ly to me, per­haps as a result of my zeal to become a bet­ter per­son.

Sometimes I find only bad, and it gives me more to work for.

Nocturnal Living, Self-Grooming Arches, Tricky Brains

Living as a noc­tur­nal being over the last week has caused me to sleep improp­er­ly. I wake up every three hours, drowsy and feel­ing exhaust­ed, unable to fall back asleep again. This is the first time in my life that I haven’t real­ly cared about my sys­tem too much. I only eat two meals a day now and go to bed between four and eight in the morn­ing. It’s all worth it.

I’m think­ing of buy­ing Dolly a self-groom­ing arch because she seems to enjoy rub­bing her cheeks against my stiff-nee­dled brush. With the arch I won’t have to hold the brush against a sol­id sur­face for her, and she’ll be able to groom her whiskers when­ev­er she wants. I set up a lit­tle perch for her at the sun room win­dow so that she can look out­side and smell the air. I made a lit­tle stair­case for her using some milk crates and wick­er bas­kets, but she has­n’t fig­ured out how to use them to get to the high­est point yet.

I watched Tricky Brains again yes­ter­day. The only oth­er time that I’ve seen it in my life was when I was too young to remem­ber much about it. I do remem­ber that I real­ly enjoyed it though, and that it was one of the more emo­tion­al Steven Chow films. This is Chow at his best and the gags nev­er stop com­ing.