Yearly Archives: 2005

Oh, The Humanity

Although not in any nar­ra­tive Herbert Morrison sense.

I had a dif­fer­ent entry half-writ­ten, but the dark­ness was debil­i­tat­ing. All I want­ed was a sec­ond sun; it felt like a case of SAD because the night was mak­ing me both anx­ious and uneasy. It’s noth­ing close to a pan­ic attack, but it was bad enough that I felt com­pelled to called Pat to help talk me out of it. He’s one of the only peo­ple I can count on 24/7, and just talk­ing to him for an hour helps me fig­ure out more about the world than three months of writ­ing here. I know my eye­s’ll feel like lead weights tomor­row for stay­ing up this late, but I need to get this entry down before I lose it. Hopefully, know­ing that it’s Friday will be enough to keep me alive through the day.

Self-improve­ment has dri­ven me for most of my life, a nev­er-end­ing goal that’s guid­ed me through my actions and beliefs. This is usu­al­ly based on com­par­i­son, since improve­ment is always rel­a­tive. Those who can accom­plish what I have dif­fi­cul­ty doing always have my respect, and give me some­thing to work towards.

Before I com­plain about get­ting six hours of sleep the pre­vi­ous night, I think of Navy SEALs who get four hours total dur­ing Hell Week, a five day under­wa­ter train­ing exer­cise dur­ing the first phase of the BUD/S. That’s when I real­ize that I should be able to sur­vive an extra hour of work with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. When I feel like throw­ing my hands in the air after work­ing on an ad for four hours, blind­ed by the depth with which I’ve star­ing at the mate­r­i­al, I think of my boss who can work through count­less inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions. That’s when I real­ize that I should keep at my work, because per­se­ver­ance will almost always yield results.

If I can sur­vive it, any­thing can make me stronger.

But as I dis­cov­ered tonight, every­one has their weak­ness­es. Even Pat. He’s always seemed as sol­id as a rock, com­plete­ly unfal­ter­ing, but he admit­ted that there are also moments of weak­ness, how­ev­er brief. Times when he can’t get any work done because some­thing is both­er­ing him that he can’t let go. Times when he just does­n’t feel like going out or social­iz­ing. To find this out about Pat, was to dis­cov­er that the most cheer­ful, friend­ly, con­fi­dent, and men­tal­ly strong per­son I know has his off days. Even the hard­est work­ing, most pro­duc­tive per­son I know occa­sion­al­ly falls vic­tim to a case of the Mondays or the 9–5 grind. There must be some sem­blance of bal­ance, in how much to push one­self, and how much to accept.

To strive for per­fec­tion is fine, but to lose sleep over imper­fec­tion is fool­ish.

Being a dom­i­nant, respon­si­ble for anoth­er per­son, means that one should be sol­id as often as pos­si­ble, but even this extreme case should allow for some lee­way. This does­n’t mean that I won’t try as hard in my attempt at dom­i­nance, but know­ing this cer­tain­ly makes the approach, and even self-improve­ment in gen­er­al, much eas­i­er.

Some may say that it’s a fal­la­cy to com­pare one­self to oth­er peo­ple. After all, every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and tol­er­ance lev­els, and it’s no fault to born bet­ter at some things than oth­ers.

But even then, every­body’s human.

Keeping Myself Occupied Has Been Easy

Some things fall in my lap, oth­ers I active­ly seek out. It’s keep­ing track of every­thing that’s get­ting dif­fi­cult.

Too busy to think. Too busy to write.

I have to remind myself that that’s what I want­ed.

And here I am, turn­ing over in my head the idea of moon­light­ing at a home­ly used book store that’s a five minute walk from my house. Stuck to the glass door is a notice for part-time help dur­ing the week­end, that I pass by every time I go gro­cery shop­ping. I walked in there once and bought a Penguin Classics copy of The Odyssey for $1.45, because I lost my old copy from high school long ago. I’ve always want­ed to work at a cof­fee shop, but gave up on that idea after apply­ing to one a few years ago and find­ing out that my résumé end­ed up in the garbage, was picked out because of a good word put in by a friend, and prompt­ly placed back in the garbage again. In hind­sight, I’m glad I was­n’t hired because I would have quit before the train­ing was over. It was only some­thing to hold me over until I could find some­thing with a bet­ter career that’s more in line with my edu­ca­tion, which is exact­ly what I found two weeks lat­er. A book­store seems like a good alter­na­tive.

Aaron and Shirley are both encour­ag­ing me to go for it. The for­mer thinks that it’ll be a good change from the reg­u­lar 9–5 that I do, and a job that I can use to relax. The lat­ter is telling me it’ll be fun, and that she’ll pur­sue her own dream job as a wait­ress (moon­light­ing as well) if I apply to this one.

I’m still con­sid­er­ing.

Transitway Six

Thumbnail: Transitway

On days like this, it’s bet­ter to wear light cloth­ing, and throw on a hood­ed wind­break­er. The rain out­side is just a driz­zle, so it’s com­fort­ably cool. Pay no atten­tion to the hydraulic hiss of the wind­shield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hear­ing them through the qui­et parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are few­er dis­trac­tions from peo­ple walk­ing down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the oth­er, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a mem­o­ry. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apart­ment. Sometimes you’d find Christie wait­ing for you here on the bench­es between class­es. How long ago those days seem, how imma­ture and rel­a­tive­ly inno­cent. The next two stops are on the edge of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, four years of scat­tered tru­an­cy. Two stops lat­er is where you use to buy a medi­um caramel cor­ret­to every morn­ing after an exhaust­ing night with Louise. Your old gov­ern­ment office is anoth­er two on. The con­crete build­ing looks so for­eign now, and you won­der if the same peo­ple are still inside. Another few stops is your last apart­ment, before buy­ing the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music nev­er meant so much.

You pass by con­struc­tion sites, fin­ished build­ings, see the evo­lu­tion of the city.

Every stop can be traced to a dif­fer­ent point, a dif­fer­ent girl­friend, a dif­fer­ent path in your life.

Six years of expe­ri­ence, six years of shift­ing, ever-chang­ing ani­ma.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.

Awakening: The Reborn Dreamer

I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do any­thing.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I could­n’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was nev­er actu­al­ly put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ent­ly if I ever came fright­en­ing­ly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mys­tery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­at­ed by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­er­al who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recent­ly dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­at­ed and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­si­ty. After uni­ver­si­ty, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­pris­es. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been giv­en, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­den­ly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would dark­en into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

I pre­sent­ed this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should nev­er live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to tru­ly live this way, it does­n’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to wor­ry in the day­time and too sleepy to wor­ry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to sur­vive.

And I can only hope to nev­er reach them.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer

Just Forget

Jeff: I can tell you feel the same
dar: do you still talk to her?
Jeff: no…I actu­al­ly specif­i­cal­ly told her not to talk to me again
Jeff: cause of some creepy stalk­er shit she was doing
dar: haha­ha
Jeff: and she still e‑mails me
dar: damn..
dar: she’s going to kill you in the dark
Jeff: haha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­hah­ha­ha­haaaahh
dar: she prob. knows where u live
dar: and watch­es you

In uni­ver­si­ty I met Mike, half-heart­ed­ly doing his biol­o­gy home­work in my cryp­tol­ogy class to hang out with his old high-school friend, the lat­ter of whom was one of my clique. Mike has an odd charis­ma. His out­spo­ken­ness means that he exudes con­fi­dence, and the girls love him for it. I’m nev­er real­ly sure if his mild chau­vin­ism is a seri­ous atti­tude, or just some­thing he projects around oth­er guys to fit in. One of those sex­ist ass­holes the girls can’t seem to resist.

He once con­fessed, “I have this Korean chick fol­low­ing me. You know, the kind you have to kick off your leg like a dog”.

Those girls are only in the movies, I thought to myself. The dorky ones with the glass­es who have impos­si­ble crush­es on the main char­ac­ters, who, in turn, are com­plete­ly blind to the awk­ward advances. The girls who sac­ri­fice their chance at hap­pi­ness, because they love him so much and just want him to be hap­py, mar­tyring them­selves in the minds of teen audi­ences every­where.

But they do exist. Those stub­born girls who still try to keep con­tact after you tell them you nev­er want to speak to them again. The girls who con­tin­ue to check your blog at an aver­age of twice a day, some sick voyeuris­tic fas­ci­na­tion.

Those girls you wished would for­get about you, so you could for­get about them.