Yearly Archives: 2008

A Night with Russell Peters

Having front row tick­ets to see Russell Peters means that you’re a fair­ly big tar­get for being picked on.

Especially after Pat yells “WOO” amid an oth­er­wise silent the­atre when Russell starts to explain how Chinese peo­ple aren’t as cheap as Indian peo­ple. From that point, we were known as the “Wu” fam­i­ly, and he’d refer to us when talk­ing to the Chinese crowd.

No one is off-lim­its though, and his eth­nic jokes cov­er a spec­trum of races as wide as the earth. I sup­pose that’s how he pulls off his par­tic­u­lar brand of stereo­typ­ing com­e­dy. Ottawa is an espe­cial­ly fit­ting place, where minori­ties min­gle instead of seg­re­gate, and per­haps it’s exact­ly this rea­son that the crowd is so ebul­lient. It almost as if his set is writ­ten for us.

Afterwards, it was back to Pat and Jen’s for some con­ver­sa­tion over hot choco­late from their Tassimo. A scoop of mint-choco­late-chip ice cream dropped into said bev­er­age turns it into a yum­my can­dy-cane hot choco­late, some­thing I must explore fur­ther in the future.

Psychoanalytic Reflections 04

My anx­i­ety is now under con­trol1, so my ther­a­pist and I have moved onto oth­er issues.

It’s fun­ny that I start­ed going to ther­a­py for my anx­i­ety attacks, but he keeps dig­ging up issues I nev­er knew that I had.

Not that any of it is as debil­i­tat­ing the way the anx­i­ety attacks were, but it’s made me real­ize that they have affect­ed my qual­i­ty of life. All of it stems from my par­ents (as opposed to being teased, some kind of inci­dent, etc.). Once again, I say that I don’t like to blame them, but the glar­ing fact is that I can now trace every issue back to my child­hood.

The idea of a self-destruc­tive pat­tern where­by we repeat the pain of our child­hoods is called a life­trap. They’re cat­e­go­rized dif­fer­ent­ly, depend­ing on the school of psy­chol­o­gy one pre­scribes to, but my most sig­nif­i­cant ones (i.e. rat­ed “very high”) are emo­tion­al depri­va­tion, depen­dence, unre­lent­ing stan­dards, and puni­tive­ness. When I first start­ed, I also had pes­simism, but this has most­ly gone with my anx­i­ety.

I’ll touch on two of them now:

Emotional Deprivation

  • One of the things that sparked the real­iza­tion that I did­n’t have a reg­u­lar child­hood was when I was asked to fill out a diag­nos­tic ques­tion­naire. I was told to rate how strong­ly I felt about the state­ment “I have not had some­one to nur­ture me, share him/herself with me, or care deeply about what hap­pens to me”. I thought to myself, “That’s nor­mal? People have that?”.
    • This is why I feel alone and detached from the world. It’s not quite as clean-cut as this, as there are a bunch of oth­er issues that fac­tor into the issue, but it’s an over­all feel­ing.
    • Until that point, I nev­er con­sid­ered the idea that such peo­ple exist. I assume the par­ents are sup­posed to fill this role, and even­tu­al­ly a spouse.
    • In many peo­ple with emo­tion­al depri­va­tion, the life­trap man­i­fests itself in rela­tion­ships where they remain emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant. For me, it’s more of a dif­fi­cul­ty com­mu­ni­cat­ing to my girl­friends about my needs, and then feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed when my needs aren’t met.
      • This makes me won­der how cer­tain rela­tion­ships would have worked out if I was a dif­fer­ent per­son and did­n’t keep break­ing up with my girl­friends
      • Unfortunately, I could write a book on this.

Unrelenting Standards

  • I’ve real­ized that I’m still being too hard on myself. This stems from the expec­ta­tions put on me as a child, or sim­ply the fact that I think being unsat­is­fied with stag­nan­cy is healthy because self-improve­ment makes me a bet­ter per­son. Most like­ly, a bit of both.
    • Sometimes I have to com­pare myself to some­one like Pat to give myself per­spec­tive on this issue. He’s a per­son who has­n’t “achieved” much when eval­u­at­ed by my stan­dards, but he’s hap­py and that’s what mat­ters. It makes me ques­tion what I’m try­ing so hard to achieve. I think of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin says, “It’s hard to argue with some­one who looks so hap­py”
    • I under­stand that it’s the pur­suit of great­ness, not great­ness itself, that should make life worth liv­ing, so when I have this self-destruc­tive­ness as a result, it does­n’t quite make sense. I’m work­ing on this. It helps me to keep a quote by Charlotte Cushman in mind: “To try to be bet­ter is to be bet­ter”.
    • A side effect is that I’m too hard on oth­er peo­ple because I project my unre­lent­ing stan­dards on them as well.
    • A lot of peo­ple tell me that I would­n’t have had so much pres­sure to be the best and per­form well if I was­n’t an only child.
  1. I don’t say solved because I don’t think one can com­plete­ly elim­i­nate anx­i­ety [↩]

Kitteh With Catnip

One of the advan­tages of hav­ing such a lov­able cat is that peo­ple want to buy her things. I make a con­scious effort not to spoil her with human food, so she hap­pi­ly accepts toys and treats from peo­ple.

Like this bun­ny filled with cat­nip that Louise bought for her.

One thing she real­ly likes to do is grab her cat­nip toys by the teeth and shake them to release the scent. I don’t give her cat­nip very often, so in ston­er terms, this meas she’s a light­weight.

And oh how she loves it; with­in a few min­utes, the fur of the toy is cov­ered in cat drool.

Making A Difference

Over the last while, I’ve been receiv­ing some very nice let­ters and com­ments.

Two, in par­tic­u­lar, touched me. This one:

I stum­bled upon your blog a few days ago. I’m read­ing all your archives right now.

One of your entries moved me so much I had to pass it to my best, most initi­mate, most sensitive/sensual girl­friends. It was­n’t a big group, but a group I felt could hear what you were say­ing in your entry. It was about find­ing the spot on a woman that should be kissed.

I read your blog every day because I can’t believe there is a man out in the uni­verse who is this intu­itive, in tune, so aware of him­self emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. I wish you had gone to my col­lege — you would have been so loved and admired.

So this entry dis­tress­es me, and I don’t even know you. I under­stand lon­li­ness — I’ve nev­er had inti­ma­cy, or rather, I’m very afraid of it. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this because you don’t know me either and you won’t care, but this entry hurts. You must know by now that some­one thinks of you every­day. Maybe it is your mom, maybe an ex-lover or girl­friend or male friend or co work­er.

I think I’m more in shock that you can write so hon­est­ly and open­ly. I’m jeal­ous of that.

well, I just want­ed to let you know that. And that I have a crush on your blog. Can a per­son crush on a blog?

Please take care,
Zaira

And this from a few months ago:

Hi Jeff,

you don’t know me and we will prob­a­bly nev­er meet. It’s sort of inter­est­ing the way the inter­net has changed the way we can know some­one.

Allow me to intro­duce myself, since you have already bore your soul in a very real way that has moved me to write to a com­plete stranger-some­thing i have nev­er done.

I am a 30 yr old inte­ri­or design­er, a born and bred new york­er cur­rent­ly liv­ing in brook­lyn. It’s been slow at work late­ly, so to pass the time I have tak­en to read­ing blogs most­ly design relat­ed, but some­how i read a com­ment that you had made on a ran­dom blog, look­ing back i can’t remem­ber which one unfor­tu­nate­ly, and it led me back to your per­son­al blog some­how.

you see I am not like you at all. I feel sim­i­lar feel­ings, and even have sim­i­lar beliefs, but I don’t have the guts to put myself out there in that way. I dont even have a blog, and i can bare­ly talk to my friends about the way im feel­ing. so for me your blog is very ther­a­peu­tic and refresh­ing.

like most peo­ple who blog, im sure, you won­der if any­one out there is read­ing. Well just want­ed to let you know that I real­ly like your blog and will con­tin­ue to read it.

I have added you as a flickr con­tact and i see that you have reciprocated-*armadilliz* I am not a stalk­er / crazy per­son, or any­thing like that, just a fan, so rest easy.

Take care,

-Liz

And while peo­ple tell me how much they appre­ci­ate me being open and shar­ing myself, it’s noth­ing com­pared to what they share of them­selves in these let­ters. I don’t know what com­pels some­one to write to a total stranger, but it’s a warm­ing ges­ture, some­thing that inspires me when I’m feel­ing closed and self-con­scious.

So I want to say thank you.

Thank you to the peo­ple who’ve writ­ten me. Thank you to the peo­ple who share their own prob­lems and issues and lives. Thank you to the peo­ple who let me know that I’ve inspired them to start their own jour­nals. Thank you for sup­port­ing me when we’ve nev­er even spo­ken.

It’s your words that make me feel like I’m not so alone when I’m sit­ting in my house, won­der­ing what to do with myself. It’s your kind­ness that gives me strength when the world is falling down around me. It’s know­ing that I’ve been able to make a dif­fer­ence that keeps me going.

Thank you.

Tears as a Turn-On

It became painful­ly obvi­ous that my turn-on of girls cry­ing is relat­ed to my own pen­chant for sad love­mak­ing.

I’ve always liked the idea of bring­ing some­one from tears to bliss­ful phys­i­cal plea­sure. Like make-up sex with­out the fight­ing.

A girl was able to do that for me once, so I’ve always want­ed to be able to do it for some­one else.

Either that, or my sad­ness is min­gling with my lust.