Posts in category "Daily Life"

Still Human

Crank it. Loud, and maybe you’ll under­stand how I feel.

I’ve been in such a slump the last week. Maybe I’m over-worked, over-tired, and over-stressed. Things haven’t been going my way.

It’s filled me with such frus­tra­tion, sad­ness, and anger.

Now I’m left to face the ugly world alone, and all I can think is to nev­er put your trust in some­one. Never be depen­dent, nev­er expect any­thing from any­one because you’ll only get hurt.

Pick your­self up, cause no one’s going to help you.

I try to ratio­nal­ize every­thing and fol­low the Tao, but I can’t. Everything is so over­whelm­ing.

As much as I’ve learned, as much wis­dom as I’ve gained, as far as I’ve come, I’m still human.

A Trip to Zone Closer to Perfection

On a whim, I went to Zone after work. I’ve been in a dec­o­rat­ing mood late­ly. I spent about an hour in there, just gath­er­ing design ideas with what they had.

Thumbnail: Potpourri plate

Thumbnail: Potpourri plate closeup

I picked up a pin­cush­ion plate and some pot­pour­ri for my cof­fee table, replac­ing the glass bowl I had before, and lined it up with the edge of the chaise lounge.

Decorating my house has always been impor­tant to me, but I’ve nev­er rushed into it. Part of the rea­son why it’s so emp­ty right now is because I want to put up my own pic­tures, and I nev­er had enough with which I was sat­is­fied to fill the walls. I don’t want pho­tos of mem­o­ries — what I have at work — I want pic­tures that set a cer­tain mood. Another thing that makes it hard is that I’ve nev­er liked non-func­tion­ing dec­o­ra­tions; can­dles you’d nev­er burn, baubles that don’t do any­thing, knick-knacks that clut­ter shelves don’t make sense to me.

Part of me wants to go out and buy every­thing at once and be set­tled, but anoth­er part of me nev­er wants to fin­ish.

Otherwise, I’d lose the thrill of the hunt, and the plea­sure of adding anoth­er thing that’s just right to the right place.

The Tao Tattoo Experience

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

I decid­ed to get my Tao tat­too about a month before I actu­al­ly had it done. Choosing an artist was­n’t hard. Tiana, who’s awe­some bro­ken argyle tat­too reminds me of insou­ciant kites against a sky, had hers done by Jay at New Moon. After see­ing some more of his work, which fea­tures fine­ly detailed lines sim­i­lar to what I had in mind, I decid­ed to go with him as well.

The appoint­ment was short. A quick check to make sure the posi­tion­ing close to the wrist joint was accept­able, and to leave a deposit.

The recep­tion­ist asked me, “What does the kan­ji mean?”.

“Kanji?”. I ques­tioned her assump­tion, and she quick­ly cor­rect­ed her­self. “Sorry, is it Chinese or Japanese or Korean…?”. I explained the char­ac­ter, and how it’s writ­ten the same way in Chinese and Japanese, the cal­lig­ra­phy being in a Chinese style.

Continue read­ing “The Tao Tattoo Experience”…

Apocalypse Now

I just had a day with­out con­tact in the office. So I called every sin­gle per­son I reg­u­lar­ly talk to on the phone, and not one of them picked up. These aren’t just sin­gle peo­ple, they’re fam­i­lies and cou­ples, which means that every­one in the house was out. I even called my cell phone to make sure my land line was work­ing.

It’s like I’m the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of an apoc­a­lypse. I’d half expect to see a mush­room cloud in the dis­tance, hous­es on fire, bod­ies in the streets if I looked out the win­dow.

I’ve nev­er felt so alone.