the one common thread lately that has been asked of me is to look inward. the answer lies there they say. either that or find Jesus which someone anonymously posted, but Jesus, as we all know, doesn’t pay the bills, at least in this household.
i think to ask me to look inward seems awfully silly, for what is a journal if it is not inward reflection in and of itself? to question and to grow from your own strengths and weaknesses. to wonder how you can do more or better with your life and archive more. I didn’t want to be an extraordinary person, rather, i wanted to lead an extraordinary life. i wanted to say that i did things that not that many people have done and seen things not that many people.
so i don’t understand why someone would ask me that.
i have searched for answers all my life to questions i thought that pertained to me, and turns out seem to pretrain to mankind. as someone gently pointed out to me that you must some how sieve through the bad to get to the good and even then it’s almost blind faith on knowing whether that person is truly of some decent caliber.
I guess I can’t accept that, and I never could.
I remember once when I was very little, I must of been about 5 or 6, it was before my brother was born or around that time I’m sure, my mother and i folding clothes in the dining room. Now that sounds a bit absurd but you must realise the house we lived in was an old farm house that had been added on to several times and thusly, it ended up being a 14 room house. Because the basement was a Michigan basement (called as such as it was unfinished), only the washer resided down there while the dryer was upstairs in the kitchen. [That sounds almost British!] And of course it was quite easy to shift clothing from the dryer to the dining room table (w/ leaves sat 12, w/o leaves sat 8) and fold the clothing appropriately.
I remember feeling that i had this burning question in my heart to ask, something I was afraid to get an answer on. As we sat there folding towels and jeans, I remember asking my mother in my five year old voice about something she had said/done to me that i thought was extremely unfair. I was absolutely SURE it was unfair. My mothers answer did not please me and I wish I knew what the question to this day even was, but I remember feeling when I was done how life seemed to screwed in the head. There was something so intrinsically right in my head that to hear that it was wrong didn’t make sense. First beginnings of being stubborn? Perhaps, Or about being passionate? Who knows. I just remember feeling that life was going to be difficult enough without having to worry about all these little details. Hell, I remember the cold walk home when I was 8 clutching my math book to my chest having a panic attack because there was no effing way I was going to do long division or whatever the hell it was that third graders should be doing let along going to high school? I was convinced i would not have enough time to learn it all. do not ask me why i thought this, i still do not know to this day. Might explain some of my procrastination.
I do not have a single solitary answer as to why I kept an online journal, or why I’ve seemingly abandon it sometimes or why sometimes themes are repeated. I think perhaps I’ve always written in something, and I can remember instances of flashbacks when I was a child writing outside under the stars, over by the library against a tree by the river or at home upstairs on my desk. I do not have my original diaries from that time but I wish i did. They have been lost via many shuffles.
I had a great conversation with Graham the other night, which lasted for about 2.5 hours. One thing I have noticed in my later years is my aversion to use the phone. It’s not that I won’t talk to people, but I don’t get many personal phone calls (why should i when there is e-mail) and incidentally neither does Paul. So getting two personal calls in one day seemed thrilling albeit i was a bit spacey with graham, which I apologized profusely on. Anyways, Graham called to cheer both myself and himself up and I think partially it did the trick. One thing we did comment on is that neither of us have really an older parentally figure (if you will) to guide us on the path to life. With Graham it is mostly because of his work-aholicism and being a Brit in the US (though he has lost some of his accent except when he says schedule, so he must go back to the UK for that). For me I never grew up with a father figure, save for my crazy grandfather, and my mother was a workaholic. I still carry on intense guilt thinking that I must be some intense disappointment to my father for not being around (yes I know its not my fault that he didn’t show up for 20 years, but you tell my subconscious that) or that i feel this need that I have to take care of my mother because really, who else will? Apparently not the state if (#*&#)@(#* Social Security hasn’t kicked in, but that is not here or there all together.
Reading over some comments left on the livejournal.com site about yesterdays entry along with entries that I’ve written in the past, i wonder if the problem isn’t a breakdown in communication.
My friend Ben and I have it a lot, mostly it is because of the translation of slang. Ben lives in Belgium and we all know where i live! But it’s often funny if he says something and I’m like wtf do you mean and vice versa. it’s amusing because what i say sometimes doesn’t convey well to him and i need to explain what i mean.
But herein likes the point, is that sometimes i feel like I’m not speaking English/American even though it sounds like i am. I will say/write something and there will be 10 different interpretations as to what was actually said. This was also reflected back in the day with ‘work e-mail’ due to ‘my tone’ sounded too snotty. I have zero idea how telling a customer that he misconfigured a router was being snotty but hey, who am i to argue? Even with paul, i pick apart his words to make sure I get the meaning clear and he calls me mean (apparently joking). Like today when I picked him up at work and I told him about the possible early acceptance to a school, and therefore i was leaving in a month ish he went nuts. He looked at me accusingly stating that I ruined Christmas for him since I was leaving two weeks early, he must then get a drivers license earlier and buy a car earlier and he’d have no money to buy a plane ticket back to Miami for the holidays. I apparently had it all made in the shade because everything was being “taken care of.” Somehow this is my problem that he waited three years to get a drivers license/car, with his excuse of we couldn’t afford it — trust me we could. Plane tickets to Miami are 200 bucks max and maybe if he stopped spending 250 bucks at Amazon.com on cds this wouldn’t be an issue. But apparently my one sentence span out of control to produce this litany of complaint.
I just ate my Wendy’s sammich and read e-mail and watched movies for the rest of the evening and stayed as far away as possibly as I could.
I find that i spend a lot of time defending or clarifying myself because I did not quantify my statements in whatever needs clarifying or defending. Sometimes it’s a miss of a letter or a structure of a sentence and others it’s just plain gibberish. Sometimes the other person doesn’t want to see the black/white and understand it himself.
I think save for a few obvious mistakes, I’ve stood by what I’ve said and do not regret what I say. I’ve had to reassure that I am open to apologizing to others when needed and that I’m not so arrogant to think that I’m never wrong. I do not like to think that what I say is ‘mea culpa’ rather a listing of facts told in an amusing yet entertaining way. I do not seek for sympathy rather i seek for understanding and empathy (yes they are the same thing it just sounds good).
I also know I often repeat myself and that i often reiterte what I say — I do this to make sure we are clear that my meaning and your understanding is one and the same for a grave mistake that is made is poor writing skills for if the reader does not understand basics of what the writer is saying, the writer is at fault. If the reader cannot grasp basic understanding, then reader is a moronic twit who fails to understand basic sentence structure.
now why can’t i be this prolific with my NanoWriMo Novel (0 words and counting).
Tag: Existential Crisis
morality and ethics girl
So there I was, standing in line at World Market yesterday evening, with my cute little basket hanging off my arm and adorable plaid oven mitts twirling off my fingers. Ahead of me were the Two Fat Ladies © who were bitching/moaning about the price of the sale items and their 5 dollar bottles of champagne. I was not in a hurry and I did not have any particular place to go. The line behind me seemed to be getting long however, so the clerk called for backup and when the second cashier showed up and asked for next in line, Ken and Barbie jumped at the chance and cut in front of me and several other folks. They were not apologetic about jumping the line, they just did. Other people quickly followed suit and i went from being second in line to the last.
I’ve been hearing for awhile now about how ever since 9/11 people have been getting nicer and nicer. We’ve become a more polite society and a more reasonable one. We are gracious and kind and considerate. Am I the only one who feels like this is a bunch of bullshit and that we are just deluding ourselves? What ever happened to spending 20 seconds to say thank you or even write a nice note for a job well done. Why or how have we become so jaded that we simply do not care any more?
I do not know.
I realised the other day that this was was the reason why I was so angry recently. I am truly sick and tired of people being rude and inconsiderate. From everything from saying please and thank you to not using turn signals when driving. I’m tired of women like the two fat bitches who rather shove products they didn’t want to the side and hide them from the cashier than to give them to the cashier so that he can restock them. I’m tired of people getting short with me when I ask a question because they are being inconsiderate and won’t pay attention to me. I’m sick of being just being mean for no other reason other than to be mean. Not everything is my fault and hence it shouldn’t be treated that way. I’m sorry that the mere thought of spending more than 5 bucks on champagne gives you the willies but that gives you no right to to be rude to the clerk. He just works there. Ken and Barbie could have hold off a few extra minutes to let others through.
I mean, think about it. Stand in line somewhere and watch how people will shove and push to get to the front. Very rarely since 9/11 have I been anywhere where people were not being totally inconsiderate. Take Baltimore Aquarium for instance. Mark and I had stood in line getting tickets and this woman a few paces back lights up and smokes a cigarette WHILE IN LINE. Now you are probably saying to yourself ‘lisa, you used to smoke’ and yah that’s true, but I never was inconsiderate to those around me and i certainly would never smoke in a public place, in line that was packed tighter than sardines. I started coughing from the smoke and Mark swapped places with me because I was seriously thinking about bitchslapping this woman in the face.
in which: lisa gets confused
I’ve been sitting here moving like a sloth today. In fact, if i moved any slower, I’d probably be dead. I’m paying homage to the slugs i saw last night when I was outside at midnight varnishing a chest to hold my linens in. i got these flash brilliant points of light when i was varnishing that i could turn this hobby of one into a project in case i left my job. which is on my mind, a lot, losing my job. it ranks up there with leaving, moving, and being sexy. some would say my train
of thought seems to range down the pretty shallow range. I’d say it’s pretty human.
i just watch a pretty dreadful movie, Kate and Leopold. If you haven’t seen it, I don’t recommend it and the only cute thing was Natasha Lyonne playing Meg Ryan’s admin assist and she gushing over bodice rippers. I love Natasha in just about everything she’s done, except But I’m a Cheerleader!, because that was simply crap. Art house films for the most part seem to be filled with subversive need to push the boundaries because they can not because it actually means something. Modern art does not speak to me, however I like Kandinsky. Go figure that one out.
I have this thing about smells, always have. This weekend I went walking around the mall and was opening up bottles of cologne to sniff to see if i could find a new scene for myself. Foolish counter girls at the stores. Why is it that they assume that if you look like a bum you can’t buy anything? I could buy/sell their damn counter several times over. I did it a few weeks back before my birthday party when i bought out Clinique counter and the woman was amazed (and hooked me upon some free crap as well, which is a good thing considering how much i spent).
i wondered around and sniffed.
CK
—-
it was your smell
that’s all i could remember
laying
down on the sofa, on the
bed
closing my eyes and thinking
of
you
—–
the winner is…
not me.
too much inspiration and not enough creativity. i miss them all and apparently that’s a bad thing. apparently it’s wrong. it’s always wrong.
i’m waiting for the dam to burst and i don’t have any towels to stop the leaks. and i’m glad I don’t, because once the dam bursts open then perhaps we can all save ourselves instead of lying to each other on a daily basis. I’m back to looking at people through green-colored glasses, wishing life was really like that over on that side and knowing that they are mere shallow humans walking around in their lean cuisine and abtastic bodies.
i’ve not had a cigarette in 60+ days and my mouth feels like shit. Nothing can make the taste go away, so what do I do? I eat and I consume mass quanties of water and it stilld oesn’t go away.
———
i’ve written before about my dream of the mystery lover who whom i’d never see but yet he was always with me. the mystery lover whom i knew was a brunette but yet i never saw his face. I have all these qualifications in my head of what they are like, this person. These qualifications that I’ve been fine tuning since i was a wee tot, and today i said to myself “Fuck. it.”
i miss him/them. it never was. i miss their smell.
———
it was your smell
that’s all i could remember
laying
down on the sofa, on the
bed
closing my eyes and thinking
of
you
harder, better, faster, stronger
on-line right now talking to some stranger in seattle, my brother in michigan and my high-school sweetheart who happens to now reside in Portland, OR. As I had stated in my livejournal, the past is falling out of the woodwork. First Josh and now Aaron.
I’ve been pacing myself outside myself recently to see what I was really like, you know, to everyone else. I used to think that I was unphotogenic but due to the recent rash of pictures that have surfaced, that little line will have to go back. So I look at these pictures and what I see and what I think I am and how
people perceive me are obviously three different things. I didn’t like the young woman in the images I saw. I didn’t like the poses or the facial expressions. I thought i was seeing a fat ugly whore. really. I’m not saying that to be negative but I am saying that to be true – at least to me. Now friends, friends say different things. They always have, but I don’t feel like I am a hot piece of ass. Now Alisha, she’s a hot piece of ass. She just oozes sensual and sex. Me on the other hand do not and I wish I did. And then the there is the opinion of me by me when I see myself in mirrors and what not. Depending on the view, I do think of myself as a hot piece of ass.
thirty
I’ve been watching the clock all day. Waiting for midnight, which will be in about 20 minutes, because I will be saying goodbye to my 20s forever. I have become, pathetically morbid about this particular birthday. Something, about the age, is grating on me and I cannot tell or say for sure what it is. I keep hearing from women in their 30s+ that the 30s were the perfect time of their life. Still young and youthful but not stupid and cocksure. The ages of 30-35 seemed to be the golden age for a woman because she knows what she wants and how to get it.
Personally I have not figured out why my obsession with my age is so frantic, but it is. I’ve been swapping between moping and careening about this day. Some say I should just grow the fuck up and deal with it and personally, like I always say, I wish I could agree with them and do said growing the fuck up but you’ll find (as I find) that what we are being told to do is not as easy as it seems. I’m still waiting for the answers and the tellings that people keep saying and yet these same said people will open and fornicate with their mouths but yet the fornication is dry and cheap.
Sometimes I love my euphemisms. I thought I had alliterated (no such word) but thanks to m-w.com, I found out I was wrong.
10 minutes.
midnight means nothing. If you want to get pedantic about it, i was actually born in the afternoon — 4 something on June 12, 1972. It was rainy, muggy and humid. My father left my mother on the corner by the hospital when she was in labor and she didn’t see him until three days later. I often wonder if my mother feels guilt or love or something about my father, even though they had been divorced for over 25 years at his death. I cannot be the only adult in history who feels like a bus ran them over since their father has died. The other thing that kills me is that my birthday always falls around Fathers Day and for the last three years I have been furious at all the e-mail I have received via direct marketing for said holiday. I want to call up Amazon.com, Cdnow.com, bestbuy.com and the rest of the lot and strangle them for being so insensitive. I wish you could opt-out of certain marketing advertising because of whatever.
In five minutes I will die, I want you to know that.
When you hit 30, you think you’ll have x amount of stuff done with your life. You’ll have finished college. Gotten a job with a firm you wanted to work for. Get married and spawn brats. Have the dogs and the whole nine yards. At 25 I bemoaned the loss of my youth and laughingly, I can recall feeling the same way then as I do know. Sitting in a BART station with Christian and yet feeling like my life had gone to complete and utter shit. That no one, no one would ever fucking love me the way I want(ed) to be loved. I remember thinking that Christian did not love me and I was right, while the location and names have changed, it’s still the same damn fucking story.
In three minutes I will implode.
Five years is a long time. A very long time. I have moved cross- country twice, been in a few relationships. I basically lived.
BOOM. I blew up.
Five years ago, if you would have asked me where I was going to be when I was 30, i certainly would not have said in the ‘burbs of Washington DC, on a flaming red/pink duvet anxiously watching three clocks for the stroke of midnight.
I’ve been accused of being whiny about this birthday — and I think I have every right to be whiny. The thing is, is that I’m tired of people who harangue me about turning 30 (or basically feel that it’s their due to tell me that my ovaries are getting crusty) and are not supplying any real answers.
the bottom line is this:
I do not feel that I particularly smart or gifted or special. I am not fishing for compliments, I am just being honest with myself. But there is something in me, in my core that doesn’t seem to agree with normal day to day life. At work I want to rip my hair out because I am so bored and the job seems to be tedious. The thought of what I do on a daily basis makes me cringe when I realise how menial it sounds. Everything from washing clothes to taking a shower seems to be beneath me. I cannot comprehend day to day life for another fourty years, I will kill myself if it is like this. I feel bored, in a rut and itching to get into mischief. The sheer fact that to share this with another person and to make this the basis of a relationship? Seems laughable and pitiful, at best. Something is wrong and I’m aware but at the same token a little voice in the back of my head keeps saying ‘waht if you are right and they were all wrong’.
I keep telling people that I am waiting for something. I do not know what I am waiting for but I am waiting for something and it will be soon. When that happens, you will all see what I finally mean.
Happy 30th Birthday to me.
Wednesday June 12 2002 — 00:30 -04:00
x0x0x
ps: it was suggested that on saturday for my party the theme be a ‘death party’. i thought that was a terrific idea until I was later told that it was too morbid or perverse. They have no sense of humour
i care because?
Today I got called into the managers office at work, and I knew why I was being called and it was not really that big of surprise to me. I was called in because of my “attitude” and apparently to sum it up telling sales reps to go fuck themselves is a bad idea. Very bad apparently but you know I’m very well aware of what i said and when is said it.
Work-wise, I’m at the end of my rope. I’m angry to start with because I got bumped from being a team lead. Now this doesn’t sound so much like a big deal but, it was because it was important to me. I’ve got this sinking feeling that raises are going to be long in coming because of the new power structure. Off track, anyways, so that’s part of it. Secondly, I’m noticing some coworkers that I am in contact with who apparently feel it’s necessary to speak down and to dummy down everything. It’s not that I don’t like being told what to do, I just resent it, when it feels like i’m being talked down to.
It has also came very apparent that I do not speak english. Really. I speak Lisa- ease. Things that should be very clear because of specific circumstances I have were basically laid out in the open, it has been apparent that it is not. I also dislike being second guessed and knowing I’m right in the first place.
The problem is, literally, if I am having acute paranoia about these things or if they really are true. My thinking as of late has been not that everyone is out to get me, or that it was really negative but more so that x follows y follows z, even though majority of the time it’s all just me being nuts or complete coincidence. But i string the events together anyways to see what happens.
I’ve also been having weird little quirks that are kind of getting to me, like I have to hold the arm rail when I walk down the stairs or I will fall. It’s not because I’m a klutz, it is because I truly feel i’m going to fall and break my freaking neck. And when I was smoking, jesus was that a bitch since i had to walk down a few flights of stairs.
misanthropy/fate
i’m fed up.
Totally and completely fed up.
I had made some new aquaintances (if you will) over the last few weeks and had told them that I was strictly not looking to start a hot n heavy affair but rather i was looking to be friends with them. period. platonic. friendship. that’s it. I know no one in this area other than work related people, and while that’s fine i wanted to find people in my own genre who i could relate to you on a more lisa-type method.
there were a total of 3 people i’ve met over the few local mailing lists. all three saw my picture and of the 3…
——-
There is an autor, named Paulo Coelho, whom I’ve recently discovered via the book “Veronika Decides to Die”. The books concept and preface seemed interesting, but it was upon futher investigation that Coelho is a prize winning author who has been wrting for nearly 20 years and is from Brazil. Appparenlty his books been…
tears
i do not write because i am depressed.
i am depressed because i do not write.
right now i’m on some hormonal in balance of some sort that i started silently crying in bed. but my crying started earlier today and there was a reason and i must share that story.
as it has become painfully aware, i have a quirky personality. not in a bad way, but as in irc, on-line and rl, i’m very sarcastic and have a dry sense of humour. this sense of humour does take some getting used to, but overall I’ve never had a problem with people being, well, upset by it. They may not get my sense of humour, which is fine, but, it generally does not offend.
as with many corps, we have many internal aliases that we use that splattercast various groups. i’m on quite a few myself, personally.email is an excellent technology tool — when it’s used. There are some discussion on the list sometimes but mostly it’s kept to work related items. which is fine.
we have been having some troubles with our internal software that we use on a daily basis. someone had emailed my local group and i had responded with comments of stale items not leaving after the items had been completed. i put this comment in a format of (complaint) (/complaint). It was meant in good faith. Now there is someone on my team whom has been working there exactly one week longer than myself. In recent events lately, this said person has taken it upon themselves to chastise me for saying, what they have felt was unnecessary things via email and it should never have been splattercasted. Now, if i was constantly emailing crap to the group that was totally non-work related, then yes i can agree. But this specific email was in response to something that was posted. His comments made no sense. But the kicker is, is that this person has been taken a special interest in me and emailing me anytime they feel my email is inappropriate. Keeping that in mind, i emailed this person back and gave the whole delete key speech and ended it if they felt they had a problem with me specifically they need to see our manager and/or they can set up a .procmail filter to send all my emails to dev/null seeing as, this is how they felt they were going.
They mail me back with a long speech about how i misconstrued them and how they were not going to set up filters for me etc etc and that they are not intentionally creating tensions with me because that was not their intent, etc et al. Well the thing is, they DID create tension because this brought up a whole can of worms. And I personally do not feel comfortable when people suddenly decide that i am a target. Am I over-reacting? No, i don’t think so. I pointed out the uselessness of several emails that have gone out lately and asked if this person was taken the time to write the senders of those emails the same kind of response. No, they said, they were not dealing with anyone else other than myself. So yes, i do feel singled out.
i started crying at my desk.
not blubbering tears but just silently going down my cheeks. i was working with a few telcos on several projects at the same time and was on the phone with them. I IM’d my boss (who is this persons boss as well) and she and i went to a conference room where i showed her the printed emails between me and said person and she agreed that the direction they took was unnecessary and the point they were driving across could have been worded better, which i agreed.
later on i found out that one of this person’s friends was killed earlier this week in a car crash.
while i could understand why this person could be edgy, this is not the first time this person has done this and certainly has been a multitude of times in recent memory.
I cried on my bosses shoulder.
I’ve been getting flack from some of my co-workers because I’ve been gone ‘so much’ lately. I don’t think many of them know just how late i stay on average as well as the after-hours work that i do. The problem that bothers me is that if there is an issue, my own manager would discuss this with me, certainly. I brought this up to my manager as well and she said she has not heard of any complaints from me at all — which is great. she also stated she knew how rough of situation that i had going on, mainly dealing with my mother and her problems. i had been sniffy eyed ever sense.
And of course i cannot let it go, because instead of a smart retort that i had written and postponed, i deleted it and moved on for the rest of the day. i’m nearly 30 years old and i still do not feel like i fit in. my work environment is much like that of high school, which in offices and buildings where the same people have worked together for an extraordinary amount of time, it’s bound to happen like that. but i always thought i was at least /liked/ by people. i never heard any relations that someone hated my guts or wanted to have me killed. but apparently, these people opinions matter far too much to me, enough so that i get this upset.
I just can’t win.
There is something about my personality that people other love or hate — which is fine. But those who love it don’t necessarily love it all that much. especially when times like this when i feel like no one likes me at all. that i’m unpopular and i’m unloved. I’ve always known that my personality was a bit more direct than most people like, which is fine but when it comes down to even those i know who like me but only in specific situations, that hurts.
one of the things, my therapist and i, have been going over is basically breaking down the layers and seeing what is underneath. you don’t feel like you’re depressed, but for some reason i feel like since October that my whole world has shattered and gone to shit. i have zero interest in anything and zero energy even more so. i’m being swapped around on anti-depressants so much that i’m moody and temperamental. my mother and i have been growing closer because we are in the same boat. i don’t want to kill myself but yet i can’t stop asking the question ‘what is this life worth living for?’
memory lane
don’t ever go down it.