Nobody Likes You When You’re 23…

The above title is a lyric from a popular song. I remember listening to this quirky song (What’s My Age Again   By Blink-182) when I was like…wow, I guess 12 or 13 (back when MTV actually played music videos) thinking that it’d be a pretty long time before I could actually relate, but well, here I am, about 10 years later…23 years old.

 

Through signing on facebook occasionally, I notice the “party of the weekend” is forever plastered in dozens of photo albums from the same groups of people that post these types of photos every week. Every week it’s the same thing, total and absolute intoxication for the entire world to see and I could careless because broadcasting your drunken weekend to the world hardly impresses me.

 

But there was a time not too long ago, where I found myself at the “hottest” party every Friday and Saturday, drinking myself into near comas with my favorite group of friends. There are hundreds of facebook photos floating around somewhere, with our koolaide smiles and glazed over eyes. No, nobody ever died, it was all in good fun and something for us to do (because we were probably too stupid to crack open a book).

 

Now that I’m older, I have bills to pay. I have responsibilities, a job and graduate school to worry about. Perhaps I’ve gotten a bit boring and predictable, but my priorities definitely have shifted and I am solely responsible for myself and my actions. My family can no longer be blamed for my epic failures as a person. No longer am I “anonymous” in this town, but now my name serves a purpose. I’m a “professional” now. No longer do I desire to go to these types of “freshman” parties. I went to one or two last semester, mainly to DD for my roommates, (who are still in their undergrad), but the parties are not the same to me anymore. I actually found myself feeling out of place, even though a good portion of the people there, were the same people throwing these parties when I was just 19. ..They’ve got to be pushing 25 and 26 by now.

 

A funny thing happens when you get older. Your priorities shift and change for the better. I’ve been “legal” for sometime now, and drinking until I can’t feel hasn’t crossed my mind in ages and why should it? I can legally drink in public and not get in trouble, there’s no need to “over do it”. I can take my time and not have to worry about cops (unless of course I decide to drive).  When I was 19 that was part of the adventure. Drinking openly in public, knowing goodness well I had no business doing so. It was something I never thought about doing back home (because I actually respected my parents and our home and so did my friends I grew up with), and something that only happened here, and occasionally at friend’s apartments in other college towns when we’d come to visit.  It’s flat out ridiculous to think we’d drive for hours just to crash at a friend’s place to drown ourselves in alcohol and fast food all weekend. One of my best friend’s at the time (my current roommate) and I would base our lives around these weekends. Looking back on it, we did some extremely outrageous things (trespassing onto the football stadium, urinating off of a bridge, jumping fences to run from the cops, stumbling around in the night holding each other up because we were to drunk to go at it alone), but always made sure that one of us stayed sober, in case one of us stopped breathing…

 

It’s not just my mentality about drinking that has changed, but my overall mind-set as well.  I’ve grown-up. I find myself losing interest in the people that I once hung around day in and day out for months on end, because they have yet to grow-up. We were inseparable. They just don’t excite me as they once did. They seem dead to me now, like lifeless skeletons in my past, only a distant memory through goofy photos or facebook messages. I hardly speak to these people, partly by choice, and partly by circumstance. I am removed from their world as they are from mine. We had good times (and some not so great times), but those times were in the past. These now 2-D people have been replaced by more sophisticated and intelligent people in my major and program, or lifelong friends from high school, who have grown up with me through it all. No, I don’t hate them, we just have nothing in common these days and I’ve grown bored with yesterday. I’ve surrounded myself by graduate students/alumni mainly because they can relate to me at this point in my life. They know how it feels to be an adult and have twenty-million things going on in your life on a daily basis. They know how it feels to have real world stresses, anxieties and concerns (outside of getting drunk). My roommate can no longer relate to me because he is in a different stage in his life, therefore we really have nothing to talk about these days besides the weather. He doesn’t get my life (yet), and I get his, I’m just moving forward.  Our lives are returning to their parallel states, as they did before we met in college. It’s funny to think of all the stages our friendship went through, to end up right where we began. Everything changes when you walk across that stage, get a job, and mommy and daddy stop paying for everything. It wakes you up and reality places a choke hold on you. It breaks you. He’ll find that out sooner or later. Hopefully he’s prepared, because it aint gonna be pretty. I warned him.

 

I’ve also gotten a better grasp on what really matters to me and what doesn’t. What upsets me and what doesn’t, who I can trust and who I can’t and I have to say that I’m getting fairly good at knowing these things from the start.

 

 I’m real. I’ve never believed in being fake in social situations. There’s no need for me to apologize to anyone for who I am and what I’ve come to be. It’s not worth it. If you can’t even be real to other people (such as your friends), how are you going to be real to yourself? As mean as it sounds, I’m generally up front about how I feel about certain situations and people. There’s no need to hide that. If I’m open enough to feel that, there’s probably a good enough reason why. It’s not that I go around hating people on purpose; it really does take a lot to get me to that point. I like to live by the motto, “everyone is innocent until proven guilty.” Some people prove that statement to be real from the get go, others epically lose my trust upon introduction.

 

I’m learning to be more selfish. In the past, I’ve done everything for everybody that I possibly could, only making myself very unhappy. I’ve learned that as the years fly by, some people are inconsolable and will never be happy regardless of what you do for them. Some people in my life actually were selfish enough not to care that they were straining my emotions and continued to do so anyway. From now on, I have to focus on making myself happy too. I have to do things for me, as well as others in my life. I have to keep in mind that I matter as well.

 

I’m learning that laughing everyday does ease the pain. No matter how stressed out I get, I have to make time to laugh and smile. I also have to make time to cry. Crying in my mind is not necessarily a sign of weakness, but a sign of letting go of pent up emotion.  It’s liberating in a weird way. I rarely have the urge to physically cry and maybe that’s my been my problem all along.

 

 

Hopefully by this time next year, I’ll look back on this and laugh at how naive I was at 23, because now at 23, I’m looking back on 22, 21, 20, 19 and so on, wondering how I made it through the ridiculous string of bullshit that I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Friends

I apologize about the lack of blogging up here, but elements in my academic, personal and professional life have hindered me from really sitting down and putting pen to paper, or in my case fingers to key board.

 

Here’s an entry I posted on my personal blog. I typically write about more personal everyday occurrences in that blog and felt this entry was “deep enough” to have a home here as well.

 

 

***

 

 

Taken from my personal blog:

 

I slept fairly shitty last night, for an assortment of reasons. Number one though, was probably that discolored chicken sandwich lodged in my stomach I had while at Christine’s Birthday Dinner last night.

 

The birthday dinner was great, I don’t see many of my “band friends” these days, since I work and go to graduate school full time, Hell, I even saw my roommate for like 2 hours. That’s the longest length of time that I’ve seen him in ages.

 

Aside from this week being the typically hectic busy week at work and school, I think the strain of some events in my personal life are starting to affect me to the point where all I want to do is clam up and disclose no additional information to anyone about the comings and goings of my life. I get like this a lot when I feel vulnerable. I never like to appear weak and feeble (emotionally), so I just tuck it away in hopes that no one will notice. I guess Damian said it best once, that he feels like, “everyone comes to me with their problems, but no one has time to listen to mine.”

 

I feel like I spread myself extremely thin a lot of the time to please certain people in my life, and lately it’s gotten to the point where I’m like a rubberband banding together a stack of papers to high, liable to pop at any moment, scattering the assortment of papers everywhere. Just making an overall unorganized mess.

 

It’s those same people with their consistent issues that drain on you day in and day out, and the one day or week you’re feeling pretty low, they don’t “have time” or don’t care to listen to you…when you’ve inconvenienced yourself and others in your life to “be there for them” when they needed you all those times. It just goes to show you how some people really are.

 

A friend of mine also brought up an interesting topic to ponder on last night. He said and I paraphrase, “Being friends is hard.”

 

And it made me think for a second.

 

Is being friends really hard?

 

 

His response to a text message I sent him sent me into an utter spaz to survey of all of my friendships. I thought about every person I’ve befriend.

 

I have friendships that are flawless. We’ve gotten along perfectly, smooth sailing all the way, no problems.

 

And then I have friendships with bumpy roads. These are the friendships where we don’t always see eye to eye on everything. These are also the friendships that have made me stronger, quicker on my feet, and more observant and understanding towards other people. Ironically enough, until attending college/graduate school, I’ve never really had to deal with those “bumpy roads” in friendships. I guess all of my friends in high school were generally easy going people, with similar up-bringings, so we automatically understood each other better with little effort from either side.

 

And even my friends that I don’t always see eye to eye on with everything are just as important to me as my friends I see eye to eye on everything with. Matter of fact I like befriending people who are completely different from me. It makes me feel like I’m a better person for having “variety in my diet” so to speak. I could get all philosophical and go into specs, but you get the point I’m sure.

 

Hopefully up to this point, I haven’t offended anyone, if I have, I apologize, but these are just thoughts floating around in my mind. Feel free to stop reading here.

 

So I thought, and thought and thought about his statement. Thinking to myself, “Should being friends really be that hard?”

 

And I came up with two answers to that complex statement (not sure if he meant it to be this complex, but it could take on more than one meaning).

 

1. Friendships should not be something that drains you dry of all available emotion. The people that generally distress me to that point are also the people I vaguely consider associates (example, my co-workers) and tend to shy away from unless otherwise obligated to be around them. I generally don’t care to make an effort to hold hands and sing coom-ba-ya, I just tolerate them enough to get through the work day and go about my business. I don’t invest any real time into them.

Like any relationship (family orientated, romantic, or otherwise) though, it is something that takes effort, but shouldn’t be anything that you are straining to do or entirely impossible to handle. I like to think that the more “walls” you knock down, the easier it is to understand each other.

 

1. My second answer to this is yes: by “hard” it takes some effort. You can’t just sit around frozen and completely detached from the world and expect someone to forcefully “get to know you”. Or “understand you” until you give them some substance and reveal yourself to them on who you really are as a person. It just doesn’t work that way. I doubt anyone wants to put that much effort to anyone that frozen. I’m not saying the way I approach friendships is “the right way,” but I generally like to consider everyone innocent until proven guilty, in other words I don’t like to make assumptions about my friends until they’ve otherwise cleared them up. It can also be “hard” in the sense that you have to actually make efforts to keep in touch (go figure, eh). I have friends from high school that attend college hundreds of miles away in other states, and although I don’t talk to them regularly (because both of us are busy with our lives), we still make an effort to meet up over holidays (when we’re both in our home town) or exchange emails and phone calls from time to time just to say “hello”. No, it’s not “easy”, but it’s worth it because we’re friends. I still consider these people some of my closest friends. I have friends that live minutes from me right here in Greenville that I see less than my friends in other states (^see paragraph 2 from above). And outside elements (outside of everyone’s control) may have contributed to that.

 

So to sum everything up, yes, a friendship is not a “piece of cake” or a “walk in the park” (geez, I need to stop using these catch phrases), it is something that takes effort from both parties involved. And the effort should be mutual, not one sided, causing one person to feel strained, or pulled or neglected. No one likes to feel neglected. And although it takes effort, it shouldn’t be something painfully forced, or obligated, because otherwise, what’s the point in investing time into someone that won’t invest time into you? You’d be better off cutting your losses and saving your energy for another friend.

 

Clearly I have a lot to learn about myself and how I handle these types of situations. Perhaps I read entirely too much into his statement, but it just completely caught me off guard because I’ve never heard that before. He probably meant nothing by it, really, but he brought up a good point for me to ponder on. Hopefully this friend of mine doesn’t consider our friendship to be, “a strain”, because I really am trying to better friend to him and all of my other friends in general. Regardless of our differences, I really do see him as a good friend and I hope he sees me in the same light.

 

 

Well, if you read all of that AND understood it AND didn’t get too offended, 2 cookies for you! Whew, I’m glad I got that complicatedness off of my chest. Now I can exhale and look forward to the weekend! 2.5 days of pure ridiculousness with my best friends and after the week I’ve had, I surly do need a “mini-vacation” from my day-to-day life.

 

Here’s to good friendships , may they be ever lasting.

What happens in Text Msg stays in text msg…

In between my fumbles of getting ready for bed last night, I caught the tail end of a joke from a comedian on the popular t.v. show Comic View (on B.E.T). And the butt of the comic’s punch line was this:

 

You can say whatever you want in a text message, as long as you put “lol” or a smiley face at the end of it….Your baby’s ugly…lol….I can’t stand you, your breath stinks, smiley face with the wink….

 

This grabbed my attention because it’s so true! In any form of technical communication, it can be hard to really tell if a person is joking around or not. Particularly if you cannot read through their dry sarcastic nature (ahem)—or maybe their just generally a mean spirited person, and only choose to show you that side through a text message, allowing you to assume that they are joking, when in terms they really don’t like you (yeesh, let’s hope not!). I’ll tell you this, if I don’t like you, I doubt I’ll waste the time or energy to respond to your dangling text message. In fact I assume if I didn’t like you, you would text message me in the first place. I won’t even go into the specs of how generally awful my grammar is when sending text messages. Here I am, an English major working on a M.A. and I hardly even use punctuation, full words or appropriate abbreviations.

 

Nah, it can’t be that deep. I’ll tell you this, text messaging to me is my lazy way of getting answers and killing idle time. Gone are the days of drawn out phone conversations, face to face interaction, lengthy emails, even Aim conversations to me are becoming a bit obsolete as of late. I just don’t have time to waste my life sitting in front of a computer or having a phone attached to my head, particularly when I just need an answer. Although, I will occasionally shoot out emails to get a point across (like at work, when cell phone usage is a little unprofessional).

 

Example: Me: What time are you done with class?

                    Friend: Noon. You wanna grab lunch?

                    Me: Sure, meet you at the dinning hall.

 

Simple A & B exchange which generally takes all of a few short minutes as opposed to forcing out an awkward (indecisive and distractive) phone conversation in which one of you are generally being interrupted from something more important…namely sleep…or I my case work.

 

This sounds selfish, but I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. And I’m not anti-phone conversation or email, there’s just a time and place. And well, certain people hold the special powers of allowing me to actually care how their day went, while 50% the people in my life do not, at least not on a daily basis.

 

Like for instance my parents…they call me daily and ask me the same questions, but I know it is because they love me. How was your day? What did you do?They’ve been asking me these same two questions everyday since I started pre-school. I’ve learned to accept that they are probably going to continue this ritual until both of them become senile or just stop generally caring about my lackluster life. Either or, we’ve got a good 20 more years to go…

 

Now I know I’m skipping around here, but I’d like to point out that I’m quicker to respond to an email or text message than I am a voicemail or a hand written letter. Something about both forms of communication just seem a little obsolete to me. And well, I’m lazy. I generally hate talking on the phone with anyone. There’s always this gaping hole of awkwardness….and one person always seems to feel that they are interrupting the other one’s life. Although on the flip side, if a good friend or family member calls, I’ll generally talk to them, even if I’m not in the mood or I’m slightly tied up. I’m horrible about returning calls though, I might as well not even have voicemail, because I often forget to check it. Even with the little envelop icon flashing at me (it’s been up there for a good week). Let’s not even get into dropping calls on the network—that’s an entirely different song and dance. Perhaps I should seek out therapy for this, I’m sure it’s not normal. It’s best to just call back if it’s that important. I apologize for my forgetfulness…I’m a little absent-minded at times.

 

So in short, I prefer text messaging for the quick simple answers in life. Like, where are we going to eat? Where do I meet you? What time do you get off of work? If I have something more substantial or serious to say, I’d generally leave that for face to face interaction, because it’s hard to generally tell someone’s true mood/feelings through a computer screen.

 

So do I really mean everything I say through a text message? Do I just say mean and surly things neatly wrapped up with smiley faces or an “lol’s” for shits and giggles? Well, you’d have to be the judge of that, for I refuse to share those details on a blog post .

 

Happy texting…;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clean Freak!

 

It dawned on me tonight that I have a bit of an obsession, well one of many I suppose.

Here I am around 1am [slightly inebriated] after a mildly successful party that my roommates put together and I’m up to my elbows in suds and pine sol, even though my roommates (who were too drunk to stand up straight) claimed they’d clean up their cluster of beer cans, dried puke, trash and other assortment of items left behind by our guests.

 

And I don’t mind cleaning up—I SHOULD mind, since of course, it was not my party [even though I knew all of those people], my beer [even though I drank half of one] or my puke [yep, I’m totally innocent there], but you know, I didn’t want to wait until 5pm TOMORROW for them to finally roll out of bed in their hung-over funks and decide to “do something about their mess”. By then, I’ll have lost my mind and well, we’d have more guests of the furry kind running around here.

 

So what is my obsession? It’s pretty clear to even Stevie Wonder that I am a clean freak!

 

I uphold a certain level of cleanlessness that borderlines OCD, but on the lighter side, my immune system is strong and I hardly get ever sick. I get legitimately sick (outside of allergies) about every two years for about three days (and I attribute that to cold weather and extreme exhaustion). Everything from my hair, my face, limbs, room, car, desk, office, you name it, I’ll probably clean it frequently just to feel some sense of sanity in my hectic life.

 

I also hate to feel dirty. I have to shower daily [sometimes twice depending upon what the day entails, Mexico almost saw a three shower day!]. I know people who may get around to showering once or twice a week…three times if it’s a special week. I’m sorry… it is too hot in the south to neglect too many showers, particularly in the summer months. I even have this girly obsession with smelling nice (I get that from my father, who always has to smell like he just put on cologne). I don’t often admit to all of these feminine qualities (because I’d much rather be watching football than The Hills, but these are things I cannot hide).

 

I suppose this all also stems from my upbringing. Why, I come from a clean freak. My own mother is just about as germ phobic as they come. She’s that woman you’ll see in public places touching things with a tissue over her hand or spraying down hotel beds with Lysol, or even obsessively washing her hands so much that they become chapped.

Not to say that my mother is crazy, why in fact she is highly intelligent, because she too never gets sick. Perhaps there is a correlation to this being clean situation. Anyway, as I grew up I guess I started to mimic her habits and here I am today, yet another hand-washing fanatic. It’s gotten so bad that my mother and I will make special Saturday trips to the mall just to visit our 2^nd favorite store (Bath ‘n Body Works), to load up on hand sanitizer. You see, this is a great wonder. This magic in a bottle can be used for times when water and soap are just not available [like when we were in the jungles of Mexico—miles away from plumbing and electricity. Yep, that was that almost three shower day].

 

It wasn’t until we were in Mexico two weeks ago did we find out some disturbing news about our favorite friendly clean product. Apparently obsessive use of antibacterial hand soap traps germs in your hands and removes vital “Good” bacteria from your skin [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/health/21cons.html]…this all coming from a guy speaking in broken English. Not that I don’t find his point valid, it’s just hard to break a “bad” habit. Besides if I believed everything that I saw on the internet or television, I’d probably be a paranoid freak who did nothing more than hide under my bed. The world’s a scary place, but not everyone has creditability these days. I’m still not sure I fully believe that entire story, perhaps obsessive use can up your chances of damaging your skin, but I doubt minor use will do you any harm, at least not as much as not washing your hands at all.

 

 

In fact I think it would do you some good. I’ll be damned if I’m going to go around places now without washing my hands or using antibacterial hand soap. Do you realize how dirty public places are? Do you realize how many people do not wash their hands after they take a crap, sneeze or even vomit and then touch door handles, car door handles, windows, walls, sinks, refrigerators, stair rails etc.? It completely grosses me out that someone could pass up something so vital, and yet these are probably the same people that are getting themselves sick with their own germs (and in some extreme cases those of us who do wash our hands) I won’t get into the techs of just how they get themselves sick—but let’s just say it’s a continuous full circle. It makes me cringe! It’s enough to drive any sane person crazy just to think about all of the germs you spread simply by not washing your hands.

 

So to my two roommates [who are guys] that were so confused by my random burst of energy to clean up our apartment, please just let me be. Just let me get it out of my system so I can sleep soundly. And while you’re out at, please wash your hands.

 

Thanks.

 

There’s A Time & A Place

There’s a time & a place…

 

I couldn’t have made this up if I had dreamt this. The one person in this world that caused me agonizing headaches day in and day out is finally out of my hair (hopefully for good).

 

For the first time in a while, I can say that I can get up in the morning and ensure my stress level will be contained.

 

So you ask who has been giving me all of these headaches? An overbearing boyfriend? My roommate(s)? Drunken uncle? Uppity professor? Why no, in fact the one person who caused me the majority of my stress was my co-worker…or well, my ex co-worker.

 

As of 5pm yesterday evening, she submitted her letter of resignation (after cussing out another employee in a meeting). And today, it was decided that her resignation will come into effect immediately (as to ensure that she does not deface company property), because under the circumstances, her departure arose from a not so positive situation. She was (for lack of a better phrase) a total arrogant bitch…and do understand it takes a lot for me to label anyone with those words (especially someone older than me).

 

Bottom line, I’ve learned some valuable lessons since having my first “professional job” and I’m going to share them with you, so that you don’t end up like my unfortunate blunder of an ex-coworker. Let’s call her aggressive Amy just for shits and giggles.

 

1.        Keep your personal opinions regarding your job, your fellow employees/people and companies that work closely with your job to yourself.

2.        If you don’t have anything nice to say, well…you know the rest. J

3.        No one likes a hypocrite.

4.        No one likes a know-it-all, particularly someone with no accreditation

5.        Choose your words very carefully

6.        If you’re going to be two-faced, at least make both of them beautiful.

7.        Respect those in authority positions—particularly those people that either influence your existing employment and those that have the authority to fire you.

 

I knew yesterday afternoon when she kept popping off at the mouth that she was done for. I knew from there, she was about to go down in flames, but it was her own damn fault. She was ultimately the unfortunate demise of her demeanor. At times she made me so angry and upset that she made me physically want to spit!! She caused me numerous headaches, and various bad moods that sometimes lasted upwards of an entire week. She was nasty, mean, malicious, selfish, disrespectful, rude and down right contradictory.

 

I will say this, through-out her evil rein, she has taught me one thing, and that’s how to better control my emotions (and just how NOT to treat people) when placed around a, “socially unemployable” (as my co-workers called her) person. I feel horrible for her, because I wouldn’t wish the loss of a job on anyone (because there were going to fire her if she didn’t resign), but what’s done is done and it’s time to move on and pick up the shattered pieces.

 

Hopefully she’ll learn something from all of this as well. Like, how to treat people with more respect and when and when not to voice her opinion.

 

It’s funny…my very first day here she told me some story of how she was fired from her first job for disrespecting her boss over and over. I thought that maybe her being a 16-year-old had something to do with it, but I see now it’s just her nature and in 40-something years, she hasn’t learned a thing.

 

Stupidity is a disease, I swear.

 

 

My 2 o’clock Babble

Life’s been rolling past me lately, quicker than I’d like to admit. It seems like only yesterday I was putting on my cap ‘n gown, adjusting my high-heel shoes and taking hundreds of pictures with friends and family to commemorate the single greatest moment [to date] of my life. Oh well, what should have been. I guess I never pictured the single most important day of my life [so far] to float by so quickly, almost like none of it actually happened. It all seemed so surreal, like a reoccurring distant dream, where I’d wake up the following day, sitting in class bored out of my mind, or hanging out with friends downtown.

 

Press fast-forward a couple of months and you’ll find me to be a completely different person. I’ll tell you what, getting a job and supporting yourself is extremely humbling [even in a town you're somewhat familiar with]. It really places value upon the important things and the not so important things. It also places value on certain friendships of mine. While I’ve made a bunch of new friends since starting this new chapter in my life, I’ve also disconnected a few, which I’ve uncontrollably left behind in the previous chapter. I’m honestly not so sad to see some of these friendships go, and others I wish we had more time [and no, I don’t need wiseasses guessing as to what I’m getting at because you have absolutely no idea unless you’re inside my head]. But as with anything, life goes on. We live, learn and hopefully retain what has been taught.

 

Since stepping foot into the adult world I’ve learned that no one will take you seriously unless you take the intuitive to take yourself seriously. I’ve had to do some serious revamping on my persona to make this vision into a reality. Also, take everything with a grain of salt. You’ll come across dozens of critics (with no credibility) throughout your life, and people are always going to tell you what they think you should do, how you should feel, what you should believe in, what you should say etc. In the end though, it is ultimately up to you to use your better judgment to weed out the unusable information.

 

Also, people lie. Everyone lies [at some point in their lives], but everyone’s reasons for doing so differ from their own personal benefit, to intentionally hurting those that they love. You have to learn when and when it is not appropriate to lie and how to tell when someone is lying. Generally though, lying [excessively] comes back to haunt you. Most importantly you should never lie to yourself, because you’re about the most gullible person you know [when it comes to your own lies].

 

Without realizing it, someone looks up to you. Someone [or some people] think you’re amazing. Try to set a positive example for not only them, but yourself. There’s nothing more rewarding than hearing someone say [overhearing or hearing from another source] that they admire or look-up to you. Regardless of age difference, you should feel honored.

 

I apologize for becoming extremely philosophical all of a sudden, but having lunch with Damian [a high school friend of mine] really put a lot of the random shattered windows in my life into perspective and that maybe I should be more proactive into fixing said windows. Life’s what you make it; no one can truly control that but you.

 

Anyway, lunch went over very well and I’m glad we got to catch up [even if it was in the horribleness that is Greenville’s mall]. Hopefully this won’t be the last time we hang-out for a while. In other news, I’ve started to hibernate in segments [i.e. my 12+ hours of sleep last night]. A little early I know, but with me going to Mexico this week and next, there’ll be no time for mindless slumber. Since I don’t know when I’ll be going back, I’ll have to make the absolute most of it while I’m down there. I don’t mind being a little tired, if I can experience absolute paradise.

 

Hmm…well 2.5 days until sunny vacation. Let’s see if I can make it there without losing my natural mind.

 

 

Crazy vs. Crazy part 1

I’ve learned that you’ll meet some of the craziest people while in college…

I graduated this past may and I’m still astonished, however, it takes a special breed of folks to beat the crazies I met while in college.  

I won’t disclose where I work (no, not because I’m afraid of being fired), but because these people need to go into hiding, and quickly before causing any further damage on this backwoods southern town, or worse the well-known universe as we know it!   I just started this job about a month and ½ ago, and I’ve never been through more Ups and downs with my emotions than I have at this place. I’m sure my friends and family think I’m absolutely insane and or bi-polar, and well after working at this place for the past month; I wouldn’t blame them for thinking otherwise. Working here will drive even the sane absolutely bonkers. And here I was thinking it was a joke when I was told, “This place will drive you to drink,” on my first day, nonetheless. I know realize they were being quite serious.  

I work in a small office for a non-profit organization as an Administrate Assistant. In so many words my job is to “assist” everyone in the office (we have an office of about 7 people plus about 3 random interns) with various projects and tasks as needed (the interns actually get to help me, when their here). Seems simple enough, right? I figured by getting this job straight out of college it would be a smooth transition into the “real world” and easy to balance while working on a master’s. Boy was I wrong! Although I work in an office with 7 other people  (all about 20+ years my senior) and those three interns (all around the age of 20), at times they make my life a living hell because their all OCD and have horrible communication skills… minus the interns, who just sit there, scanning documents all day.  

I’ll isolate one situation for this entry (I could write a novel on every situation combined though)…   It’s like this….one of my co-workers is a 50-something divorcee straight from the west coast…so obviously she thinks she has a one up on all of us because, “we’re slow east-coast southerners” with a “slow  way of life”. She talks down to everyone (and talks a mile a minute) and becomes highly offended if you try to tell her anything she’s done is anything less than perfect. She’s very abrasive as well as cocky and I sense little sincerity in any of her mildly nice things she’ll occasionally say… those things being along the lines of, “nice shirt,” or “nice hair cut,” “cute shoes,” Which typically means the opposite, because she talks out of the side of her neck.  

I believe the one thing she does that annoys me more than anything is verbal digging. My definition of verbal digging is best explained through a situation. Sayit’s Monday morning after somewhat of a busy weekend and uppity co-worker walks in and says to you (while you sit there at your desk already pissed at the world because it is Monday morning and there’s no coffee):   “How was your weekend” to that you respond (without giving away too many details because you are trying to be professional and or keep your privacy):  

 “Wonderful, it was very relaxing.” Uppity co-worker stops and slams her hands on your desk, demanding to know a string of details like, “where did you go, what did you do, who did you do it with, what time was it, what was the weather like, what shoes did you have on, What’s x divided by y and squared the second power, and can I borrow $10.”   You’re already tired mind becomes overloaded with questions, you become a little uneasy and start rambling off what you did that weekend (and some things you probably didn’t, but since you’re being put on the spot you start rambling), telling her you went shopping with your mother for undergarments, only to run into your old friend, or you went to your friend’s house and got attacked by their cat…you know, random stuff… she nods and criticizes you for your hobbies, interests and going shopping with your mother (because she wears last fall’s clothing).

“Oh? You like going to eat at Red Lobster? Sea food will give you sars, you drove to VA? I’m surprised your p.o.s car made it there…Oh you got attacked by a cat, cat’s don’t like black folks…You went on a date with said guy,  oh, he’s probably gay and is probably already cheating on you with your best male friend…etc”.   It is enough to drive any reasonably decent person insane, right? Right.

The other night I had dinner with a good friend of mine (I’m giving you a shout out douche, holla back), and he probably gave me the funniest, yet most useful advice I’ve gotten regarding my job yet and here is what he said as follows:   “The best way to deal with a crazy person like that, is to say something crazy back, like you set someone’s house on fire or you planted dead puppies in your neighbors yard, or you slashed all four of your professors tires for giving you a C minus on your last paper, when you knew goodness well you deserved that C+ (so ok, I can’t remember specifically what he said, but it was along these lines).”   I haven’t quite tried this tactic yet, but come Monday I’ll have to give it a go…maybe if I tell her something crazy enough she’ll stay out of my business, and generally leave me alone. She’s kind of like a dog, she smells fear!  

 It’s not that my life is really all that private, I just don’t feel like talking about what color shoes my friends and I had on while going to see, “sex in the city,” Friday night.   If anyone has any suggestions on just what I should tell my co-worker come Monday, holla back…I’ll be sure to let you know of the outcome.

PS: excuse the format (the words running off the page, I will fix it promptly)

 

 

 

 

 

Music Speaks

If I had to choose one thing that I couldn’t live without, hands down I would choose music. Music has gotten me through some of my darkest days, followed me through my proudest moments, reminds me of the good times, bad times and young times etc.. From morning to night music plays some sort of role in my life, rather I am listening to it, singing it, playing it or watching someone play it. Music tells a story and often speaks to people more than they think and if I go a day without it, I feel empty.

 

 I thought about that the other day while watching a friend of mine play a gig in this quirky little tea café’ downtown. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from him or the gig, seeing as how the only thing I had ever heard him sing had been Michael McDonald’s ‘I keep forgettin’, (at our weekly trivia night and it was a joke). But as I sat there listening to him seriously sing and play his own original work (on guitar and harmonica), I took a glance around the room a few times. Everyone in that room dug him. Some of those people probably weren’t even there to specifically see him, but when they stopped in and saw him performing they became locked in a trans. I don’t know about everyone else in there, but a lot of his songs reminded me of past relationships gone wrong, love interests, traveling, holidays and so on. It took me back to specific times in my life. It commanded my entire attention.

 

 Then it came to me. Rock Stars or Musicians shall I say, are some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet. Now I’m not talking about Brittany Spears or Milli Vanilli (didn’t think I knew who that was, did you), but realmusicians. Luther Vandross, Maroon 5, Sara Barellies, Ne-yo, Mariah Carey, (…fill in the space with your favorite band here…) etc. These people have the unique gift of communicating with their audiences through song, rather it be sad or happy, they connect with their audiences all over the world, from all walks of life.

 I guess that’s why growing up I’ve always been automatically connected with other musicians. Being in band in school through-out much of my life has given me that advantage of expressing myself in other ways besides words.

 

 Outside of the tea gig, I hadn’t really talked to my friend about anything outside of the here and now. He just seemed like a typical happy-go-lucky nice kid that goes to school and occasionally likes to mimic/quote music and television shows. Almost as if I had only met his outer layer. As a musician, that kid sheds light on a lot more than what’s on the surface and becomes 3-D (figuratively speaking of course). It’s like he was telling the audience why he is the way he is. What’s occurred in his life to mold and construct who he is as a person.

 

 My point here is that music says what words cannot. It’s that happy medium for times when words just won’t do. I mean my friend could have just told me, “Yeah, I had this girlfriend who cheated on me,” but hearing that through a song places more emphasis on the situation and the emotion involved. Music conducts some sort of mood or feeling deep down inside of you, and often times helps you relate to a similar time frame in your life.

 

 Music always has been, currently is and always will be a part of my life.

 

 PS: Check out the website to hear some of the great music I described from that gig:  http://personal.ecu.edu/DMT0925/