Archive for December, 2002
57950
30 December 2002Ok, now this is all Danté’s fault… lol. He started bitching about Sjoerd’s livejournal–I guess he looked around for it after reading my previous entry–and he got me thinking about shit some more. So I looked back at this e-mail G sent me:
Subject: hey
nah, it’s all good thom. think whatever you want. i told you before, you are
perfectly free to hate me or be pissed. i knew we needed to go our separate
ways…and this is why. but take care, for you were very important to me and
that much was for sure. i still thank you so much, from the bottom of my
heart.
later.
G
I simply replied:
Have fun in france. Get my guitar to me sometime soon… I don’t work a week from Saturday.
- Thom
It’s odd to say it, but it feels good to be so fucking indifferent about it any more. I really couldn’t care less what she thinks. She seems to want to believe I “hate her” or am “pissed” or whatever–understandably, as that would make it all the easier for her not to regret–but the truth of it is the only thing I feel for her is sheer disappointment. Disappointment about how she’s fallen for all those cliches, ended up being one of those very same cliches I’ve always abhorred… The type that wraps themselves in a little bubble with their significant other and which nobody else can exist and thus must be pushed out. The type that thinks they’re something special and that they feel things that no one else has ever felt. Disappointment about how selfish and self-centered she has become or has been all along.
Yeah, I want my guitar back. I want the last of any business we have with each other behind me. I guess she’ll get around to it before winter break is over. She’s going to try and sneak it in under the radar, though. She’ll bring it back while I’m at work or ring the doorbell and scurry off… Something to that effect, I’m sure. She’s implied as much. She doesn’t want to see me. Sure she’s tried to make it sound like she’s doing it as a favor to me or something, but her reasons are obvious: she doesn’t want to face the person she’s shat upon during recent months. She’s being a coward. And whatever, let her be a coward. It’d complete the image she’s painted of herself for me. Just so long as I get the goddamned guitar back… I’d like to hope I can still have more faith in her than to be a thief as well.
Ha, asking for my material things back always reminds me of this Ben Folds Five song.
I Always Like This One:
29 December 2002| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid: | Low |
| Schizoid: | High |
| Schizotypal: | High |
| Antisocial: | Low |
| Borderline: | Low |
| Histrionic: | Moderate |
| Narcissistic: | Low |
| Avoidant: | Moderate |
| Dependent: | Low |
| Obsessive-Compulsive: | High |
– Click Here To Take The Test – |
|
Good Grief
29 December 2002Adults acting like five-year-olds! I swear! Come 9:00 tonight, everyone at work seemed to grow an immediate chip on their shoulder, like Chia pets that grow attitudes instead of that fuzzy green moss stuff. Warren and Kathy (hardware and paint associates, respectively) seemed to each think it was anothers’ job to clean up the aisles, so they were fussing, and then Angela came down and started fussing at the both of them, and once I got upstairs after closing the cashwrap it seemed everyone else had been made a little fussy from Angela’s wrath. So I just kept quiet, did all I was supposed to do, and got the heck out.
I don’t get why people get so damned worked up about having to work. You’re not doing anything, something has to be done, so just do it. It’s not like I never get pissed at anybody at work, but I don’t make a big deal out of it if I am mad. Chances are, they have or will be mad at me for something I wouldn’t notice, so I’ll extend them the courtesy I’d hope they would extend me and chill.
I seemed to escape the axe, for a week at least. Jackie (sp?) got the can and I heard Reuben actually got fired for some wrong-doing. I wonder if I would’ve been canned had he not messed up. It’s not like I’m doing crap as far as credit apps are concerned. Oh well, I’m safe for now and that’s good enough.
Blabity Frickin’ Bla
26 December 2002I swear, I don’t understand how intensely people can change their ways in so little time. But I am more and more sure every day that I’m glad I have nothing to do with it any more.
A couple of days ago, Sjoerd e-mailed me asking for a LiveJournal activation code. He appealed to my “sense of altruism”–hey, at least the guy knows how to stroke an ego–so I gave him one. That got me thinkin’ to read G’s journal again, and good grief… “Is this real? This IS real.” Blabity bla! If I had to ask that so many times and affirm myself, yeah I’d probably be pretty worried that it was real or not. Then again, there were things I thought were real just a couple of months ago that now seem like complete bullshit. I’m sorry, live in your hyper-perceptual reality if you want… But thanks very much for leaving me out.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all these arguments before. “Is there any truth beyond our perceptions of things?” C’mon, that’s stuff I debated in AP English in high school. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But if someone can be so manipulative and so fickle and fleeting with their perception of truth, then I’m glad to be rid of such people.
It’s ironic. I always thought I was the type who was demanding of fate. Who tried to force things to be true. And maybe I do, but the lengths to which I go in order to make things true are not so great as I thought. I don’t trample people’s hearts over making truth. I don’t leave them in the dust. And I don’t put myself or the person I care so much about through a wringer of heartache and torture and questioning and denial. Well, maybe I put myself through that at times, but I’m courteous enough not to put such things on another person. The really funny thing is, I feel like she played a large part in my acceptance of letting fate be what it is. Still trying to grab on to the things I want, but not swimming against the currents. My time with her certainly did help me learn it. But I thought she understood it herself. Now I wonder if she was fooling herself. Hah! There’s a truth for you: a truth found in lies. A reality that I have found to be true even though my inspiration has thrown such truth out the window.
Yes, my time with her helped me learn, and so has my time without her. And I’m sorry if she reads this and thinks I’m “deconstructing” her to make myself feel better, but quite honestly, I don’t care, and she has done more than her share of deconstructing as it is. I have been released from my duty, my promises to her, and for once I am able to enjoy such freedom. Yeah, I get an odd comfort out of realizing how juvenile and overdramatic she’s become, and how I’m glad not to be on the receiving end.
Well, I’ve gotta get some food in me before I get to work. You want the truth? Work sucks ass. That is real.
Chocolate Milk
24 December 2002Hello there. Just another update. I suppose they’ve gotten a good deal less frequent than they were at points, but I haven’t forgotten about the journal, and I think that’s what’s important. Next time I have reason (and time) to write three entries per page, I’m sure I will.
Anyhow, yesterday was interesting. I was working 7:30-4:30 in hardware with Rachel and Sarah. Well, I just got the notion to ask Sarah what she was doing that night, and as it stands, she had the same plans as I… nothing. :-P So before I left work, believe it or not, I gave her my number and told her we should hang out. Wha? Thom simply getting up the guts to give his number to a relative stranger? Yeah, pretty cool eh? It’s neat to be able to measure growth like that, and even cooler to reap the rewards–in this case, a pretty fun night.
After she got off work, she fell into some pressing plans with a friend, but she called me and arranged to do something after she was done. So I grab a pencil and ask for her address, and she says “205 N. 74th Street…”, and before she can finish, I asked if she lived in an apartment. “How’d you know?” she replies. Well, it just so happens that I lived right down that same block before my parents got the new house. More than that, she used to live in the same apartment complex at the same time, I discovered.
So I picked her up, and took a quick tour of the old complex, showing her where I used to live as well as Kaleena’s former and current locations. After that, we just drove. We considered pool and she said she thought the hall on Greenfield had been closed down. Thanks to my insatiable curiosity, within a few minutes we were driving past an unlit, barren building east of Greenfield. Crap, that was a good pool hall… no smoke. Oh well. We spoke about work a bit, and the conversation got onto Danté, and whether or not she’d met him before. Of course you can guess where my impulses led us next…. Yeah, Ahwatukee. Danté’s apartment. So the three of us just hung out and chilled until 2:00 AM. One would think it was boring from the complete lack of doing anything, but it was just a blast. Danté and I had to fool around with the camera some more and make asses out of ourselves again, and Sarah seemed entertained and even willing to join in on the buffoonery.
So that was that. Nothing revelatory or supremely enlightening to write about, but it was pretty fun. And that’s a relief. I was afraid I was going to be all like Jon Favreau from Swingers for a while, but it seems I’m not quite the mope I used to be. Hmm… As we were almost back to her apartment, Sarah asked if I’d given her my number just because I wanted to hang out. “Well yeah, I just thought it’d be fun to do something with you.” I added jokingly, “Why, did you think I was trying to make the moves on you?” Not sure if I cared for her question, but I liked my answer. At least, the one I decided on in my head. Yeah, I thought we’d have fun and we did. It’s not my traditional thing to do, but I didn’t (and haven’t) blown things out of proportion, building up a crush or anything, nor have I resigned from the possibility. I just don’t really care at this point. And I think it makes things a lot easier.
Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day. Shhh… I know a few of the gifts coming to me. Some are surprises, and indeed they were surprising to stumble onto, so I’m going to do my best to act surprised. ;-) The best gift I can think of, though, at this point, is a day of not having to work. God that’ll be nice. So, if I don’t get around to updating before then, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, have a pleasant Ramadan or Kawanza or whatever your cultural celebration is, whether or not it falls around this time. Peace out.
Merry F&@#ing Christmas
21 December 2002Well this is turning into a fantastic first weekend of the break. I traded shifts with someone at work yesterday on her request. I thought it’d be good, because I could go out Friday night and sleep in a bit before work Saturday. But Jason (my boss) flaked and didn’t put the shift switch in the managers’ records, so this morning (after three hours of sleep) my mother wakes me up at 8:00 telling me Sears called and was wondering why I wasn’t at work. This throws me into a brief panic, so I scurry out of bed, call HR and tell them what the deal was. Well, after that, between just being wound up from that scare and from my mother being the most annoying, disruptive person on the planet, I didn’t get an ounce of sleep after that. So now I’ve got to go to work at 3:00 this afternoon, stay until midnight, and go back at 8:00 in the goddamned morning the next day. So maybe nine hours of sleep among three days of working. GOD DAMMIT! Pissing me off. My boss! He keeps on pushing the credit apps, which I can understand, but yesterday he was trying to set a goal that I got two apps today, and the moron just comes up to the cashwrap among a long line of customers and, I dunno why, trying to be motivational or whatever in his loud effeminate voice, but he blurts: “C’mon Thom! Let’s get those credit apps today!” Brilliant strategy. Why don’t we just get on the PA and tell the customers we don’t give a shit about what they want, just so long as they put it on their 24% interest Sears card?! Even if the credit card is the focus of their business strategy, which I have serious problems with in the first place, that’s not something you broadcast to the consumers.
I think if my boss tries to give me crap about the credit apps today I’m just gonna pull him aside and tell him “Look, I wasn’t hired on knowing that soliciting credit applications would be my primary form of evaluation. If I had, I wouldn’t have taken the job. Now I’ll ask your ‘May I’ question and the stupid follow-ups, but I’m not going to be misleading and pretend that it’s more like a coupon than what it is–a credit card with a ridiculously high interest rate. And I understand if that means you won’t keep me on past the new year, but for now, I’d think you would like to keep a hard worker, one who almost always stays in the cashwrap and returns products to the shelves whenever he isn’t, and someone who is friendly and greeting to the customers and who surely does more by that to bring them back into the store than some stupid credit card.
God, it reminds me of that 85/10/5 theory, where 85% of the population is essentially simple and innocent and easy to manipulate. 15% of the population is able to manipulate that other 85%, and 10% of the total pop use those abilities for malicious or selfish purposes. Only the remaining 5% is both apt in controlling the population and benevolent enough to work for the greatest goods. Corporate America is that 10%, with their damn credit cards and crap. Argh! And I who have always tried to be in that good 5% am now working for the bad tenth.
Sigh… Breathe, breathe. Just take the crappy money their giving you and get out. That’s all there is to it. And go get a job where there’s no chance to be evaluated by anything to do with credit card applications.
Hah, well last night was fun. I took Erin to CoffeeTalk briefly, didn’t talk much but had a fine time, and then I went down to Danté’s crib. He just got his big X-mas present early: A Sony Digital-8 camcorder. Oh yeah, baby! This is gonna be crazy. There’s something wrong with his audio (it’s extremely noisy, it crackles with static continuously) so he’s gotta replace it but we had a blast with it anyhow. We went down to Mill Avenue at 1:00 in the morning and just started filming as we walked down the street. A couple of bums and street freaks stuck a pose for us, funny how the camera can just bring people out of silence. We’re a photogenic generation, now, I suppose. Danté and I just get way too much fun out of having ourselves on camera, as well. Our tape was hilarious… Don’t get me wrong, it has no semblance to being any form of entertainment, but it was just crazy. Especially the climactic Blair-Witch/Fear-Factor ending… ;) I discovered that turning the camera around and stiffening one’s arms creates a face-cam shot very much like what they use in those shows, and it looks even more similar when you turn on night-vision.
So, we’re bound to have some fun and maybe even productivity with that one. I’m almost inspired to write a short script just so we can have some fun with the cam and some practice as to committing a project to film at the same time. Other than last night though, this winter “break” looks like it’s just gonna suck. I’m working more than full time these two weeks. And I’m down a friend, a major friend from this last point in my life, and hardly even hear from or talk to any of my other friends with exception of one. And my family’s driving me nuts. Agh, bah humbug to this holiday crap. It was more restful when school was in session.
Ah yes, and a fitting song to cap off all this frustrated reflection.
Spring semester, here I come, baby!
20 December 2002Yessah! In typical procrastinator fashion, I’d put off registration a little late. But today I registered for classes, and does it look good!
9:15-10:30 - COM 100: Intro to human communication
10:40-11:55 - PGS 101: Intro to psychology
12:15-1:30 - REL 100: Religions of the world
1:40-4:30 - THE 300: Film: The Creative Process
All classes are Tuesday & Thursday, except the film class which is Tuesday only.
Why do I say it looks so good when it’s pretty much intro courses? Well, it’s all stuff I’d hoped to take someday but never thought I would be able to with those aggressive engineering schedules. Now that I have nothing to do with engineering and I’m all but sure the GIT degree will share the same fate, I get to check out all of these classes with the possibility of majoring in one of the subjects.
I’m really psyched about the Film class. It’s a big class, 115 people, but just to be able to take a class about film is going to be awesome. And I don’t care if I’m in the back seat, I will be an active participant in that class. I’m pretty excited about the psychology course as well… It’s a social-behavioral psych course, not the dumb statistics crap. One would think I’d be more excited about Religions class, simply because I love debating theology so much, but I doubt there’ll be much debate in a class of 200. Still, I’m stoked about all of the classes. I’m gonna enjoy being back in Tempe more often as well. I miss the fun little college burg.
Update Time
19 December 2002Well, it’s been a while. Let’s see where I left off.
Ah, well at least I covered all that. That’s still good. There’s a time or two I’ve been checking her journal for an update, but it’s out of sheer curiosity more than anything. I spent so much energy trying to be invested in her life, I suppose at this point I still don’t mind seeing what’s going on in it. Maybe I’m just making sure I get my guitar back, who knows :-P
What I did not cover was the conversation I had with Erin a few days ago. I felt it was right and important for me to just say what I felt, and I did. And the response surely wasn’t “picture perfect”, but then again I knew it wouldn’t be. Part of the reason I spoke my mind was because I’d figured out at that point that nothing was coming from my ponderings. Why spill the beans then? …one might ask. Because it felt right. Because it was and is going to be, I think, a victory in another sense. So many times have I resigned to the notion that nothing would come from what I felt, but it didn’t end there… I would hold back and in that sense hold on, and that would do exactly what I’d hoped not to do: hurt the friendship. Really, I think Jeanette is the only case in which I’ve fully recovered from such things and remain good friends with. Of the others–Clarisa comes most to mind–there is abysmal periods of silence broken only by small, heartfelt but extremely limited hellos.
With Erin, I am confident in the friendship and in myself, and feel that to let such things out and to let go of them was the best thing for the friendship, and in that sense, also a victory, a strong bit of evidence that I have taken something from all of this, all of the drama I’ve gone through since junior year in high school.
I’m hoping and feeling that I’m overcoming a major hurdle that has hindered me for a long time. This friendship vs. romance thing. This wanting both and finding one and being one and in return only wanting the other… I don’t think it’s a bad thing, because I think I’ll find happiness when I find both together. But I am learning that I can’t simply create one from the other, or wish one to be true. Maybe this stuff with Genelle has even taught me to cherish the greatness of friendship a little better… That I may be slightly hung up physically on her, but that the things I miss most are the friendship, and yet I have that elsewhere in multitude.
I don’t know how to describe all of this… I find myself reverting to terms I used with Genelle… things like “non-feeling” or the inexplicable gut feelings, and I hesitate to do that because, well… her gut feelings have pretty much shat upon me by the current point in time. But you know, there is something intuitive in how I feel right now. And although I still feel restless for some reason–I think I will feel restless for a long time, as that feeling is my driving force–I feel comfort as well. Comfort that the good and the bad, the hopes and the fears resolved, are all moving me forward to something new. It’s expected that I continue to think in the terms I’ve grown used to thinking in. But I’m finding my own terms. My own truths.
Ok, other news… Work is a pain in the butt… I need to get signed up for classes for next semester, but work is just cutting right into the middle of my day at this point, and exhausting me to boot. I need to get better sleep. Yawn, in fact, I think I’ll just wrap things up and head to bed right now. G’nite.
Resolution
12 December 2002I hope this has been it. The things have been said that should have been said a month ago. There is nothing. She doesn’t want a “real” friend, she only wants me in the distance, at her convenience as it seems, and that’s exactly what I don’t want anymore. So, I think with the minimum possible amount of ill feeling, we’re done. I asked her something I’ve never asked anyone to do for me before… I asked her to release me from my promises. Promises that I’d always be here for her if she needed me, promises that I would be her best friend. Of course, she said I was released from them a long time ago. (Nice for me to have been informed. :-P) And I suppose I knew it, or at least shouldn’t have seen it, but I don’t think that matters. I needed to hear her say it not because of her, but because of me. Because sure I could’ve just moved on without it, but I would’ve beaten myself up for not following through on those promises, just because that’s not who I am. “I do not like to go sour on my word,” I told her. But I guess I’ve more than held up my end of the bargain, so now I feel free.
And you know, this tells me a lot about what I do want, what I need. I want to find someone who finds a promise as limitless of terms as I do. Who doesn’t just see it as a phase of existence, but as a fiber stitched throughout that should run on unending. Heck, maybe I need to find someone that I don’t need to make promises with. Because promises are as much as anything self-assurances, and that means more often than not they’re applied when there is some level of self-doubt, so why just force denial upon a situation that there are incertainties to?
I need someone with a similar pace to life as myself. I’m not a devourer, I’m not the type that just eats up life continually faster and faster. I like to stroll, to observe all the fine and beautiful and even ugly details. Genelle sees it as “working backwards”, as lingering on the past. I see her ways as trying to hide from the past. But we’re not wrong, either of us. Just different. Regardless of which direction we turn to, front or back, we’re still in the present. We exist standing on the shoulders of giants, of things that have come before us and even in our own lives. She’s the type of person that wants to use the elevation to grab onto what’s next. I feel I do too, but in order to do so I see a necessity in looking at what has gotten me to the current point. Her method will get her where she’s going faster, but in my eyes it makes it less clear where she’s heading to. I guess it makes sense, some of the things we’ve said. I mean hell, she’s said she’s going to die young, that fits the life in the fastlane pretty well. I want to grow old, I wanna be that wise old man type. Hell, I feel like I’m that type of person already–not in the sense that I’ve been through so much, but in the sense of my personality, my method of doing things. I just need the wrinkles and grey hairs, and I’d be there. No rush, though. ;-)
Yeah, I want to grow old. I want someone there growing old with me. Someone to push up against me using my chest a pillow, in that ugly green chair. The chair I want to be sitting in one day. Where I’ll sit, with one arm dangling over the edge petting the top of my dog’s head, watching TV or staring into a warm fireplace or out a frosty window from a warm, wooden room. It’s a vision of my future I’m becoming more sure about, more sure that I want. Funny, I came to this vision in large part through all the self-exploration I put myself through with Genelle. I guess it’s important to note that, while someone might lead you to find the things you want, that doesn’t mean they’re meant to share it with you.
Once again I feel particularly eager to look for those things that will make me happy. I’ve been afraid for a while that such moods are some form of denial. But you know, I think it’s just that I’m energized… that I’ve seen what I don’t want and that’s helped me see what I do want and I want to grab for it before I lose sight of it. I’m going to be more cautious than been in my recent near-attempts, though. I’m not going to crush on someone like a junior high-schooler just because I see the possibility of what I want in them. No, that usually ends up fabricating possibilities that don’t exist. But I’m not going to be afraid to look for those possibilities. And you know, I think I see some of them, and I’m not going to be afraid to explore them.
Fear. Maybe in each of our cases, our pace is out of balance as result of fear. I won’t try to explain hers, as there’s little need or use, but sure I know I’ve been afraid of the future, of consequences. I’ve been paralyzed, immobilized, by the fear at times. But I don’t think I am right now. That won’t keep me from looking to the past, but it might keep me from stalling from the future.
55722
11 December 2002Last Night
genelle: analyze
genelle: analyze, you motherfucker
dutchie: Because it takes away the pain, but also because… you are powerless, you cannot reach into my shell and pull me out, it is tearing at you. If I fall you fall, soulmates, linked souls, I will pull you down with me
Maybe if there was any truth to what she and I told each other… Maybe, yes… She even said this would happen. That her time spent with Sjoerd would require tearing and breaking down a great number of things, pulling walls down, major demolition so-to-speak. So if there’s truth to us, that we too are linked, does that mean he will pull her down, and I will help pick her back up? Shit, part of me really hopes so. Nine-tenths of me (not to mention my friends, when and if they read this) want to say “Are you nuts? She’s hurt you already… There’s no ill will, no damage you’ve done to her that needs repair, so put her in the past. Move on.” But part of me still does think there’s something to all this, that at very least give a little patience and time will either prove the meaning of those things we said or drive the last nail in the coffin of hope thereof.