Month: January 2019

Hey. This week… sucks. I feel dumb compared to everyone around me. Dumb and useless. and like I’m never going to get anywhere better. I’m tired all the time, the heaviest I’ve ever been, I don’t feel close to R or M even though I talk to them more in-depth than with anyone else… I see myself failing a lot. And basically it seems like the solution is to just keep going. What I really want, or feel like I want/would help me deal, is to take some time for myself and just be in my own space, doing things by and for myself. it’s really hard when r and I spend all our time together. he manages to read books more than i do at home, though. i haven’t been able to kick my recent stardew valley streak. I still want to play that, AND this new game that just came out called FutureGrind? It looks like glowy Trials with some SSX flavor. but that’s not productive, so I worry about R judging me.. and then do it anyway because I refuse to perform my life so I can avoid judgment from my boyfriend of a year and a half. (damn, a year and a half?)

I read some of How To Win Friends and Influence People, actually poked at it a couple times. The main points I’m seeing/thinking so far are like…

• your mileage may vary if you’re not a white guy in the early 20th century.
• wow dale, your capitalism is so much lighter than ours. imagine companies built on relationships top to bottom, where workers can actually be rewarded in meaningful ways. imagine these companies being the default.
• this is the kind of thing I should probably be taking notes on as I’m reading it rather than trying to marathon-read like a NJO novel.
• kind of going in with the previous, but i should also revisit this book from time to time to keep it top-of-mind when engaging with people. repetition is uh. a. thing.
• THE PLURAL OF ANECDOTE IS NOT DATA, DALE. I BET A LOT OF THOSE STORIES ARE FAKE ANYWAY

the other night when i was actually getting into the meat of the book (instead of the part where it sells itself to me, the person who already owns the book, ad nauseam) it was talking about how the best way to get someone to do what you want or to like you is to give them what they want. I haven’t finished the chapter yet, and I think part of the point it’s trying to make is that there are certain universal likes (lol sdv), but I fell asleep that night shortly after trying to think about what kinds of things the people I work with want. like, how can I engage them on subjects that interest them and make them feel good about themselves in ways that…. actually speak to them? are these questions I actually have enough info to answer, and if so, why haven’t i put the pieces together yet?

–

not like i know what to do about any of this.

I really managed to finish 2018 without updating (publishing) since august, huh

I’m sick. again. i had a cold around the end of october that lasted two whole weeks and was 100% coughing. like, I was going through a bottle a day just to be functional at work and not have to step into the hallway every ten minutes for a cough attack. it was the worst cold in recent memory. this one is very annoyingly timed with my 5 consecutive days off, ending tomorrow. less coughing and more just Incredible Faucet Nose.

I did nothing with my time off. it’s hard to go places and do things without 1) budgeting better and 2) having someone else along. M had her family + boyfriend thing out of town and only got back Saturday night/Sunday morning, and of course wouldn’t want to do something right after getting back from all that business. R had family in town, so I ended up tagging along to that a fair amount. They’re really fun, nice, smart people and I enjoy spending time with them. The only thing is that I really struggle with remembering the names of all his relatives outside immediate family, and how they’re related to each other. I’ve never been close with someone who stays in touch with this much of their family. It’s kind of incredible. It was also an opportunity to see R interact with people who’ve known him so well for so long. is it dumb that I didn’t *really* think he had a label, a specific political affiliation, until he and his sib were talking about it recently? it had come up before, I just… wasn’t sure how much it was a part of him. What else don’t I know? how much more honesty do we have to go through before we’re like… sustainable w/each other instead of (relatively) new relationship airs?

but yeah. break hasn’t felt like break, holidays haven’t felt festive, just kind of getting through. it’s exhausting and boring. i wish I could spend some more time alone. tomorrow’s the best I can get, though, and for all I know R will come down as soon as he wakes up. I’m thinking probably not, but you never know. he has a knack for doing whatever will surprise me in mildly unpleasant ways.

I was browsing netflix shows today…. oh man, I blazed through both Dragon Prince s1 and whatever it was called, Tidying Up? in one day. Jfc. Dragon Prince just seems like… bad avatar. Cool animation, obviously a lot of budget and it looks gr8, but the characters are…. not compelling. I do like that the protags do a lot of talking about their failures and like, figuring out how to work better as a team. that’s pretty cool. but other than that blahhhhhh.

after like five months of no posting, you’d think i’d have more to say. and hey i probably do but it’s probably also too much for one post, and I don’t know how to separate out the important things and write them clearly. what did I even do with these last 5 months? whenever people ask to catch up with me, I don’t have a good answer for them, and I don’t have a good answer here, either. i haven’t been to any cool shows that I recall, no fun parties, no classes or self-improvement (quite the opposite), no milestones, no goals, no nothing. guess what: R still consumes my life, my thoughts, my time, my effort. i really like him and i like spending time with him, but it’s obvious we’re both struggling to accomplish our own goals and spend time together. these two things should not be mutually exclusive, and yet, so far… yeah. adulting. when i’m not with r these days, i’m probably either at work or doing laundry. time goes so fast and everything is soft, easy, and at a remove. I want to change. I know he does, too.

aside from that, I guess I did drop acid for the first time right at the beginning of my previous cold. took half a tab and colors were beautiful and more vivid, r and i cracked each other up all day, something about ducks, and i finally found monty python laugh-out-loud funny. i also remember thinking that I really should learn more world history.

it’s 2019. i should do the per-month spread, call insurance, schedule an oil change, and maybe spend some time researching jobs and housing and education. fuck, dude. people are relying on me more now.

gonna go to sleep before i can do so accidentally while holding down one letter key for several pages.