Interact, MAN! Be A Part Of Something!

     I've always thought of interacting with people as a hassle.  I'm not sure why I feel like this, so that's why I've decided to dig in this week and do a little self evaluation.  Hopefully, if this works out right, by the end of this narrative foray, I'll at least be a little closer to the answer--and maybe a little closer to understanding myself as an individual.  I think we all suppress personality traits.  We all hide behind a socially acceptable mask of vanilla opinions and predictable responses.  Perhaps we don't want to offend, perhaps we all, deep down, just want people to like and accept us.  I have been at this game for a long time, and it's becoming obvious to me now, that I have lost my identity in the process.  Maybe there never was a time when I just let it loose, full steam ahead, destroying every preconceived notion of me in its wake.  Maybe I never even had an accurate identity to begin with.  After all, we are our outward appearance.  We are perceived by others how we elect to outwardly appear.

     I wonder how many of us really know ourselves.  How do we really feel about things?  Why do we do things we don't enjoy?  I would imagine that the benefit received by doing the joyless act outweighs the misery of doing it.  That's the only reason that I can think of.  But, and at the same time, I don't really ever recall sitting down and deeply considering the nuances of cause and effect.  I have a healthy respect for the human mind and it's ability to subconsciously make many decisions all at once, and maybe we're on auto pilot.  I always fear that we flick that auto pilot switch on a little too often.  We've become complacent with everything, detached, and we're not quite as self aware as we once were.  I'm often haunted by the question:  Am I living life, or is life living me?  How much control do I take in the results of my own life?  Not enough.  I am drifting down the lazy river of life on an inner tube, casually taking in the scenery, but most of the time I'm napping.  Those of you that know me, know that my naps are not only a metaphor for not stopping to smell the roses, but also a reality that I take extremely seriously.  

     Who am I?  Ah, an age-old question, possibly too complex for a simple, multi-million neuron equipped network of synaptic impulses to determine.  Who am I, really?  Maybe that's a better question.  Who I am is relative to the observer.  Who I am really pulls out the relativistic factor and implies that the answer will be a fact, regardless of observer.  Strangely, no one could ever know the answer but me, and even that is questionable.  Does everyone engage in a societal desire to be accepted?  I've heard people say they don't care what others think of them, but I wonder if that's truly the case.  Part of being human is to desire interaction, to feel like you belong to something, to be able to relate to someone about anything.  There are countless groups and organizations you can elect to be a part of.  Most of us belong to more than one.  Republican, PTA, car club, book club, Sam's Club, magazine subscriber, movie goer, dancer, writer, blogger, Facebooker, Twitter--ah...tweeter, Christian, drinker, student...the list could go on forever.  People want to be a part of something, it seems.  But not me.  I don't desire interaction.  People who know me might find that surprising.  People who really know me, know this about me.  I loathe the mere potential for interaction. 

     I find interacting cumbersome.  I find meeting new people awkward.  I have groomed myself into a passably believable(maybe I'm fooling myself here) extrovert.  People often seem surprised when I tell them I could easily be a recluse.  People think I'm joking when I call myself an introvert.  I have fooled them too well, it seems.  I enjoy solitude.  I like quiet time.  I like to have time alone with my own thoughts.  This way, I can get to know myself better.  I don't always have to be doing something.  I can bask in the silence of solitude indefinitely.  But despite that almost depressing fact, I am also pretty charismatic and ridiculously narcissistic.  Can these things really go together or define who I really am?  Only I can be the judge of it and I'm thinking that this evaluation is spot on.

     I think I'm too concerned with how others perceive me.  I'm too concerned with the fact that I might accidentally offend someone.  Please don't misunderstand me.  I have no problem in offending people.  I have a problem with accidentally offending someone.  If I have a goal in mind, i.e. Offending someone and I succeed--total win!  On the other hand if my goal was not to offend, and I still offend--total loss!  If I gave up my concerns about how others percieve me, though, would it be an improvement?  If I just lived my life, and truly didn't care what other people thought of me, and lived an "I am what I am" existence(wasn't that a Popeye quote??), would I feel like less of a fraud?  Because when I'm pandering to people, in the hopes that I can sway a positive opinion from them about me, that's exactly how I feel: Fraudulent.  And perhaps that's the main problem with this whole situation.  It's the fact that I feel like I am selling a fraudulent personality.  And that makes me feel dishonest.

     The tough part to swallow then is the idea that there will never be a truly honest portrayal of my personality.  One reason is because I honestly don't know who I truly am since I've been faking it for so long.  Another reason is because no one would appreciate it to begin with because it would be sinfully self-centered.  And yet another reason is because everyone's in the same boat.  No one truly knows themselves.  People pander to be accepted.  People bend their morals to be accepted and people act out of character so that they can manipulate another person's perception of them.  It's textbook sociopathy.  We are all on that track, I suppose.  And despite my advanced ability to think freely, this is a case where I've decided to follow the rest of the cows to slaughter.  And I'm okay with it.  At least I'm part of something.

Small Talk Is Vampiric

      I think I'm personable.  I think I get along well with others.  I outwardly accept most situations, even though sometimes someone throws a serious curveball and I'm ill prepared to mask my surprise.  Most of this may seem intangible so I'm prepared to back it up with examples.  But before the example backup, ask yourself how well you roll with the punches.  I guess it's not necessarily even punches I'm talking about, because that implies a hardship, and even though that's a portion of what I'm talking about, it's more frequent.  Ask yourself how well you can make someone feel that you relate to them.  How well do you put people at ease, allowing them to feel safe enough to give you a glimpse into their twisted lives?  I feel that I have, in some scope, refined an ability to do this.  It sounds sociopathic.  It sounds like social engineering or psy ops.  I suppose it is on its most basic level.  It's social guerrilla warfare, a manipulation of perception swayed in your favor to gain an insight not just anyone can gain.

     As a general rule, I'm not a "small talk" kind of person.  It's awkward and irrelevant.  Small talk is, at best, a disengenuous act of feigning compassion about someone else's concerns.  I'm more of a "say what you need and then let's shut the hell up" kind of person.  This may sound a bit harsh, and maybe I don't mean it quite as harsh as it seems to sound.  Basically, I want my conversations to stay relevant.  I have been known to tell people that I think their story is too long.  I can fake interest in brief sections of time.  But when someone's story drags on and on, I get antsy.  Gotta keep moving.  I liken it to someone telling me what they dreamed.  This is so irrelevant, it makes me want to cry vomit.  Yes, cry vomit, since it's so sad and nauseating at the same time.  What happened in your dream is pointless and holds no bearing on real life(I'll not get into a debate about psychic phenomena or future predictions from dreams, here).  Often, when someone is explaining their dream, it is an ill-constructed, plotless, weird recount of events that have no structure or climactic payoff.  They all end with "then I woke up."  There is no character development, and no plot line resolution.  Its a waste of time.  The only format in which dream recitation is acceptable to me is in two to three sentence explanations.  "I dreamt that you had a goats head, then we hunted you and ate you for dinner.  Pretty weird, huh?"  Quick, to the point, and a breath of fresh air.  So, I'm getting off the dream stump now, and back to what I'm trying to convey.

     Since I get bored with small talk and everyone seems to want to do it, I have no choice but to engage in it so I can fit under the societal umbrella of normal.  So I often play a game.  I roll with what people tell me.  I feign interest.  I ask follow up questions and I listen way more than I talk.  If you ever get a chance to watch two people engage in small talk, I recommend that you look at it through this prism:  Every intention that the two people have during the interaction is to twist the conversation into something meaningful and relevant to them.  It's a struggle for floor time, a struggle for each of them to keep the conversation about themselves, to gain control of the spotlight.  If I get stuck in a small talk situation(which is not that often, since I'm easily put off by it), I allow it to be about the other person.  I don't grapple for the focus.  It's interesting to me because it makes people really feel that I care.  But it's also exhausting because I am loading up on someone else's emotional baggage.  If I could come up with a way best to explain it, I would call it "emotional energy transference."  I am letting someone use me to unload their emotional energy and so I absorb it, making them feel better and me feel like I now have their emotional weight.  These people are energy vampires, off-loading their negative energy and corrupting my positive energy.  That's why I don't like to engage in it.  It's exhausting. 

     You'll find that when you don't wrestle for the focus in conversations, people will tell you way more than you expect to hear.  And also, your reaction will alert them as to wether they feel safe to continue or if they feel that they've said too much and back off.  I always try to handle whatever people tell me as normal and not too far off the beaten path, even when it is way outside the grid.  "Oh, you killed your girlfriend last night?  Hmmm.  Sounds reasonable.  How'd you do it?"  This makes them feel safe and they will continue, knowing now, that you are not judging and are sympathetic to their point of view.  

     So, I'm obviously and constantly thinking inwardly.  Outwardly, I accept what people tell me.  Inwardly, I'm thinking crazy thoughts about this killer I'm talking to and how I hope they don't kill me, and how can I get out of this conversation without getting kilt.  (Decided to use the vernacular of "killed."  I don't know, maybe now I'm getting bored with my own story)...

     So anyway, I guess this post is about holding a reaction to get more insight because it makes people feel more comfortable.  And I guess it's about how if I can avoid it, I will, but also, if I can't avoid it, I try to seem genuinely interested to build that trust to see how much I can get out of them.  Mostly it's about how bat-shit crazy my mind is, and how long conversations suck the life out of me.

5 Life Lessons In 36 Years

Here's a list of lessons that took 36 years for me to learn.  While I understand that just reading this list is no substitute for actual experience, hopefully it can allow one to arrive to the conclusions a little more expediently than it took me.   

1.  People are selfish.  Big deal, you knew that already, right?  People want to feel important.  People's worlds revolve around themselves.  Obvious lesson, right?  I think I knew that early on, but maybe not quite to the extent that it realistically is.  There are subconscious subtleties to this lesson that I never considered or even fathomed.  It starts at one's desire to hear their own name to wanting money, fame, etc.  We, even me, want it all.  Everything.  It's a deeply rooted, base feeling inside us all.  It's the human condition and can lead to pretty substantial problems.  A surface word for it is greed.  But it's more than that.  It's a subconscious fear of inferiority.  None of us are confident.  We hide it through arrogance and vanity.  But it's there.  

     The lesson, I guess, wasn't that people are selfish.  As I said, I knew that early on.  The real lesson was how to deal with this fact.  It was the 36 year long struggle with how to interact with people in a world of selfishness that was the eye opener.  So here's the secret,if you haven't figured it out yet in your own journey through this tangled world:  Play into it.  Very simple.  Use people's names.  Ask questions from the perspective of what's important to them.  Remember details.  Stop talking and listen.  Do this, and your desire to feel important will be fulfilled, because you'll find that people suddenly want to be around you.  You'll become likable.  Funny how that works.  

     As a manager, I've hired many people.  More applicants than you might realize speak in terms of what they want.  Instant interview killer.  Without being too insensitive, here, I just don't care what they want.  I'm interviewing people to find qualities in someone that I want.  

   

   "So, Mr. So-and-so, why do you want to work for our company?"  

    "Well, I'm ready for a change of pace.  I need to make a higher salary.  I wanted better hours than my previous job and I just had a baby so I need the benefits...."  Blah blah blah.  How about speaking in terms of what the employer might want?

     "I feel that I might be a good fit for your company because I have experience doing x,y,z.  Also I'm really impressed with the operation of your company.  (A little ego stroke). I feel that I can add value to your organization because blah blah blah."  Speak in terms of what other people want.  You will instantaneously become a desirable person to be around and a breath of fresh air to the selfish monotony of other people.  Not just in interviews--that was just an example--but in life.  Talk less, listen more.  And when you do talk, speak in terms of the other person's desires instead of your own.

2.  Nothing is free.  There is a cost to all things.  If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is, and if there is a truer cliche, I don't know it.  We all wish for free things, but there is no substitute for working hard to get it.  Working hard for things adds value to the thing you got and builds confidence when you succeed.  It's not our fault that we feel like sometimes we should catch a break on something.  We are indoctrinated.  As kids, most of us lived with parents who provided for us and for a long time, things truly did seem "free."  It wasn't.  Our parents worked for the "freebies" we enjoyed.  We know that now, as adults, but we still don't fully consider it.  I see it with my kids, too.  We want to provide the very best for them and we do, but there will come a time when we unleash the real world on them and the realization that nothing is free will come to them.  Despite this realization, we desperately want the free ride.  We want a taste of that innocence again, the worry-free attitude of the hand out.  It's a natural feeling but understand that it's gone and it will not come back.  

     There has been a lot of debate recently about government filling that cavity of emptiness we all have.  And it is a tempting notion.  But remember, nothing is free.  Whatever it is, must be paid for by someone, somewhere.

3.  Everyone has skeletons in their closet.  We have all done some things we are not proud of.  We have all made mistakes and have had to live either with the guilt of not getting caught or the consequences of what we did.  We all have embarrassing moments.  We all have memories of something that happened to us that still makes us cringe with regret.  We have all lied about something at some point, and we all have all of that hanging over our heads at all times and the stress of it has made us into who we are presenting to the public today.  Baggage.  Emotional baggage.  I have a theory about this.  In life, we start out with no property, no emotional baggage.  As we age, we accumulate a bag, a small one.  Eventually that bag turns into a suitcase and later still, that suitcase turns into a forty piece luggage set that you carry with you everywhere.  We cannot let go of our past mistakes.  We will carry that baggage with us everywhere until our death.  That's not my theory, though.  My theory is this:  If you get married young, the other person will have less emotional baggage for you to have to deal with.  The older you get, the more emotional baggage and the less likely you'll be to get past it all.  Like going on vacation, it's a lot easier to travel with two bags than it is with three. You see where I'm going here.  The theory is only a theory so unbunch those panties!  It's simply an idea I've had about people and relationships for a while and there's no way to prove its accuracy.  There's WAY too many variables for a controlled experiment to occur.  But know this simple lesson.  Everyone is dealing with a personal past and it shapes who we are today.  It is the reason that someone has trust issues.  It is the reason someone adjusts the rear view mirror every time they get behind the wheel and it's the reason someone is doesn't take no for an answer.  It is trivial, and it is gigantic.  It doesn't matter how small or big, it is the reason we are who we are.

4.  Do things you don't want to do.  Obviously, I'm not talking about killing someone or anything even remotely harmful or illegal.  All I'm saying is to get out of your comfort zone from time to time.  I don't know many people that like doing things that they're not already comfortable with.  It is awkward, uncomfortable, humiliating, maybe.  You cannot do something confidently until you've had practice at it, or at least have done it a couple of times.   We don't like feeling unsure.  I get it.  We don't like that we might look foolish.  But really, who cares all that much if you look foolish?  Just you, that's who.  I made a decision a while back to just charge in and try it.  If there's something I haven't done before, I refuse to go in meekly or timidly.  I will either surprise myself and do whatever it is well, or I will fail miserably and look like the biggest fool ever.  And I have decided to be okay with the latter.  I'm already dragging a few tons of emotional baggage around anyway, load me up.  I have found, and I guess here's the real lesson behind the scene, is that when I charge into things head on like that, and even when I aggressively fail, my emotional baggage stays the same size.  It's a mental preemptive choice, to accept that I might fail, and that if I do, to take it in stride.  

5.  Be honest, and give bad news.  No one I know enjoys having to give bad news.  In fact, most people try to dodge it at all costs.  It's difficult to do and emotionally painful, but do it anyways.  Most people will be surprised by your honesty.  Don't mistake what I'm trying to say though.  Don't seek out bad news just so you can inflict an emotional breakdown on someone.  That is ethically defunct, and mean for no good reason.  But if you must give someone bad news, don't avoid it.  On top of that, it has been my experience that the sooner the bad news is delivered, the easier it is.  In counterpoint, the longer you avoid it, the harder it becomes.  Get it out of the way so it's not sitting heavily on your shoulders for any length of time and so that whoever is going to receive the bad news can begin to accept whatever it is and move on from it.  

     I have witnessed a lot of people pass the buck when it comes to bad news.  The buck stops here!  People appreciate the honesty in most cases.  And even when they aren't gracious enough to not take it out on the messenger, well at least you're not carrying that burden around any longer.  In all cases, it is necessary to deliver the news with a certain level of tact.  I fear a misinterpretation on this one.

     Five steps to major life lessons in 36 years of life.  I'm not perfect by any stretch, and often it is a struggle to remember even simple lessons I've learned in life.  For some, I'm doomed to repeat for a long time to come.  For others, I have them mastered.  We make mistakes to learn, but when the mistakes get made, we also have to be in the right frame of mind to receive it as a lesson, and that may be the most difficult lesson of all.

     

Are You A Winner Or A Loser?

     Are you a winner or a loser?  As I was driving home from the gym this morning, something on the radio got me thinking about this.  I really only listen to talk radio, since most of the music stations seem to only get the rights to play the same four songs in a cycle of repetitive monontony (I honestly can't even begin to substantiate this claim, but I've spent a lot of time imagining a back story for how this occurs so in the interest of making myself feel like it was time well spent, I'm going to blindly believe that I somehow correctly guessed how the industry works).  Bottom line:  I choose to listen to talk radio as an alternative to music radio.  It is entertaining, keeps my mind engaged and its different everyday.  The reporter was relaying a story about a school somewhere (who cares where, am I right?) that has made the decision to not keep score during their soccer games.  We've all probably heard of this scenario at some time or another.  They decide not to keep score so that the kids don't get their feelings hurt, they all get trophies, yada, yada.  But as I was still coming to terms with the fact that I've become desensitized to this whole line of thought, the story took an additional twist, one for which I was not prepared.  Apparently, some of the children couldn't dribble the ball(aha!  Are you impressed with my knowledge of soccer terms??  Dribbling in soccer, unlike basketball, simply means handling the ball with your feet to work your way across the field).  Well, they couldn't dribble the ball quite as well as some other kids, so they elected to leave the ball out of the game.  Are you freaking kidding me?  Imagine watching this game of pretend soccer where the kids are running back and forth on the field, no score, no ball, and wait, why am I watching this?  This sort of sounds like running around a track, now.  Just tell the kids to do some sprints.

    Okay, now we're going to play tennis, but sometimes the ball hits the net and that could disappoint someone, so let's remove the net.  The tennis racket can get heavy after a while, so let's just pretend we are holding a racket and you don't have to worry your delicate little mind about missing the ball, because guess what?, we are going to just imagine that the ball is there.  No need for those pesky out of bounds lines, they can be such a nuisance!  I know that some people can get tired of running back and forth faster than other people and that's just not fair, so no running allowed.  Alright!  Good game! You guys played your hearts out, out there!  Good job.  Tomorrow, you get a trophy for sitting on the couch and watching TV.  Keep up the great work!

    This doesn't adequately prepare children for life.  In life, producers are rewarded.  Laziness is punished.  At work, promotions occur because someone is better at something than someone else.  People that can produce results get paid more than non-producers, and this makes sense. 

     "You tried but your results were the opposite of what we were going for, but dammit, you tried.  Here's a pay increase for trying."  Nope, it would never happen.  Can you imagine the shock these kids experience when they grow up, get out into the real world, and never get a trophy for just participating?  Everything they learned in school taught them that all they need to do is participate.  They've never been subjected to performance pressure and now they are not conditioned to handle it.  Freak out.  Depression.  Confusion.

     Here's the truth...Tell as many kids as you can, so they can be prepared for life:

     Are you a winner or a loser?  Everyone is both.  We don't always win.  But, on the positive side, we don't always lose.  Learn to accept a loss.  It teaches you what not to do next time so that maybe, when you are presented with the same situation, you'll make the necessary adjustments to win.  We lose to learn.  Use it as a learning experience.  Everyone's goal in life is to win more than they lose.  Produce.  Producers are rewarded.  Hard work is rewarded with wins.  Mediocrity is rewarded with losses.  Welcome the loss objectively, even positively, and change the thing that made you lose.  We are all trying to beat the other team.  Life keeps score.  Bosses keep score.  Life puts the ball in play and life gives trophies only to the winners.  A loss means you need to work hard and practice more. A win means you need to work hard and practice more.  Get it?  It's the same.  There will always be a competitor that worked harder than you, practiced more than you.  Acknowledge this fact, it's the natural order of the universe.  The goal here is to get good enough to capture a few wins, and then more.  Everyone is after the title and no one can stay on top forever.  Try to give yourself a few moments up there, because its always brief.

     Life makes you play with the soccer ball.  Skill level in sports, in everything--in life, is like fingerprints.  There is no one that is an identical match.  If I were on that scoreless, ball less soccer field, I would still try to be the best damn imaginary soccer player out there, because I want the biggest imaginary trophy ever not given out for not being the team's irrelevant MVP.

     Now get out there and produce!

Breaking Up With Yellow

     I'm not much for sentimentality.  I don't have a problem letting go of inanimate objects just because they're attached to a particular memory or feeling.  I'm a pack rat in reverse.  I throw things away I might desperately need at a later date.  Thinking that I might need something two years from now is simply not enough reason for me to retain it.

     I like clean lines, clutter-free, knick knack free countertops and tables.  My home is not a retail oddity shop.  You cannot come to my house and peruse an eclectic mix of bizarre items from around the country.  Functional items often cross the boundary into decorative, and this might be okay to some people, but I'm not trying to inflict my own personality onto the items I own.  I don't buy things because they're "cute."  I buy things that I need.

     Maybe it's a function of testosterone, maybe it's a function of a fear of personal attachment, but for the most part, I can throw almost anything away.  I think people, as a general rule, don't consider themselves enough.  People don't often sit down, have some quiet time, and consider who they really are.  We're on the go.  We have things to do.  We lose our sense of self awareness in our daily grind.  Our personalities are there, buried in us.  The fight to get out, though, has been lost.  We stand by original convictions as if we still feel the same way.  Case in point:  when I was very young, I decided that yellow was my favorite color.  Many years have passed, now, and when someone asks me what my favorite color is, I blankly, and without much thought, tell them it's yellow.  I have never revisited this stance and I am comfortable with the color choice of my six year old self.  I'm so comfortable with it, that I have a hard time revisiting my original conviction and I'm not really open to change it.  It's been yellow for so long, I feel that I might lose a little piece of who I am if I just up and abandon poor yellow.  And then where would yellow be?  Out on the streets, tossed aside like a used diaper in the trash!  We've been through a lot together, me and yellow.  How could I ever abandon you?  This may be an extreme explanation, but it illustrates the attachments we feel towards things.  And that's not even a physical thing, it's a concept.  Sorry, yellow, it's time for you to get evaluated.  People change.  It's not you, it's me.  

     I'm not saying that I hold absolutely zero sentimentality.  I like to look at old pictures, I feel connections to things I've had for long periods of time, and I have certain books that I just can't simply give away or throw out.  What I'm saying is in those rare times when we make a decision to like something, when we evaluate how we feel about something and respond according to that decision, we very rarely look back and reevaluate.  Once the decision is made, we take for granted that we will always feel the same.  We take comfort in never having to analyze that feeling again and years pass as we blindly assume that once we like something, we'll always like it.

     Sometimes, I make a snap judgement to throw something away that I don't think I want to throw away.  And it's hard.  But once it's in the trash, I move on and rarely ever think of it again.  Just recently, I was cleaning out my garage.  In there, I found an old beat up lamp, with no shade, in the shap of a koala.  The koala on the base of the lamp was a stuffed animal sort of thing, fluffy, hair matted down.  The lamp was not mine, it was my wife's and she had had it for as long as I can remember, probably before we had even known each other.  But I was cleaning out the garage.  I couldn't remember the last time we even attempted to plug it in.  Into the trash!  I continued cleaning out the garage, but luckily (and as an act of sheer self preservation), I got into that rare mindset of reevaluating my initial feelings.  Who am I, I thought, to inflict my personal feelings about keeping sentimental things onto my wife?  I thought about it for a while before I pulled it back out of the trash can.  Who knows what kind of memories this item holds for her?  Who knows what memories she would forever lose because this lamp was not here to remind her of them?  It was not my place, and I overstepped the boundary of respect for her belongings, assuming that she could have the same sense of disconnect that I have.  

     All of this begs the question:  Are we the sum of our belongings?  In a way, the answer is yes.  We acquire things and we project memories onto them.  We see an item and are reminded of a certain time and place, a situation, a smell, a feeling.  If not for the item, the memory inspired by the item, while not completely lost, will dull with the inactivity of thought.  These items bring it back, remind us of the memory, and repetition always equals retention.  

     So what, exactly, am I advocating here?  It seems as though I'm contradicting myself.  Throw it away, keep it for the memory it reminds you of...

     I'm saying that we are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and personalities.  We are unique and diverse.  I'm saying use the power of thought.  Don't blindly accept something just because it always was.  Reevaluate.  Hold yourself to a higher standard of thought and self awareness.  Try to understand how and why you feel a certain way.  It's easy to forget it in the mundane course of everyday life, but one day you'll wake up, and years will have passed.  It is the difference between letting things happen to you and making things happen for you.

     And come back yellow, I miss you already!

     

   Check out by book here!

     

Airport Shenanigans (part one)

People are amazing.  Recently, I flew to Atlanta on a work related expedition for product training.  

JIA is a humble airport, with a spattering of terminals, resting serenely, almost with an air of nonchalance, as a nearly insignificant blip on an otherwise uneventful swath of land inside the rim of Jacksonville's northern extremity.  I suppose what I'm trying to convey here, is that Jacksonville has a wishful airport, big boy pants for a waist that's just too small...it's trying, though, and one day, maybe soon, the waistline will fit the pants.

With ticket in hand and bags checked, I confidently made my way toward my designated terminal.  I wouldn't, by any remote stretch of the imagination, call myself a frequent flyer, but over the last four or five years, I've flown to Atlanta twice, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Richmond, Virginia.  While I I'm not a Lord of the Rings level traveler, I would at least consider myself comfortable with and accustomed to the act of flying--in a plane, in case you thought I had acquired the next level of human evolution or come up with an aviatory solution not otherwise already considered.  Because of my past experiences with this sort of thing, I elected to bring a Tom Robbins novel with me in an attempt to quell the boredom of the inevitable wait.  I already knew that waiting in a security checkpoint line, on the plane before takeoff and after landing, and then on the tram to the hotel, was imminent.  Plus, the book is wildly entertaining.

Everything was textbook as I boarded the plane; everything was standard airport monotony.  I can find entertainment almost anywhere and people-watching at an airport could be the Super Bowl of a lifetime of people-watching training.  There's much to digest, if observing people is your bag.  

A little off-topic, and as a simple example (I like supporting evidence), I hadn't been inside of JIA for ten minutes before I witnessed the first of many soon to come novelties a simple airport has to offer.  I was standing on an escalator, heading down.  The escalator to my left was on the upward rotation, creating a technological letter "X" in the form of metal steps.  I mind my own business for the most part, I don't seek out strangers to talk to, don't give them a reason to talk to me.  In fact, in public places, where there is an abundance of people, my goal is to be invisible.  I slither through the crowd, not making eye contact, not making a scene in any sense of anything.  I'm not sure if my ninja skills were honed just so precisely on this occasion, or if the woman on the up escalator just didn't care that I was there, because she suddenly turned to two men about twenty feet back on the escalator behind her and asked loudly, affronted, if they were talking about her, and that she could hear everything they had said.  I, as previously stated, was on the opposite escalator, moving in the opposite direction and so was not privy what the two men had said.  One of them looked at her square in the eyes and told her, yes, they were talking about her.  Then she released the Kracken on them and began to unleash some words in the English language that I had only heard tales about.  

The voice trailed off the deeper I rode the escalator down, as my thoughts moved from how homeland security could possibly have executed her right then and there for causing such a stir in the airport.  They would have been within the limits of proportionate reactions because the woman had lost a grip on her sanity and quite literally had become a threat.  I never got to hear the end of that argument, but it would end up being just a simple skirmish in the war of my day.  

So, my thoughts moved back to finding my terminal, which I did, and fast forwarding, I ended up on an aisle seat, sitting there, invisibility cloak wrapped tightly around me, Tom Robbins book in hand.  The book had been a gift, and I had just started reading it after I had situated myself in my seat.  I was on page one.

The seats were five across, with an aisle in the middle.  I was on the two seat side, close to the aisle.  I only describe this arrangement to facilitate the understanding that the window seat was currently open, the plane not fully boarded, but really it illustrates that when my aisle-mate would arrive, we'd be in intimate quarters, just the two of us with no third wheel buffer.  A third wheel buffer always keeps the invisibility cloak in tact.  Head down in a book keeps it in tact too, mostly, because most people just don't feel comfortable interrupting a person reading.  My aisle-mate arrived and I stood up to let him get to his window seat.  A break in my reading, and a break in keeping my head down not to have to converse with anyone occurred because of this movement.  Obviously, I had not properly planned this out.

We were forced to exchange cordialities.  He was in his mid to late fifties, a little overweight, gray hair, but still held on to a youthful vigor only discovered after he began talking.  

"What are you reading there?"  Dammit.  Here we go.

"Oh," I muster a deceptively fake air of outgoing charm.  "It's a book by Tom Robbins."

"Not very far into it, are ya?"  Dick. 

I rally.  "I just got it.  Brought it to read on the flight."  There.  Short, to the point.  Stated my intentions. Leave me alone.  He gets it.  And he really did seem to.  I continue reading.

The plane begins to take off in the late afternoon, early evening.  The sunlight is waning, but there's still enough that I can comfortable see the words on the pages.  The airline had taken measures to ensure a convenient experience.  I like to believe that the meeting went like this:

"Look, we can give them more leg space, bigger seats for comfort, or we can give them overhead lighting.  We can't give them both.  Cut backs causing strategic use of our funds dictates this.  We have some tough decisions to make, boys."  He probably slammed his fist down on the table for emphasis.  The members sitting at the boardroom table probably jumped a little at the unexpected punctuation.

"Lights."  They all agreed.  Except Smith, who always went against the grain.

"Fuck you, Smith, it's gonna be lights."

So there I am, legs curled up to my chin, thinking about how Smith needs to grow some balls and stand up for his convictions.  I reach up to turn on my overhead book light, since my side of the plane is angled away from the sun.  I push the button....and nothing happens.  Wow.  I lose.  I accept it quickly, and go back to reading in the dying light.  There's still enough to easily make out the words on the page.

"Ya have to hold the button in for a few seconds to turn it on."  My best friend next to me suddenly exclaims.  Apparently, my dilemma has not gone unnoticed.  I graciously say thank you and hold the button in.  I hold it in a little longer than what I deem necessary, but it's just so my helpful buddy sees and knows that I gave it a shot according to his directions.  No light.

"The flight is only 53 minutes.  How long are ya gonna hold it in?"  Holy shit man.  This guy just directed me to hold the button in and now he's ridiculing me for doing as instructed.  This guy!  I don't respond directly.

"Oh well." I say.  "No big deal."  Still using as little words as possible, no longer so I don't have to interact anymore, but because I've already decided that I don't like him.

He turns his light on and directs it toward me.  "Thanks," I manage.  Maybe he's okay after all.  I would never find out.  The plane touches down in Atlanta and I'm off the hook with him.  "Good luck in your travels," I tell him, and he, none the wiser that homeland security could very well have wrestled me to the ground if they had but known my thoughts as I exited the plane.  

There's more to the story, but my time to write is winding down.  Perhaps soon I'll revisit it and explain the rest.  Maybe, when its rainy outside, or the kids are at school and I'm alone in the house and with no idea what to write about, I'll create the second part.  Enjoy!

Don't Eat The Meatloaf

Somewhere, in the winding recesses of my brain, locked up tightly, and probably rightly so, is true, unadulterated honesty.  It's a promise of secrecy we often share with ourselves, careful to spill only a few drops out at a time for authenticity.  Honesty is a hard truth to tell, an array of a million judgmental telescopes, all pointed at the world around us.  We're victims of perception, slaves of an authoritarian device telling us what to make of things.  How we manifest those views into language, how we articulate the feelings to ourselves and others is the measure of how well others respond to it.  But, as the cliche goes, "the truth hurts," and so we elect to keep the pact of secrecy we've made with ourselves to spare someone's feelings.  It just might be a dangerous precedent.

Take, for example, my lack of desire to eat food that someone has made from home.  "Here's some ravioli," she says to me, eyes hopeful that I'll enjoy it, "I made it from scratch."  Declining the offer, undoubtedly, is offensive to the would-be chef and several questions immediately populate my cerebellum.  What does her kitchen look like?  Did she wash her hands? Did she taste a little of it and reuse the spoon afterwards, without washing it?  What do her pots and pans look like?  Have they been properly cleaned?  Has she made ravioli before?  Did she cook it at the proper temperature?  A slew of questions, which, in and of themselves would be offensive to ask before I gingerly accept the fact that I'm getting ready to put my life in someone else's hands.

I'm okay with the fact that this might be an absurd feeling to have.  I'm comfortable with it.  My comfort with the absurdity of it doesn't make it any less real for me, though, and I have opted for a tactic of preemption.  When I meet new people, it casually comes out that I have a propensity towards obsessiveness about not eating food from someone's home.  This happens when there is not yet even the idea of an offering.  Sure, it's a preemptive strike, hitting them while they are unaware to solidify the fact that I am not personally singling out your food.  It is a general irrational belief that all food from someone's home kitchen is somehow contaminated.  They dismiss it as an eccentricity and life goes on.  Three months down the road, when people at work somehow come to the conclusion that a potluck is in order, they are not offended when I tell them I will not be participating in the act of devouring roaches from their homes.  Obviously, I sugar-coat it to spare any residual offense they may take.  But the result is that people remember that initial conversation and connect, subconsciously in their minds, that its not personal, it's my 'eccentricity.'

Suppose, for a moment, that you selectively choose who's kitchen you think is clean enough to eat food from.  People see you try their food.  It's delicious.  You eat it up.  Then Violet, who might be one gene away from literally being a filthy pig, decides she will bring some food for others to try.  You've already eaten someone else's food.  She saw you eat it.  TROUBLE!  Now you really have to decline the offer, as meekly as possible.  "I'm full," you tell her.  Lie.  "That's okay," she says.  "Just try one bite and tell me what you think of it."  TROUBLE!  There's no way in hell you're eating her food.  You remember her telling you about her rat problem and how she caught one by stomping on it.  

When you premptively ban all food before there is an offer of food, it is essentially you saying, "It's not personal."  People cope well with it and all you might have to do is to remind them that you have an irrational mental hang up about food from people's homes.  They easily accept it because you've already set the stage.  But you HAVE to use the word "irrational."  People will not accept the notion if you try to defend it as something that makes sense.  It makes the concept a little more manageable for people to cope with, and though they don't understand it, well, they believe you don't understand it either, and that it just is.  

Back to honesty, back to the filter, back to the charity of sparing people's feelings.  We think offensive things about other people every day.  If we chose to unleash those thoughts on society, there would obviously be a retaliation strike and we don't want to deal with that.  I can certainly dish it out.  But I certainly don't want to take it, and not because I have a weak tolerance for meanness, because meanness is a false projection.  It's honesty.  I don't want to hear negative truths about myself.  I don't think any of us do.  The act of not being honest with negative thoughts and feelings about someone else is actually an act of self preservation.  There is no "high road" simply because you just want to spare someone else's feelings.  You are subconsciously quelling a retaliation blow to your ego.  

Believe it or not (though, how could one not at this point?), I think inwardly and assess situations mentally before I act.  But I move fast.  I suppose it means that I've had so much practice at it, I'm at a level of automation where people can't typically see the wheels turning.  I respond quickly to a million possibilities, choosing my perceived best option in nanoseconds.  I often wonder if everyone thinks this way, keeping that inner promise of negative honesty a secret, moving forward, compartmentalizing, cataloging perceptions, and choosing better options than instincts suggest.  

In the end, and I guess as a bottom line, please understand its not personal.  I do not want to eat your cockroach meatloaf.  Not today, not ever.