Yes woman

One of my closest friends at work often says I'm too quick to say yes. This is in regard to a few different scenarios: when my boss asks me to do something I don't have to do (I can't say no; I never say no; I'm a goddamn pushover) and getting drinks after work. I will always and bitch I mean always be down for a drink at 5:00 p.m. sharp.

When she says it relating to drinks, she does so with a smile and a clipped laugh -- playful but not quite free of judgment. And my gut sort of falls. Is that supposed to mean I'm too available? Is it so bad to be available....always....? I like to have a good time, man.

I recently went out for margaritas with a coworker whom I don't usually spend one-on-one time with. And it wasn't awkward because of tequila! Also because complaining about a job is an endless waterfall of conversation.

I've started dating someone but I'm still a yes woman. I still have all the time in the goddamn world so yeah what the hell I'll get a drink or three with you. I don't think that's so awful. You should be so lucky to find yourself on the receiving end of my weirdo anything goes drunk conversation. You really should.

#lifehack

Man, I love these #2ingredientlifehacks:

Find a friend who owns a good sturdy ax (make sure the ax is lightweight with a carbon steel head and hickory handle--this makes for the swiftest and smoothest of swings) and have her chop off your fingertips just below the first knuckle in a single blow. Et voila! No more painful hangnails or red and raw cuticles.

Life changing

If you stand while you work you’ll live 30% longer If you stand while you work you’ll increase your metabolism and improve your posture If you stand while you work you’ll grown an average of 3 inches every 5 years If you stand while you work you won’t feel hungry or thirsty but always nourished, something warm and tingly will always nourish you If you stand while you work you’ll reach your target weight If you stand while you work your skin will smell faintly of a just-bloomed rose and you won’t need glasses anymore If you stand while you work your mind will stay so clear you’ll forget your name, forget whom you love and who loves you, forget sadness and anger and disappointment, forget to blink, enter nirvana and never perish Please consider standing while you work.  

Rambling

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be lonely versus being alone. Admittedly not such a unique thought but what are you gonna do. I'm alone for a good chunk of my waking hours and for 100 percent of my sleeping hours. Evenings and weekends are often a blank slate waiting for me to etch in some last minute plan. Nothing spectacular--a walk in a park, a walk down the main street in my neighborhood, staying in and reading a book. I don't know. I feel OK about doing stuff alone but it's mostly because if I didn't I'd just steep in my own juices sitting in bed, watching Daria.

I vacillate from feeling righteous about being alone to feeling weak about being lonely. When I'm righteous the world is mine. Doesn't anyone realize the greatest gift they can give themselves is to be comfortable alone? To need no other bodies and minds with whom to interact? When I'm lonely though my skin feels itchy and my breath quickens. I don't have any friends. That's about the only line running through my brain.

I'm not so sure what makes the difference? Does loneliness suffocate me on an "off" day? Perhaps I'm not as comfortable with myself as I'd like to presume. The matter of choice certainly comes into play--it's easy to relish an evening in when I've turned down other invitations or if I'm just "in the mood" to be alone. When I'm alone and I simply don't want to be but there's no other option...I guess that's when I become frantic for another body to share space with.

I recently joined OKCupid and it doesn't exactly help matters; the place reeks of loneliness. Everyone's doing the Internet equivalence of shuffling their feet, writing a message cuz what the hell that's why I'm here, then radio silence. Or a message back! And then a terrible or at best mediocre date. The feet shuffling kills me.

And I always feel a slight hint of shame creeping up around the edges when I sign on and read the messages, browse the matches, and judge judge judge judge judge judge. My self consciousness fires off in a million directions--when was the last time I was on? I can't look at this guy's profile again or he'll know I'm interested (??? yes I know that's the point ughhh) why do I sign on so much? I should be signing on every other day (impossible). And it's fruitless so far. I've barely messaged anyone. Someone's profile was pretty impressive (genuinely funny, good taste in writers, smart guy) but I'm scared to message him because I don't quite find him attractive. So now I am (have always been?) a shallow bitch. Cool!

(I'm constantly reminding myself I still felt a heavy loneliness even when I dated someone--a wet and saggy security blanket I carry around like a child)

Last week I read Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself  and there was a lot of talk about fiction as a remedy for loneliness:

"There's a certain set of magical stuff that fiction can do for us...one of them has to do with the sense of, the sense of capturing, capturing what the world feels like to us, in the sort of way that I think that a reader can tell 'Another sensibility like mine exists.' Something else feels this way to someone else. So that the reader feels less lonely."

No doubt I underlined and starred those wise words of DFW. I've garnered a new fervor for reading over the past few months and I imagine it wouldn't have happened if I had less free time spilling out all over the place that needed sopping up. I turned to Middlemarch for comfort and relief when I felt helpless and just plain sad. Feasting on Geek Love during my weekend afternoons when I was just plain bored.

Middlemarch was a turning point book for me, which seems sorta contrived since there's a lot of new hype around it, but whatever. It was the first time I gasped while reading because yeah my everyday thoughts and emotions and my fucking traits, which always seem like a heady blend of mundane and intensely personal and snow flake-y, were be translated into sentences so eloquently and effortlessly constructed. I had to take a break from reading and suck in a few good gulps of oxygen, letting it seep out slowly. It does make a person feel less lonely.

Temporarily, though.

But then, I guess if I really think about it, if I really put my back into it, everything we do is a temporary fix to stave off loneliness.

Oh well.

Party over where?

I'm trying not to let a pity invitation crawl under my skin and vibrate through my bloodstream but it's forcing my stomach into a mild nausea and feeding energy into my fingers as they fly through my hair and around my nails.  

You are an afterthought.

It's one of the lowest and darkest things you can be. Especially when you first think an invitation is sincere, that people really do want to spend some of their precious free time with you. You're light in your steps and the friendless, loveless world you've created for yourself doesn't seem so prickly-grey anymore. But hold up. You find out your friend spoke with the person who invited you and she probably used the words should and why not.

I started watching The Rich Kids of Beverly Hills and like most reality TV shows stuffed with over the top and out of this world characters you're prepared to hate and mock and pity, after the third episode (if you make it that far and I almost always do) they end up being not so terrible, kind of funny, and a hell of a lot smarter than you originally gave them credit for. In one episode the billionaire's daughter throws a pool party and she and her friends spend a fair chunk of time ruminating on whom they should invite. Only close friends. People they trust. People they can laugh easily around. They have names for those on the outskirts who show up to events by way of third-string invitation: Groupers. Bottom feeders. Take your pick with the phrase but either way it's ugly.

This show is ridiculous and meaningless but I'll be damned if I didn't identify with that sloppy grouper the pretty ones snark at. And anyway who are those people who are always invited to things?? Regardless of the friends I have, the people I date, the folks I spend time with and share the same air with, I rarely receive these thing invitations. It usually doesn't bother me to tag along as the "Oh we haven't met, I came with so-and-so, you've got a great place by the way" party goer but today my feelings are an exposed, raw nerve and even the lightest touch is blinding.

I accepted that pity invite and I'm leaving in an hour and I look pretty damn good and after a drink or two (or three or whatever) hopefully I'll forget that I allowed myself to indulge these thoughts.

I dreamed a dream

I had a dream last night that stuck with me. A dream where I was getting to know someone in a way that if I had slept a little longer, if my brain synapses had fired off the right connections, would have surely evolved into something romantic. It left a quiet, soft warmth in the pit of my belly.

There's a guy (in real life) whom I see at the Downtown Crossing T stop fairly regularly at the same spot (the platform near the end of the train going toward Forest Hills) and around the same time (5 p.m). I find him achingly cute and have for the longest time--maybe since October? There's something...endearingly dainty about him. He's not so tall, very slender, always well put together, always wearing the most beautiful glasses. I imagine he's the proprietor of some "Aristanal [insert any noun] Shoppe." We stand next to one another on that platform enough so that I never worry it'll be the last time I see him; and I stand alone enough so it's always a shock to my system, a flip of my stomach when he walks up next to me. One time I swore he craned his neck to watch me get up from my seat and walk out of the train. I think he is the first person I allowed myself to be attracted to, to have a little meaningless, shallow crush on, after my ex and I broke up.

So anyway this dream was about him.

I sat next to him on the T, struck up a conversation and enjoyed easy, natural talk. He was going to a bar I was all too familiar with and would I like to join him? A yes couldn't have poured out of my mouth any quicker. Then, as dreams are wont to do, all of the sudden we were somewhere else. We were already friends, loose-lipped and giddy. Wherever it was we were alone and I desperately wanted him to kiss me, or fuck me, or give me any easy excuse to press our flesh together. It didn't happen, but I wasn't disappointed because the company of this new-found friend was enough for now.

And that was it. This dream makes me feel comfortable and content, perhaps only because my subconscious acted as it should have: playing out a sweet short story in the grey slimy mess of my brain what I hopelessly cannot play out in life. I'm pleasantly surprised there's not even a tinge of lonely and pathetic lurking behind those feelings; their swallowing blueness will take hold of me some other day I suppose.

Maybe this dream is a prophecy and I'll talk to him one day. Maybe I'll find out he's terrible, married, gay, or all three. Maybe I'll just nurse this grade-school crush and do nothing except steal glances at him on the train and remember how I feel right this very moment.

Wahhhhhh

One of my friends at work recently told me that I give up too quickly. And she is (unfortunately) 100 percent correct. Excuses are so easy to pick up and regardless of how big or small they are, or how many I find along my way (so many!) they fit perfectly in my pocket. But I should really empty out my pockets! I keep saying I want to write and yet.....I'm not writing. I started this blog bored at work thinking it would become some sort of saving grace and yet........less than a week after I started I more or less stopped. I know I could easily find freelance work or even write little things for a journal I once interned for and yet.........I sit on my ass and do nothing. Ugh! I'm the worst!

I decided last week that if I'm still at my job in June I'm going to quit regardless of whether or not I have a new one.This job is killing me, making me miserable, etc etc. If I absolutely have to find something, I will. If I'm comfortable enough I know I'll never be as fully motivated as is necessary. And surprisingly, day after agonizing day, I am comfortable enough. So I guess I need to lose my source of income for that motivation. Yeesh.

I have loads of free time--a nice by-product of having only 2 friends and no hobbies and no boyfriend/hookup/what have you--and instead of shamefully browsing Buzzfeed and crafting some fairly shitty tweets, I could be writing for money! Or at this point writing for free let's be real :-(

The sun's out, it's kinda sorta warm, and I've got my whole life ahead of me.