Echo

See that press release about no Gorillaz on Glee? I bet there will be. This tour is big arenas. They need the hype.

alright my love. tonight’s song is dedicated to you.

Reflecting on that last post, I’m thinking about expectations, how people who see me do something like that will assume certain things of me, expect me to be certain things, even only in terms of the most basic assumptions. And then they get closer to me and I’m not what they expected. Yet at all times, I’m just being me. But I think it’s hard to deal with constantly disappointing people. It made me feel how there are some things that look so different when seen from different angles, or from different distances. I think I’m one of those things, like how I can look so different in photographs and even in person. I think it would be easier if what people expected was in fact what I was, or if they didn’t root their acceptance in their expectations. The reason I like listening to the radio is that even if for the most part it’s what I expect to hear (same songs), I like that there’s still room for surprise.  I’m probably someone that you can feel comfortable with, because I’m a predictable person. My positive traits are pretty straightforward, my negative traits are pretty straightforward. But if you can accept that, you can enjoy the quirky little ways I’m unpredictable in my predictability.

Back to my original point, I’m thinking about how if someone didn’t really know me, what kinds of ideas or assumptions would they form about me as a person, as a personality, and how much of those are really me or can be me, and how much of those ideas are contradictingly misleading so if they really met me in a different light, they would be utterly confused if I’m the same person.

There’s this guy who plays during my dad’s open gym. He’s not a jerk, I don’t think. He’s just aggressive and always knocking me down. At least once a week. There was one weekend he’d already knocked me down twice when I was going for the drive, but I was playing really well regardless. On one of the last plays, I got the pass in the corner and went up for the jumpshot. He came flying into me and crashed, bumping my knee with his which was excruciating. I hit the floor and the pain made my whole leg weak, but I still got up and just walked it off quietly.  Found out later I hit the shot. I think that collision made him realize he could really hurt me and he has backed off since then, which is why I don’t think he’s intentionally a jerk, but he still knocks me down at least once a week. When it happens, I usually just yell “C’mon!” in a hot flash of pissed as I get up, but I always let it go immediately, keeping my mind in the game. Last week, he knocked me down again, and it was the same hot irritation frustration as I hit the floor. I got back up and the teams reset the play. He was standing facing the basket and I was walking by towards halfcourt in the opposite direction. As I passed him, on complete impulse, in one fluid motion, I slapped him on the ass. Hard. And kept walking back to my position without missing a beat, just my usual silent intensity turned obliviousness when I’m completely focused on what’s next. There was howling and disbelief from the other guys in the gym–my dad wasn’t there (he’s been in Taiwan) so it was his 50 to 60 year-old basketball friends who have a reverent relationship with him (he’s the Big Brother of the circle), and a handful of my coworkers. I don’t even know half of them (in fact, I don’t even know who this aggressive guy is and who he knows that got him a pass into our gym), but from their point of view, basically the boss’ daughter just spanked a guy for knocking her down.

On Monday morning, Jerry and I talked about it at work. “You didn’t just pat his butt,” he said. “You full on spanked him! Like a dominatrix. And it was completely natural, like you didn’t even think about it. You just did it.”

I smiled at him. That’s how you earn street cred.

In life, they don’t always have to believe you, but they must trust you.

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I was mostly angry with people not helping me when I was in a place I couldn’t help myself.
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If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around, does it make a sound?

If someone doesn’t know they’re gay, are they in fact gay?

I’m inclined to believe there’s the layer of what you are, and the layer of what you do. Gayness doesn’t always have to do with what gender of person you sleep with.
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Very few people who can open their minds wide to be big picture thinkers. Not saying I am all the time, but it’s frustrating when I can see people not seeing the big picture. I know my problem in life has often been that it’s not necessary that people don’t want to see what I’m seeing, but they can’t. But it’s frustrating when people close their minds just because they don’t understand. Then I feel like nothing gets anywhere.

My best friend and I are taking a break from each other, so it’s been quiet in my inner circle. And with less time and energy to blog due to my workload, it’s a lot of echoing in my head. Which is good because I’m sure there are things that I should keep to myself. Like how sometimes when I’m alone, I indulge myself by looking at the facebook pictures of this guy I know…from 15 years ago. He’s in his 40’s and a handsome guy (the thing I find sexiest about him is how unbelievably nice he is), but back in the day…he would have been the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in real life. A giant of a man, huge warm hands, great handshake, warm, piercing eyes, and great for far-reaching conversations. But one of those untouchable personalities. I think I like looking at his pictures because they’re torturous–if I was meeting the him at 25, I would probably be terrifically intimidated, so who am I kidding. Just one of those untouchables…

Then again, every man is untouchable to me. I don’t know when it was that I lost touch. Lost interest. Lost…connection. Got lost.

My coworkers cornered me last week and asked if I was married. If I had a boyfriend. Why not. I found it interesting how they couldn’t tell I was clearly single since I never talk about anyone, but they said I’m such a happy, open, flirty personality that it distracts from the fact no one knows anything about my personal life. A lot of people say that. I do most of my verbalizing of my romantic aspirations and frustrations here, my missive out to the universe like messages in a bottle, perhaps to the other extension of myself on the other side of time and space. So it’s interesting how much of my feelings and desires and inner life dominate this space, whereas in the world around me, it’s as though they don’t even exist.

They asked me why I’m so mysterious. I don’t know, I said. It’s just perception.

I had dinner with some family friends on Friday. Their oldest son was a couple of years younger than me and is finishing up his PhD on the east coast in computer science. I was telling his mom how smart he is when she said, he’s smart? You’re smart.

Not really, I said. I just fake it well.

Do you remember that time Nick had to interview you for an English paper? He was about 13, in junior high and he had to interview someone about how they were successful so he chose you. And one of the questions he had to ask was how it was that you were able to be successful, and you just said, “Because I’m smart.”

I told her I don’t remember this at all.

Ohhh, she said. Nick remembers. He always got A’s. He never got anything less than A’s. But when he got that paper back, his teacher had written all over that answer, ‘How can this be it? You didn’t work hard on this answer.” And gave him a B. And he was so upset because he said he asked you the question and all you said was “because I’m smart,” and so he wrote exactly that, and because of that, his teacher gave him a B for not putting enough effort into the interview. 

I laughed, though I felt kind of bad. That ego of mine. That sounds like me, I said.

Work news. I got my 2nd order. I’m really hoping for a big cluster order to come in this week. A six figure order. I’m heading up a new committee called Strategic Planning, responsibile for creating and roadmapping new products into the company pipeline. I ran my first meeting last Friday, bringing together heads of three departments. Sometimes I’m so scared that I know nothing. That I will fail. But I feel if I’m going to fail, I have to fail going in head first.

Parents decided to take a vacation together to Taiwan/China, and left on Saturday. I had a mild panic. I finally admitted to Bohr something…

I’m terrified all the time. It’s one of the reasons I can’t live close to home. Whenever I’m close to my family, I have a constant anxiety…a constant fear. Of losing them. It’s almost paralyzing. Sometimes in meetings, I’ll look at my mom and I’m so terrified of losing her that tears well up. When my phone runs out of battery at night (I only have a car charger since leaving my wall charger at Aubrey’s earlier in the year), I worry about what would happen if there’s an emergency and I can’t be notified. I can’t stomach medical shows because of all the death and loss. I told Bohr that I worry about my parents traveling together–it’s almost like having the president and vice-president in the same place. And on one hand, I recognize that this anxiety is irrational, that the cycle of life is inevitable, it’s still a constant emotional underpinning. I worry about it every day, spending more emotional time on this fear than I would ever admit.

He asked me if maybe it wasn’t just the loss that scares me, but something else. The reality of my responsibilities–for the company, for my brother. And I thought, yes and no. But it probably is. How much I don’t know. How I’m basically surviving in terms of taking care of myself…how will I be responsible for real responsibilities. Perhaps deep, deep down, I don’t feel like a very worthy human being. I can live in a universe of my own making, but I have not much established myself in the universe of a collective making.  Maybe I just never shook the fear that terrorized me in my childhood when I realized how small we all are, how small we can be. Who really has control in a world that is an illusion of stability upon a hurtling rock in constant motion?

Still, it makes me feel safe when people smile around me and tell me I’m such a happy person. It means my connection to the world is intact.

Then do what this guy says and play it with this song.

i can’t do it myself.

someone understand how brave i am.

someone understand how scared i am.

i. will. find. you. backwards.

i’ve heard you try to speak german to me. but i don’t have time to read.

these days i’m so confused.
it’s all out of control.

these days, i’m so focused.
it’s all about control.

creatives are not people
they are creatures

Today the office sang happy birthday to a cake.

Bohr got a bag full of exploding fireworks cake candles that someone brought back from China for his mom. We took one and have been plotting all week how to have an excuse to light it. We found one girl whose birthday was last Sunday but she said she’d kill us if we made a big deal of it. I realized any cake that is baked that day would be celebrating a birthday. So I went and bought a red velvet cake, then we gathered everyone and had them sing happy birthday to it before lighting the explosive (gunpowder-containing) candle. It was satisfying.

Video footage of the crazy Chinese candle (as well as video of our office bbq football game shortly before Luke and I conked heads and nearly gave each other concussions) here.
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