Textually Abusive

HA! You like that title? SOOOOOO original, don't you think? Yeah...

Anyway, it is a topic which has plagued my mind a little, as of late, and I feel that I need to doodle around it so that I might understand not only my resultant frustration but also how I might in turn deal with it in a face-to-face setting. I know that my words tend to be a tad jumbled when put on the spot... improvisation was never my forte. Therefore, why not plan out my grievance... no... no, that's far too dramatic a word. My response. Yes. Response.

I know this gentleman... well, not really "know"; he added me on FACEBOOK, and of course, this means that we are bosom buddies (a-ga-duh). He seems a decent fellow and I hate to kill him, and I seem a decent fellow, and I hate to d-... wait, wait, no; he seems a decent fellow and a wonderful, upstanding citizen* - graduate of SMU, teaches music, a very artistic guy. But he also seems to have a rather jagged edge to him; he loves - LOVES - to text. At all times of the day and night. He has the Sprint Evo phone, and apparently, he is able to talk and the phone understands him, thus negating the need for fingers to text.

And so he prefers texting to actual vocal communication. It suddenly seems to me then that perhaps it is a power/control thing: that he is able to do 100% of the talking and not feel obligated to actually listen to anything that the other person "says" (or rather types), basically allowing him to read whatever he wants into the texts he receives back. This leaves him quite vulnerable to one of my least favorite aspects of e-communication: lack of inflection. People do not realize (or at least far too many people tend to ignore) how important vocal inflection is when it comes to interpersonal communication. And seeing as how this guy thinks we are moments away from marriage, this makes our relationship all but insufferable.

The man sounds like such a nice, somewhat shy guy when we actually do converse on the phone, but a different facet comes to light when he texts me. He becomes rather haughty and attention starved... I guess kind of like my very own facet somewhat of the same lustre that I have learned to control. He assumes that I am ready and willing to agree with anything and everything he says, and being a teacher with summers off, he seems (please note I say 'seems' because heaven forbid he should explain himself) to become almost incredulous that I am unable to go on a date with him in BFE where he lives at the drop of a hat. I feel as though he may have been a rather privileged child... and perhaps might still be - one who has never really known want without fulfillment. I mean, heaven forbid that I actually do things in my life outside of my day job - my DAY job, which he has, but from which he is presently on summer hiatus - which I find more important. Selfish? Perhaps... but not in the slightest bit uncommon.

I think he feels he's charming, and that I am just head over heels for him and am merely playing hard to get. That being said, I do not find his character at all palatable and in all honest I am quite afraid of what inner demons this text persona is meant to keep covered. I fear that this "relationship" could go nowhere but down from any statement of exclusivity and thus I must bolster myself for the moment when I will need to merely tell him to stop.

My heavens I'm a picky bitch... but I was a child of the GHW Bush Era: "ME, ME, ME!" ... I was taught to think I was worth it.

Okay so I think I have figured out the meaning behind my ire whereupon I hear a specific phrase that is meant to administer (what I assume is) comfort. Why anyone would care is beyond me, but hey... I'm rocking my spiral, just like Susan (and John) said...

I guess it is misguided to call it a phrase, as I can't really narrow it down with such specificity; it comes in many a guise. But the idea is such - that all situations are never so bad as they could not be infinitely worse as demonstrated by [fill in the blank here]... and without fail, there is always some immediate example just itchin' to be used for just such a coddling admonishment. Okay, that's not fair... that I speak in such scathing terms of an act of comfort that more often than not is meant for just that: comfort. And you know, thinking on it now, I feel as though my shame for not having recognized the situation (aloud?) before it being called to my attention is what makes me lash out... but therein lies my conundrum, that I lash out. That it brings my any consternation at all is unsettling to me, but I feel it is somewhat justified...

It is my opinion that when a situation of greater severity than one's own is called to attention, it produces - initially - the desired effect of assuaging frustration... but I think that this assuagement is laced with - I personally feel - what might be contempt for the individual providing the comparison as well as the individuals involved in the situation of greater severity. Basically, we transfer the energy expended on our self pity into scorn for those who have it worse off than we do. Or at least that kind of feels how I react... and frankly, I am ashamed of this. It's a cruel thought, and I would do well to not say this when met with just such a situation as mention before.

Is it necessary to compare? I mean... we are alone in this world - we are utterly alone. The world exists because we open our eyes to see it, and a trillion different worlds exist because of each of a trillion sets of eyes. Therefore, is it really a good idea to compare? One might say that it is simply because it puts our insignificance in perspective... and it does, but then one must take into account the general self-centeredness and egoism that is the human way. And suddenly, it might be safe to venture that we as singular human beings would not look at it as a verification of our own insignificance but rather that of others, whether actual or imagined. And that's no bueno.

But then why not just be an egoist all one's self? Does that justify it? Nope... not in the slightest. And that's where awareness comes in... we have to realize our insignificance and accept that it is not such a negative thing. As the Buddhist saying goes, "you are already complete. You just do not realize it", whereupon one might then hear "when you do something, burn yourself completely"... we are not here to amass, we are here to disintegrate. Whoa... we are here to disintegrate.

Okay, I am spiraling... again... out of control. Well, no, that's not true; I have 'total control'. Or rather everything is stagnating, but kind of like a centrifuge which is in fact constantly moving but in one direction and to nowhere in particular. I have too much on my plate, and the world is not in my corner. Not that I can expect them to be, mind you, but the resultant situation does seem to put a damper on the prospects of my goals and aspirations...

I am in the show at Ohlook, [title of show]... FABULOUS. I love it, and I love my cast... they are amazing people. Some of the finer people I know at the moment. Unfortunately, the time I get to spend with them is marred by the fact that I spend every other waking moment (basically) at my day job. At that place. With those people. And it is, I feel, killing me softly.

Susan Blackwell - famed fellow "day-jobber" from [tos] - says (as I was reminded by my good friend John, that upon creative stagnation, one must keep doing something... anything... even if it is, in fact, a spiral doodle on the page one which you are writing. And suddenly I see the grand metaphor for the "page" and the potential "doodles" one may "write" thereon... huh...

Anyway, I stated (on facebook goddamnit) that I was spiraling, or trying hard not to or whatever... and in accordance with Susan Blackwell's words, John reminded me that I must, in turn, "rock it". One must "Rock the spiral" to keep going, keep all of it moving until you can pick back up where you left off. And it makes perfect sense... COMPLETE sense. Keep the mind moving, as the hardest part is just "starting".

"Just start. That's all you have to worry about. Starting. Get away from your computer, grab a notepad and a pencil and just write. Anything you want. Play. Doodle. Whatever. Okay?" says the character which I portray in the show when he talks to his best friend regarding creative inspiration and the set-backs thereof. Man, I wish I were a writer. That'd be amazing. But then again, I am quite the fatalist, as of late, and feel that nothing I have to say is of any great (or marketable) import. THAT BEING SAID... that is quite alright. And who knows? Perhaps the creative spark that triggers the ability to formulate quality thoughts into recognizable and universally understandable patterns will happen when least I expect it... wouldn't it be loverly...

Anyway, I am feeling a tad better as I sit here wasting time eating my bread-and-milk (thank you, Nigella Lawson! Although my bread is lo-cal and my "milk" is Almond Milk... go figure)... my head hurts however... and feels a tad dizzy. I felt this way last night at rehearsal and chalked it up to the heat and the ridiculous amount of "spinning" required in our choreography. I'm sure it looks fabulous, but at present, I kind of suck too much to get it right on the first night...

Here's hoping we have a show on Thursday... and that's not because I doubt we will have it ready as much as it is I doubt the marketing put into the show itself. Whoa... bitchy, Marshall. Pull it back. Anyway... all the same... here's hoping.

Okay, so I feel I have a better grasp on the whole "anti-facebook" sentiment I have felt as of late... I deliberated on this the other night as I felt my drive to break myself away wane - a sure sign of addiction, don't you think? I mean, it's bad enough I don't just walk away and leave it, cold turkey... but that I was thinking of extending my deadline for exeunt just helps me solidify my theory.

That being said, it is just a theory... but a well supported one - if there are scientific studies on being addicted to porn, surely one can be addicted to all things electronic... I mean, hell, look at Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ... the incessant need to dominate over life... or something like it.

Anyway, what snapped me out of it, really, was the Wikipedia article on Jean-Paul Sartre's (famed French philosopher of the existentialist tract) On Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, or rather the study of being. Heavy stuff which is WAY above my head... but reading just the article made me want to start reading Sartre. I mean, not just this one book, but perhaps some of his plays as well; No Exit or Huis Clos as it was called in French sounds quite interesting... rather anti-fatalist as it discusses people "existing" eternally in hell, but hey, there you go. I know that it will take me forever, as that is just how I roll, but I feel that his existentialism would help me balance the encroaching fatalism I feel inside... whoa...

Anyway, this totally relates to the whole facebook thing... how? Well I'll tell you how; the idea behind this opus gripped me from the very description of the introduction in which the subjects of being in itself versus being for itself are portrayed as rather oppositional; "in" implies a lack of consciousness that, in our limited capacity, can only be approximated, and "for" implies that consciousness of something for the validation of the self comes into play. Blows... my... mind.

The first chapter is basically a page from the book of any one's life, whether or not they choose to recognize it, and practically verifies my theory that the road to "happiness" (or at least a path of little resistance) is one most certainly NOT paved in expectation; the Origin of Negation comes from the disappointment or resentment we feel when something expected does not come to pass, or the negation of expectation, at which point Sartre states "it is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of human expectation". From there, he describes the existence of "bad faith", or rather this expectation that we are all generally something that we are not. Now, this sounds initially rather pessimistic, but reading on (in the article, mind you) changed my opinion.

Sartre implies that one can escape bad faith by recognizing that the actual self and the projected self are not the same thing, and that basically, in that you are an existent being, you are not "no thing", you are anything. Anything at all... through effort of course, but abounding in endless possibilities and whatnot. We must realize we are beings who exist and not just some social position or aspect. He qualifies this, though, by saying that the "authentic" being is one who balances the existence, the bad faith in various conditions we must take on, and the nothingness in between. Like... whoa...

Facebook, yes, right... facebook is a condition on which I have taken willingly that I cannot shake. I am not my facebook. My facebook - in a perfect world - should be me, but it is not. I am my own being, endlessly capable, and not defined by online critiques of my e-personality. Therefore, it is my personal theory that the resultant no-thingness that exists between who I actually am and what my facebook portrays me to be (in all its "electric sheep" glory) is the barrier I must pass through (or perhaps through which I must return) in order to be more personally actualized.

Why am I making such a big, (poorly) philosophical fuss about something as trivial as a facebook page? Because I know what it is like to be addicted to something that is only harmless on the surface... addicted the candy from the wolf in sheep's clothing... addicted to routines that are endlessly self-destructive regardless of how we justify them; they may be harmless to the condition which consumes us, but they are poison (POISON!) to the existent being.

It is in this spirit that my faith in my decision to drop facebook is reaffirmed and renewed. July 31st, 11:59 AM... die, vampire... die...

Chumbawumbic Wisom...

"She's been born into the wrong time; she keeps nonsense on her mind.

She's a poet; she's a builder; she's as bored as bored can be.

She's a have-not; she's a know-all; she knows just how to say 'yes'.

She's skating frozen chaos till the no good gods are dead...

She's a clueless social climber; likes the wrong side of the bed.

She's a pick-me-up, and she's a "drink to me" in the company of friends.

She's tried every variation - she's so common, she's so cold.

She's homesick for a future... can't stomach what she's told."

You know, I wish I couldn't relate to these lyrics, but I'm afraid that I can in ways I never thought possible when first I listened to them back in the day. And who's fault is this? Wouldn't it be simple if I could just blame Chumbawumba? Lay guilt upon them simply because I heard their lyrics? It's suddenly oddly humorous that there is such controversy over children hearing violent lyrics and exhibiting the potential to be violent... might the same thing happen should one hear introspective lyrics? The debate shall surge, no doubt...



But I guess that's why I write here; introspection seems to be a very precarious term these days - to one direction, we who look within are ahead of our time, forging a path to enlightenment and self-understanding and the understanding of how we fit into this world... to another, we are self-centered, self-aggrandizing egoists who feel the need to look out for none but number one. I like to think myself nowhere near the latter, but does thinking just so make me egocentric? It seems so... but then again, so does blogging, regardless of whether or not anyone reads it!



My feeling is, however, that there are certain aspects of our very humanity which are rather egoistic; namely self-preservation and self-continuance. Continuance of the species is a very self-centered ideal, but in an oddly altruist fashion. It suddenly makes me rather ill to think that we cannot help but be so damn human.

In other news, I have decided that I must... MUST... delete my facebook account... if only for a month. Facebook has captured more than just my attention; it has captured my very soul. I find myself going back to the website time and again at home in the evenings just HOPING to have caught some one's attention; just praying they will have commented on a photo or a post or something. But as I have "e-aged" on facebook, I have noticed more and more that - with the development of things such as the "like" feature and "hiding" - people really just don't give a shit; everyone is there for the same reasons I am there, and the majority of them have already formed e-cliques into which entry is quite exclusive. That being said, I feel that facebook has become just a complex, "belled and whistled" online photo album which people can publicly ignore... and frankly, I feel like that might just be poison!

There are such things as computer viruses - computer programs that make your computer sick - but I now believe there is also computer poison, or rather computer do-dads that make you sick. Facebook is one such do-dad, at least for me it is. Some people have built up an immunity to this poison... I however have not. And therefore the way to build aforementioned immunity is to ween myself onto it... from a lack thereof, of course. Meaning? I must delete my facebook account and start over at some undisclosed time in the future.

My mother suggested I just not go to facebook for a while or only intermittently, but as with any addiction, you can't just only do it sometimes... you can't just "shoot up" after lunch and no longer call yourself addicted. Therefore, I will go cold turkey at the end of July for at VERY least a month, if not longer... dependent upon my needs at that point, and by needs, I mean thus: if I can learn how to appreciate the "social network" that may be provided by facebook, and if I can utilize it as such as opposed to an e-life coach or "positivity" generator. If I can ignore the "social" aspect of it and use it merely as the aforementioned photo album (you know, as opposed to flickr which would do just the same thing...). And various other reasons which I really don't care to discuss. And why should I?

Anyway, yeah... July 31st, 11:59 PM... deleting my facebook account for at very least a month. If not indefinitely. So there.

So I feel like I've come to a stand-still. Big news, I know, but I wanted to try and see myself explain it, so here goes...

I am keeping myself from the outside world. I am imprisoning myself in my house and defending my captor... and it's stupid. It's stupid of me to say that my friends never call when I have cancelled so many chances to associate myself with them. And what's worse is I try to turn it around on them by magnifying any instance in which they are unable to sate my desire to socialize... and I am so ashamed.

I need to just leave my comfort zone... leave my home... get the hell out. But I don't know where to go... how to do it... WHAT to do... and, as an aside though pertinent to my predicament, I'm so very frightened that I am going to be too old to save myself from my own loneliness. I don't want that to be the case, but who's to say it won't be?

I suppose a good Christian would tell me to find strength in God or Jesus... and it is short-sighted of them, in my opinion, to think that I haven't tried that in the past. God and Jesus are not there. And that's fine, because there can be plenty of people there... REAL, LIVE people who will listen, whether they want to or not... it's simply up to me to go out and find them...

Yes, the problem is within... but I think the problem therein is an emptiness... and while the solution may come partly from within, I think the emptiness will be shoaled with something that may very well come from the outside... heaven knows what, but that, I think, is my quest.

Here's hoping...

I need a hero...

...that's the song to which I am currently listening here at work. It's been a crazy day during which I have had few moments to think about anything other than the task at hand (which is a good thing, no doubt... but a little unnerving when there seems to be so much else to ponder). But now, there seems to be a blessed lull in the business to which I attend, and I am going to take this opportunity to reflect on the song which I hear.

I do need a hero. I'm holding out for said hero not just until the end of the night, but forever more and always, amen. Or at least that is what it seems. In my case, I really am not sure just what that hero is, seeing as how more and more I think that it mightn't actually be a person, but rather an action or a thing. And I suppose therein lies a conundrum, seeing as how as of late, my life has been quite full; I attend a gym in the mornings, and then work at my full time job (at which I have recently been given a batch of new duties that keep my QUITE occupied), and then I head home only to then head to rehearsal for Romeo + Juliet. After that, there really aren't very many hours left during the day with which one could do anything, really... I suppose I could devote them to reading or crocheting or something, but in all frankness, my mind seems so mushy by then, that neither of those pastimes really appeal to me.

Thus, my life is full. At least my week is full. My weekends? Well, they are about to be full (seeing as how we are honing in on opening for the show), but at present, they are more occupied by a kind of mental regrouping with my family in Weatherford. I enjoy this, but at the same time, I think it might be working somewhat to my detriment...

I arrive home and feel a sense of relief to be around something familiar, but then I realize that this has been the case for a while now. I live in Arlington - a town in which there are amusement parks, malls, and varied distractions of all sorts, and which is situated near two major metropolitan areas within which are housed yet greater numbers of distractions and diversions - and yet I take no advantage of this. I guess part of that is my preference to partake of these things with someone else - friends, family, etc - yet experiencing a dearth of people who might fit that bill.

That's not very nice... I guess... but it is none the less true. I'm at a point now where all of my friends don't seem like friends any longer (and I don't doubt that not being in school any more has a great deal to do with that... although to be honest, when I was still in school, I felt markedly similar to now). I guess I'm just curious... how does one break free? My friend Troy feeds me the "look at me" lines somewhere in the ballpark of "all I did was change my job, my boyfriend, and all my friends, and things got better"... and hell, he's probably right on the money when it comes to what I should do... but frankly, I just don't see how the hell all of that comes about. He admitted it took a while, but to hear him talk, you'd think it were an infomercial for a weight loss product or get-rich-quick scheme...

I hate to sound whiny, because it's been my experience that people tend to find that a big turn off when it comes to deciding whether or not to associate with you. I suppose that is why I vent here. But venting, admittedly, will only get me so far. The rest is up to me making active changes and rolling with the resulting punches...

... now if I could just figure out what the hell those changes need be...