About start Nanowrimo AND about to start blogging my readings for my alumni audit class a la masterworktheory.blogspot.com.

Writing a bunch is clearly on the menu.

That's all!

Jamming out to Girl Talk
Reading World War Z, Weber's Vocation Lectures, Reaper Man, Watchmen

So, there are all of these things I want to do. Like learn to surf. How am I supposed to learn to surf in DC? Clearly, I need a field trip to somewhere with waves.

No stories of late, but I've been having crazy urges to write a lot. So maybe I'll indulge :) After all, I have to keep my critical thinking skills up and my writing stamina at ready....

- r

Averting Guilt and Learning from Mistakes

Ah, the joys of being overly sensitive and feeling real guilt for not doing something perfectly. Case in point today:

I had done a lot of work to gather ideas for this project and had presented them relatively comprehensively. This had involved talking to a lot of people about how they thought a particular situation should be dealt with. I presented my content and people moved it forward.

Fast forward to the NEXT level of presentation of my content : the person who had assigned me to gather this information presented it as content I had gathered from some people who I, in fact, had not talked to. And they were there.

Now, I didn't realize until RIGHT THEN that I was supposed to have talked to them. I thought that the list of people to talk to was a selection and a place to start/work from, not an all-inclusive list. I have now learned that that is not the case. When I'm given an assignment, especially if it is for someone else, I need to really make a plan of EXACTLY what I should do per their instructions. While my methodology may make sense to me, they probably know what they're asking for and want what they're asking for for a reason.

So I didn't do it perfectly and I totally didn't realize it until way after I thought I was done. Very frustrating, and I suppose this is avoidable guilt. I will have to apologize and really reconsider how I organize my tasks so that, when I'm done, they meet all expectations and assumptions and I can win instead of feeling really good and then feeling like I only performed marginally well.

I mean, now I can see how the information I gathered would have been richer had I been fully paying attention to my original assignment, but I got caught up in the product and that it needed to be done and not in the process and how to do it richly and well. Lesson learned.

Hey, look, a place where I'm smart on the internet

Do I want to move other things down from their high ranking on google for me? Maybe.

Look! I was in a cool program.

AND

I'm a PMF

and here I'm a PMF too!

AND I was on student council

Current books: Thomas More Utopia, Richard Adams Watership Down

As usual, strangers have been talking to me. In fact, there has been a lot of talking in general lately in my life. It is perplexing and comforting how much passing conversation has had depth, soul, and thought. It is also quite peculiar that my day-to-day (well, the part that's not mundane) is wildly...good?

Mrs. Ryser always said that "nice" was a trite word and a bad word choice. Yet I've really upgraded it to what I kind of want to be all the time. Again, strange.

I talked to a woman today while I was waiting for the bus. I believe our conversation started:

Me: Have you been waiting for the bus long?
Her: The 1 bus went by a minute ago.
Me: Oh, well, I'm patient.
Her: You need to stand up for yourself.

The conversation directly non sequitor'd into her life story, her convictions, her beliefs, her experiences, and the odd parts of her life. She was a wonderful woman, a little strange, but no more than the fact that she WAS who she was. No show and no performance. I got onto my bus feeling like I'd met an angel.

We talked about the people we have to love but who we don't have to like. I've been wondering what those people think, how they sleep at night, and how they can live with so little joy (because those are generally the people I don't particularly like). A piece of me feels like, at the end, people who have known joy realize their lives were not frivolous in joy, and those who have not finally get to know it. THEN the love stops being something occasionally exclusive of like, and everyone can get it. Some people down here just see it more clearly than other, like the woman at the bus stop.

I've also been really digging (scratching?) Watership Down. And learning (HA) chinese.

So, I was indulging one of my lamer whims and reading personal ads (seriously, I think it's fascinating how people present themselves, how they describe their ideal mate, and how you can tell how often they try to sell themselves into mated life by how overdone their ad is), and I found one who actually sounds like someone I could have conversation with:

"MA in American Cultural Studies" check

"I try to strike some sort of balance between interesting intellectual discourse and stupefying, maudlin entertainment." Has anyone heard my discourses on the larger sociological structures embedded in the video-ethnography that is Laguna Beach?

"my thesis was a post-structuralist reading of MTVs Total Request Live. if you have an elitist disdain for pop music, I will get on your nerves" Has anyone watched my last.fm account and wondered why I have a fascination with crap music? Has anyone heard me get all post-structuralist? In day-to-day conversation?

"You will laugh loudly, and often" Has anyone heard me ever?

Man. If I met this person in reality life it'd be awesome. But my realization that there might actually be someone out there like me who somehow feels like metaing so far over personal ads as to end up participating in it (because I did. once. it was an interesting and slightly bad experience) made me realize that, as much as you meta over things, I was, in fact, considering shopping. But I hate shopping for people. In principle and in act. SO MUCH. I mean, I like Laguna Beach (well, seasons 1 and 2, at least), it's guilty, whatever. But shopping for people is playing the expectations game which I DESPISE.

I immediately felt dirty and useless and hypocritical and like I was unwittingly going from participant observer to NATIVE. I refuse to be native.

Wouldn't it be fun to run into this person in reality? (and by fun, I mean probably really obnoxious.)

I haven’t figured out why, but over the years (years!), I’ve found myself, on an alarmingly regular basis, asked if I am someone I am not, assumed to be a frequent visitor at places I rarely visit, and told the entirety of life stories. People seem to think they know me.

Is it perhaps that I’m average? I’m average height, average (well, in the US) build, I don’t dress particularly flashily, and I really don’t look interesting. I smile more than people should, and make eye contact with strangers, but I also have a relatively innocuous “American girl” pattern to my speech. Do people just map all other “average” girls they know onto me, thereby recognizing me as someone they know?

I have people at whole foods who I don’t think I’ve ever talked to, but will chill outside with me on my way home from shopping. They tell me I haven’t been shopping in awhile (I usually haven’t), and ask about how I am, and then launch into their life dreams stories. I have acquaintances there too, who I do know, with whom I have chatted, but it’s the people I don’t immediately recognize who still feel they are connected to me (somehow) that lead me to believe there are other people around who are just like me.

I went to the career center yesterday (I’ve been maybe 4 times this year), and someone called me out for being a frequent visitor. Not only have I never interacted with him before, but I also really don’t hang out there. I wonder who does, and who I’m being perceived as. I wonder if my interactions will bode well for them later.

And people mistake me for their friends from home, their siblings’ friends, friends’ siblings, someone very familiar but not close to them, etc., etc. I get called different names and told that I’m so much like x person, and am I sure I don’t have a sister (yes, unless there’s something my parents aren’t telling me). This comes from peers, people younger than me, and people older than me from geographical locations worldwide.

And then I get the life stories. At the bus stop, in stores, from concierges, security guards, etc. The ones I solicit for conversation are the stories I expect, but some will just tell me. Everything. Tragic things, hopeful things, regrets, reforms. They will advise me (that I should be a good Christian girl, that prostitution (!?!) is not what I should be doing with my life), try to feed me, invite me over for tea, try to invite themselves over for *cough* other things. One time, in finland, I couldn’t talk myself out of visiting this one woman’s apartment for tea. It was strange to be invited into someone’s home having just been strolling around the park. I probably shouldn’t have gone, but she seemed nice enough and seemed to really need to talk about things, and I can oblige. I can’t commit, but I can oblige to listening, talking, trying to give people the familiarity they seem to need.

Because familiar is what I am. I never wanted to be ‘familiar’ or so average that people think I’m someone else. But I like that I can be transient and just be a temporal construct in people’s lives. I guess.