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27September | i wonder what "blog" is in different languages
Been thinking about blogs lately. There's a certain stigma, I think, that comes with being a blogger. I've been meeting a bunch of new people recently and I always wonder if I should bring up the fact that I have a blog, or if that is like too much personal information for a new friend. Especially because then they might want to check it out. Not that I think everyone I know is just dying to read my blog - I have plenty of friends who don't check in, or if they do it's only once in a while when they think of it or I have a new layout. But those who do - I wonder if it sort of throws things off balance. Right now I think my readership is about 35% actual friends, 45% marginal/online friends, and 30% ghost readers whom I don't even really know. I'm okay with that, mostly because the people who are close to me who do read it, wouldn't have to read it to know what's going on with me because we talk on a regular basis. Anyway, I've been reading several blogs pretty regularly - I suppose I am part of their ghost reader percentage because I don't think they know that I read them, or if they do we've never mutually acknowledged it. And I've started to wonder what makes a good blog and what makes a bad one. I can recognize them almost immediately. Lisa is a good blogger. (If she wasn't, do you think I would host her?! Haha) Rachel can make anything inane seem insightful and interesting. Heather... well, Heather makes a living being a blogger. Out of those three, I only know Lisa personally. Even her - I've never met. We've been friends for seven years (in fact... I believe our anniversary is tomorrow? (Yes we have an anniversary)) but as we met online and live in different countries, we've never actually been in each other's physical presence. Yet I can appreciate each of those blogs in relation to how well I know them or don't know them. Then there are the bad ones. (And no I am not going to link them, come on that's just mean...) I'm not sure what makes them bad, as I think most people tend to blog about similar topics - something funny that happened, a world observation, personal trauma or revelation, etc. Maybe it comes down to simple writing ability. MANY MANY people who can't write still have blogs. And even though I'm sure they can talk like normal human beings and form relatively grammatically correct sentences, for some reason when translating their ideas in a written forum it just all gets lost. That's the first thing. The other is, I think, a lack of self-reflection. (Which is ironic because... they are writing in a blog which is all about self-reflection, I think.) I hope that I don't come across as self-centered or hypocritical in my blog. If I do, I'd love to know, because I think I have a high level of paranoia of being a hypocrite. Reading someone's personal thoughts while knowing who they present themselves to be offline can be rather jarring if they actually indicate very different people. I'd like to think that my blog represents me well - that someone who read it on a regular basis could come away with a pretty good idea of who I am. There's nothing on here that I wouldn't say out loud. I'm not sure where all this was supposed to lead, but it's almost 8:00 and America's Next Top Model is on, so I'm out. Let me know your thoughts, please. Doesn't matter which percentage you fall in. :)
25September | i got to work at 9:00 today
and it felt like a completely different day. I also had a specific project that kept me busy right until its noon deadline which might have also helped, but there's something to be said about an early start. Who knew, right? Ha. Anyway, I think I might start getting up earlier - my eyes are recovering well from the bout of terrible allergies I had a couple weeks ago so it's not so much of a hassle to wake up and start functioning right away. Also I had dinner with my friend Kristy from my last job tonight. It's really disheartening that every time I see her, she has worse and worse stories about how they treat her there. It's so appalling and just downright wrong that a person with such impropriety and arrogance could get to the point of running a company and have so much power. I realize this happens in almost all companies, but the structure of most corporations are vastly different from that of a non-profit. Anyway I don't know. I'm sick of hearing about all the blatant favoritism that happens there, and all the bullshit surrounding my termination. I feel like I'm starting a new phase... of something. Appropriately this arrives just after I dyed my hair and cut my bangs. I like this change...
23September | attention ladies
Here are 4 simple steps to getting that cute boy you have your eye on: 1. Point him out to me. It's failproof and tested. I can even provide references.
21September | put me in a vacuum
I just watched the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy, season three. It was anti-climactic. The only part that moved me was one of the very last scenes with Christina and Burke and I can't really place why. Maybe it's because it's clear that she loves him so deeply and I just really never think that I will get to that point with anyone. This is not me throwing myself a pity party - this is me evaluating the choices I've made and the situation I currently find myself in, and seeing that there is a blockage there. I am simply unable to open myself up. Have I been faking it all these years? Anyway then I couldn't bring myself to watch Six Degrees even though all the commercials are touting it as the most amazing thing ever. Maybe I think that I will like it too much and thus further my own wallowing depression of not being able to produce any decent pieces of writing. People must be sick of me talking about writing, because I haven't really done much of it since I graduated from college. It's not a lack of things to write about. I am unfocused and undriven. Want to pull it back together-
20September | exciting news
my younger brother (he has balked at my former descriptor of choice, "little") has this old secondhand guitar that my mother has so graciously informed me is still in his room at home - i am going home next weekend and will be bringing it back to me, re-stringing it and learning myself how to play! i've tried and quit twice before - they say the third time's the charm... we shall see!
19September | i can't sleep
and in line with my last post i am running through the people who have been important to me in the last year, starting with the beginning of the middle of the end of last year's "someone" and ending with what i think is the end of the end of this year's (or something?) and also the beginning of a nowhere road with the current, and everything in between- why is it that the only person who's consistently meant something, is someone that i don't think i'll ever touch? i always get swept away with ideas like this and am too self-aware for my own good. someone shake me, wake me and bring me back to reality. i am so much more than this pettiness. right? why can't i let it go?
19September | in thinking
Do you ever think about friends you've had? I mean all of the friends you've ever had? And then do you think about how many of them you are no longer in touch with? Then, to take it a step further, do you think about why you are no longer in touch? What your last interaction was like? Was it amicable, and you just fell out of sync? Or was there friction? Are human beings that intrinsically sensitive and prone to grudges that we would let so many friendships go because of friction, or even just an extended time of being "too busy"? (Or is it just me?) Maybe we are built that way so that we don't overextend ourselves into caring about too many people. I've got a handful of people who have my heart unconditionally; maybe that's all I can handle. All the same - I find myself counting the people I've fallen out of touch with due to friction and I hate how high the number is, especially considering the kind of bond we once had. Did we just grow out of each other? Or were the emotions just too intense to recover from how much we'd perhaps unintentionally hurt each other? Why do we meet so many people, only to weed out the single few that we are meant to keep in our lives forever? While Alice and Tati were here I realized that we've known each other for six years. That's at least three times longer than I've known anyone I met in New York. And there are not many people in my New York social circle now that I've known for much longer than a few months. Is that the way it's going to be from now on? As long as I keep picking up and moving on, will I just keep leaving people behind, and vice versa? When I leave New York, will I take anyone with me?
17September | i am working on a story
about love - but not in a conventional sense. i wrote a couple posts back that i'm hesitant to love. this i still find to be true, but only in the conventional boy-meets-girl, courtship sense. that's too easy for me (or perhaps too difficult to face?). in passing conversation i think my notions about this kind of love seem flighty or naive, perhaps a bit overeager. but i've been sitting on this for years. and the incurable romantic in me can't resist embracing it - at least long enough to finish writing about it.
15September | and we thought britney was fertile
Breaking news: Taylor and Natalie Hanson just had their third child. Several reactions to this: 2. He is 23, and Natalie is 22. Um... I am older than both of them. If they continue at this rate, they will have seven children by the time I MAY be ready to have my first. Maybe they don't believe in birth control. If I were Natalie I would start sneaking it. Which brings us to... 3. Please! Give that poor girl a rest! If 3,000,000 girls had known years ago that marrying Taylor Hanson would mean spending the rest of their twenties in labor and never having a normal-sized uterus again, they surely would have turned to a different brother. Say... Isaac. I hope he stays a bachelor forever. Would be fitting. 4. ... now maybe they can start touring again?
14September | why i don't try too hard to write about men
Thinking back in the past year or so, I realized that I've spent the most of my writing energy on the men in my life - whether it's curious wonder, contentment, or indignance. And then I look back, mostly on the first two categories, and just think, you never deserved to be written about like this. I like to romanticize my feelings in order to put them into words - it makes the pieces that much more interesting to read, and more tangible, both to myself and to my readers. It's hard for non-writers to understand that concept, and I guess it's even hard for me to understand it, now that I am out of it. It takes a certain degree of detachment on my part - detachment from my reservations, sensibilities, and paranoia of being hurt - to really write something that seems true and worthwhile about a man. At this point, I don't think I can afford that detachment anymore. Even though that person may never read it, I just feel much too vulnerable even having produced it, and to have people think that I have truly felt the things that I've written. Recently I've really started to think that I am much more hesitant to love than I have ever been before.
13September | my little secret
Is it so wrong that I am eagerly anticipating the October 2nd premiere of E!'s House of Carters, starring none other than my first boyband love, Nick Carter? Has my reality tv penchant finally gone too far?
12September | what i have learned this week
My friend Charles likens my moods to my hair; ever changing, experimental, daring, yet always stylish. (Well, almost always.) Lately he's described my overall aura to be "zen-like" - perhaps meaning that I'm a bit calmer, more grounded. Perhaps that's true. I guess things aren't as volatile as they used to be - I still feel deeply, but I maintain it better. My moods may change, but my hair has stayed the same. Having Alice back and with me was a welcome relief of the constant me-ness that I've been surrounded by - a lot of who I am now is influenced by having known her and she brought me back to it... but it also showed me how much I've grown into myself. I don't have friends here like her and like Tatiana - I'm not sure if it's because I just haven't been here long enough, or if it's the difference in environments. I'm loving and comfortable and unafraid to show my emotions with them... I suppose I've felt let down by too many people in New York City to open myself up to anyone here. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, having been shut out of my own bed by a very deeply asleep Tatiana, I spoke to my friend Sam on the phone - the first time I'd heard his voice in over three years. He's in Australia now, and we talk very sporadically, but he is one of those people that I just love to have known. We've been somewhat in each other's lives for about eight years now, but most of the time that I've felt strangely close to him, we have been nowhere near each other. He went to Georgetown for undergrad, and I was at Haverford... and now we are across the globe, in almost opposite timezones. Three summers ago was the first time we'd seen each other since going off to college - we were like unfurled wounds, each having gone through very personal pain and had emerged still smarting, yet a bit wiser. It is also the last time I saw him, and to this day there aren't many afternoons that I truly treasure more than the one I spent with him. Hearing Alice's stories about her experiences abroad have made me itch... not necessarily for a trip of her caliber, but just for something a little less stationary. Even more movement around New York City - taking more advantage of what is at my fingertips, tasting life instead of just lingering on the surface. Having a full-time job has definitely calmed me down a bit, but I still want to experience the vivacity of life. And I want to surround myself with people who feel, who express themselves, and who truly care about my well-being. People like that do exist - whether they are travelling the world, states away, across the world, or just around the corner for me to meet. I shouldn't settle for less... because I know that I am truly worth it.
10September | the weekend summed up in a picture
(click to enlarge)
10September | dude
I've never been big on drinking - I'm a social consumer and there were always classic college moments but mostly I never saw the point of it. Mostly because it makes otherwise smart and cautious people act dumb, and I am clearly not immune to it.
07September | i'm in love
Suri Cruise is adorable. I can only hope my baby will look like that...
05September | my favorite thing
is when shallow, judgmental people continually stress how much they hate shallow, judgmental people. it makes me laugh every time.
04September | a laborious day indeed
Remember when I wrote about my contact lens cleaner dilemma? Well today I stopped into Walgreens to pick up a soda after an afternoon of laundry and errands (more on that later) and saw, not the cleaner that I've been looking for, but Opti-Free's Daily Contact Lens Cleaner, apparently the only other soft contact lens cleaner out there. Sweet! I pounced on it... then looked at the price... $10.99. For a 2/3 fluid ounce bottle. I'm sorry, but are we serious here? I used to use this cleaner, and it was never more than $7.00 or $8.00. As if having poor vision isn't enough of a financial setback (I 'm down $500 after my last contact lens and glasses purchase), they have to jack up the prices with the full knowledge that there is NO ALTERNATIVE? Anyway... as today is Labor Day, the laundromats that I usually go to are closed (or, closed at 1:00pm which is roughly when I got out of bed... hehe) and I direly needed to wash my linens so I decided to pack them all in my backpack and check out the 24-hour laundromat about 8 blocks from my apartment. It is called "Atlantis SuperWash Center" and my, is it nice!! Huge, rows upon rows of washers and dryers, snack and soda machines, cappucino and ice cream vending machines, a sitting area, and even arcade games!! Also it is not quarter-based, but card-based, which is great because then I didn't have to lug around a pocketful of quarters between the washing and drying phases. It was exactly what I had expected laundromats to be like before I had actually experienced them. Even though it is more of a trek than my nearest laundromats (one is two blocks away, and there is actually one around the corner but it is small and dirty-looking so I've never been brave enough to venture in), I think I might start going there instead... I love that it is open 24 hours, as the one I usually go to closes at 9:00pm but they always try to close early, so I'll go back to get my stuff at like 8:30 and the door will be locked and they'll let me in, then sit there and stare at me as I hurriedly stuff my steaming hot laundry into my bag and scurry home with second degree burns on my arms from the rivets on my jeans. Hmph. I think I will definitely be patronizing Atlantis SuperWash from now on. Also, I'm on the prowl for some new music. Suggestions anyone?
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