Tag Archives: opinion

Communcation Revolution: Quashed!

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“I’d love to hang out, but I need to wash my hair… all day… and until later this evening. You know, lather, rinse, and repeat? Maybe some other time.”

“But, you’re the one who said we should hang out. You even picked the day!”

“Well, I did, but that was until I got so busy with paying attention to my hair follicles. Sorry!”

This person got off light. I got a non-specific vague implication of suddenly being busy. So, I’m supposed to be sad, sit at home and eat ice cream, waiting until this person says they want to hang out again, right? Instead I make other plans.

I also let it out to a few friends who all have had a similar experiences recently.

“That happened to me the other day. So-and-so who I haven’t seen in forever calls me out of the blue and we make plans. The morning before I leave to meet her, she’s all *cough* *cough* ‘I don’t feel so well’ *cough*.”

“What’s that? It just makes you never want to have anything to do with them again.”

“Exactly. Just don’t make plans in the first place. Or tell the truth.”

“Yeah, at that point the truth is not going to have a worse effect.”

I’m a little annoyed at and confused by humanity. Why can’t people say what they mean?

It makes me feel like attempted communication with most people is useless, because there’s no actual connection being made. A bunch of words spew out, you think you are on the same page, and instead you’re a million miles apart. Every once in awhile something spectacular happens and someone actually picks up what you’re putting down. You both hold onto it, run with it, and friendships are born. With all the bullshit people say and do, it’s a minor miracle.

It’s a full out miracle when it stays for the long haul. I am lucky to have a handful of friends that fall into that category.

I’m unlucky that they don’t live close by.

I’ve been a bit hard on myself lately that I don’t have the ‘buddies’ to hang out with in this area that I once had. I haven’t lived here for over five years and people have moved, moved on, changed phone numbers, changed emails, and lost touch- sometimes even fallen out. In addition, this area of the United States of America contains people with a particular attitude on friendship and communication. I grew up here. If you want to be close, you’re clingy. If you’re open, you’re a freak. Being distant is cool. Meanwhile, in college I got used to asking friends if they wanted to go to the grocery store together. I’d get calls asking if I wanted to hang out and do laundry together. I could show up at someone’s door and call up ‘Lemme in!’ and be invited to stick around for dinner.

Life is short, and people around here are spending it being standoffish. In Maine and Virgina I became close to people quickly. We found one connection and ran with it. We found joy in getting lost in the car together or driving around nowhere all night knowing exactly where we were.

I am sad because those friends are still out there, but they’re too far away. I’m sad because I did have a few people here that it took me my whole childhood to find. And they have since scattered or fallen out of view. I drive by those places and have a fit of stir-crazy nostalgia.

Moving is a terribly hard adjustment, and I’m finding that moving back after being gone so terribly long is even worse. Everything is a comparison. Everything bares a past bias that is hard to shake. When I moved back, I was hoping my views of this area were youthfully prejudicial. I hate it that I was right all those years growing up. It’s worse now that I’ve lived other places and seen that other people are like me in their approach to people and friendship.

I have plans next weekend with an old friend, and I know we will be hanging out unless there is an act of god. I know if something comes up, the truth will be told and we’ll see again soon.

I’m pissed at humanity, but grateful to my friends. Here’s to them.

Follow up posts:
Wednesday Night

Historical posts:
Communication Technology

Communication Technology

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So, people have a hard enough time with regular socialization skills. Now with all the tiers of communicating, it’s a wonder anyone can keep up. It’s not just technology to master, otherwise geeks would be super-pro at socialization.

First there were people communicating at social gatherings and work.

Then there was phone.

Now there is *deep breath* AIMPhoneMSNICQCellPhoneMySpaceEmailFacebookBlogRTSTextMessageForumMMORPG *another breath* -you get the idea. You figure this would ease communication. We’d be super in touch with everyone all the time. No. Because there is no way someone is going to call you to tell you something important if they can text you even if you disabled text messaging because you’re either dirt poor or got sick of getting texts of “hi :)” (or both). Even though you told them in person that you blocked texting, they forgot and they don’t like talking on the phone. They’d rather enjoy Olympic button pressing and staring at a post-it sized screen for 5x the time it would take to say what they needed to. They scoff and think that if you really cared to keep in touch with them, you would enable texting so that you’d get that one important text out of 500. And don’t dare ask them to email you, because that’s *totally* not the same thing.

I once had a boyfriend who argued with me on the phone until I downloaded an instant messaging service to talk to him. It doesn’t matter that we had cell phones, texting, and SKYPE (back when you could dial out for free). This was his most comfortable way of communicating, so I better adapt. On some level, I can understand. You can minimize the other person, don’t need to listen to their tone of voice, can play your RTS or MMORPG, have both hands to type unlike a cell phone, and they don’t know if you got up to get a bagel or pee. On the other hand, we were kind of trying to be emotionally intimate. One other advantage of online messaging is that I still have logs from these chats. That’s what I need… a record of how much I don’t stand up for myself. Hindsight is supposed to at least be softened by memory, and here I have a .txt file showing how pathetic I can be.

Sure, check your email, but make sure you have your FacebookMySpaceLinkedInRandomNetworkingThingies configured to let you know when someone sends you a message on one of these websites. But usually, you can’t read it in your email. I go into my email, see I have something on facebook, and in facebook go to my wall or my inbox… TWO separate methods of communication in ONE networking tool that tells you through email.

Woe onto you who have more than one email. I have two… one that I have had since… before it was cool. The other I got in college and has forums for jobs and places to live and alumni and dialogs on campus and stuff for sale and calls for art. It also has instant messaging built in too… so instant messaging services open and go into your email with yet another instant messaging service and texting on the cell phone in your pocket that can also ring… I’m sorry if I haven’t got around to checking my other email in awhile.

We’re not at the sad part yet. Want to know what the sad part is..? I’m part of a generation who is used to it. Sure, I set my boundaries. I’m on facebook. I’m not getting MySpace too. I’m not enabling texting for the pope- if you’re at your cell, call me!

But I’m used to it to the point where it is ingrained in me as a socializing solution to my communication shortcomings. That’s right, I sometimes look for even more alternate forms of indirect communication… Sure, I could turn around and say something to the funny and good looking guy in my IT class who I’ve thought was pretty cool since the first class (even if he does have a girlfriend but who cares it’d just be nice to communicate). Or, instead risking getting giddy and giggling like an idiot, I’d could go run, cmd, net send…

But the instructor set his boundaries. Thou shall not abuse net send or I shall disable it. Don’t make me do it.

And then people started writing batch files that sent net sends by the hundreds… and logged into other computers with remote desktop to say ‘it wasn’t me’… and flirted using poetic computer based metaphor (Oh, wait, that was just me… and him… as far as I know).

It’s ridiculous, and I realize it. I looked myself in the eye reflecting in the monitor and made a decision.

I asked for his cell number in the parking lot. *cheers* Score one for the communication revolution! At some point in the future, we will hang out and communicate outside of class- in person!

…now I just need to call it …and stop giggling at everything he says to me in person. Yes, even I- currently rated number three most confident on the compare people face book application of all my facebook friends who also have said application- can get shy. (see documentation above)

With all the additional ways to communicate and keep in touch with people, it’s true, we still don’t know how to communicate with other human beings. The opposite sex… oh, forget about that. This isn’t Star Trek you know. We don’t have the technology.

Follow up posts:
Communication Revolution: Quashed!
Wednesday Night

Recovery

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a studio mouseTwo months after living in a tent and communal ceramics studio, it didn’t take me all that long to get used to sleeping indoors and in a bed again. When people ask me about what happened, starting off with a “…so, I hear it was pretty ridiculous down there,” I reply with, “Yeah, but it’s water under the bridge now.”

Is it? I’ve been berating myself for not getting as much done as I used to: looking for a job, taking classes, building a studio, and selling work. I feel guilty for giving myself a bit of a break- traveling, spending time with friends and family. I also haven’t been doing much talking about my experience in Virginia.

If you know me, you would think that I’ve been thinking about it a lot, obsessing even. I’m avoiding thinking about it. I have been downplaying it to everyone because I needed to downplay it to myself to deal with it bit by bit, an sometimes, not at all.

I somehow don’t feel like I’m allowed to be hurt by that experience. There are people down there still living in tents and at least making a little bit of art- and they somehow deal with it. Don’t they?

Out of six, one lives in a nice apartment nearby.

Two is from Virginia and has family and a boyfriend that she can visit anytime (and talk to at length). Every time things got really bad down there, she was gone in her car for a weekend that had a habit of turning into a week.

Three is not from Virginia and doesn’t have family there. However, he spent about half the time I was in Virginia traveling. Sometimes he’d leave to go up north without telling anyone.

Four came to ‘look at the place to consider it and be considered for a residency’ with a dufflebag containing all his worldly possessions. He came on a bus, walked the rest of the way, and stayed.

Five came burnt out making production ceramics and with baggage he hopes to unload through drinking and burning things. When I left he still had not even tried to make the one idea he’d been talking excitedly about since I got there. He has built a tee pee and adopted an abandoned puppy.

Six has been there a long time. He’s a passive aggressive mask living in the kiln shed on a couch where he watches the Simpsons on dvd, smokes, drinks, eats, and leaves the communal dishes.

These people, as far as I know, are still there and getting by. So I feel like I can’t act like it was such a bad experience if people are still there and surviving. But then I remember what it was like. People are getting by at the post-college club for wayward kids who may be ambitious and want to make art. For the ones that do want to be serious artists, it’s a fight against those who just want to feel as good as they can doing whatever. More than living in a tent, that was the real issue that made living there hard. I blamed the tent because I thought that if there was a quiet room somewhere to relieve my stress, I could deal with the struggle in the “mentally and creatively rich studio environment (ha)”. It was hostile, tense, immature, and lawless most of the time. One of the residents, I think it was Three, called it Lord of the Flies. That’s the easiest and most accurate way I’ve ever heard it described.

The reason I left was a sudden lack of income. It was also a final breach of trust. Most things I was told while I was there, I believed. Most things I was told were said to me to put me off and make me: go down there, deal with it for another little while, wait for it to get better, and just wait because you have so much invested. I even paid for three months of rent on the studio and then left because the news on my lack of income was at the same time as when rent was due.

Living in a place where you can’t trust that people aren’t deceiving you, eating your food, taking your things, breaking your things, talking about you, going to yell at you, and invading what little space and privacy you do have is not living. It’s surviving.

I survived, but I’m not myself. This past summer in Maine I lived in a space I didn’t feel safe or welcome in. I held in there and saved money, pinched pennies, to go to another place that was supposed to be better, yet was somehow worse. I didn’t feel like myself at the end of the summer. I’m just starting to feel like myself again. I don’t know that I’m ready to think or talk about it much in any real way. I can put people off with jokes about the south versus the north (and how some people think that Virginia isn’t even really the south). Silly tid-bits come easily enough.

Not being myself means I’m not working like I used to. I know that in me, I have the ability to finish up my novel. I know I have the ability to get my studio together faster and get some work made. I know I could have a near perfect score in the it course I’m taking. I know I could have more posts and more site updates. I could have a few more web programming languages under my belt. I could be looking for that perfect job more aggressively.

Would any of that help if I’m not myself? Working harder isn’t going to help me concentrate on doing a better job. I feel like everything I’ve done since I’ve got back has been sub-par. I see the bar that I normally meet or exceed and stare at it. I don’t know why I’m not up there. I tell myself I’m lazy. I am starting to realize that is an easier answer compared to admitting that I took a big blow these past several months. I let things not just get to me, but actually push me down.

I’m going to get up. The sooner I can admit these things and sort through them, the sooner I can be me again. Regardless, I think it’s going to take me some time. I’m relearning how to live and strive again rather than just survive.

Inhibition & Identity

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All of our actions go through a personal filter. Thinking and doing are separate things. When these things approach being the same, what happens to us?

 
NYC New Years
Many of us just went through this New Years Eve. People traditionally gather on this evening for the sole intent of getting totally wasted in company just because ‘Why the heck not? I don’t have to work tomorrow, and neither do you!” Most of my peers are somewhat ‘used to’ getting drunk. The have a certain drunk identity that has been integrated into their view of themselves (or not if they like the ‘I was drunk’ excuse for every time they’re a bit tipsy). For someone like me that has lived most of their life without alcohol at all, and has a natural tolerance to not get drunk even when drinking, I wonder who the hell I was the night before. People are comfortable doing things they wouldn’t normally do and knowing they likely will do them. People are used to saying, “Oh, he’s normally a great guy. He’s just like that when he’s drunk.” I can’t pass the buck so easily.

 

I was so drunk that my vision was blurred, and I still spent most of the night with someone who is ‘my type’ while beating off a total asshole who happened to be married. So, my judgment wasn’t excessively off. How was I different?

 

I was even more bluntly crass- saying what I thought when I thought it. Little surprise there.

 

I did a few things that ‘seemed like a good idea’ and ‘made sense to me at the time’ that on further thought, may have only made sense to me. For example, if you want to counter someone’s statement that “rape is funny”, you disagree. If you then ironically grab his ass- you may think it makes a point and is great comedic timing. However, if the guy is someone to say “rape is funny” chances are, he’s not going to get it. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

I enjoyed dancing. The only dancing I normally enjoy is moshing or, when I used to act, musical numbers. That night, though, I danced more than I did in all of 2007. I struck an impressive figure, taring up the floor to bass beats. And if that’s not true, I’m sure people don’t remember clearly enough to contradict me.

 

I took chances. Saying whatever I want is a chance I’m used to taking. I’m not used to taking chances with trusting people I haven’t known for very long. I’ve never gone to a party at someone’s house I don’t know. I’ve never decided it was a good idea to stay there after all the people I knew well were gone. The list goes on into the night.

 

So I’m left to wonder, since these were things I never would have done without drinking, was that me?

 

The best answer I can come up with is: that is defiantly part of who I am. It was me minus certain inhibitions. It was not someone else minus those inhibitions. Underneath it all, I am the type of person to rip up the dance floor, I am the type of person to say no and slam a sliding door in an asshole’s face if they don’t seem to get it, and I am the type of person that will trust people when they’ve given me no reason not to trust them, even if they haven’t had long to give those reasons. Even if I don’t normally do these things, I at least want to on some level.

 

So what do I say to “Oh, normally he’s a great guy. He’s just like that when he’s drunk?”. I say, underneath it all, he’s really like that. The rest of the time, he’s probably just thinking or wishing those things. While they’re not the same thing, it shows you what they would do if they didn’t spend the additional moment to think. We all have that person underneath. That person for me is a good dancer, even if she’s more likely to get into sketchy situations. I’m okay hanging out that person every once in a great awhile.

 

So what about your lack of inhibition identity? Do you like hanging out with them? Do you make excuses for them? How do they measure up to your sober selves?

 

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’ve all recovered by now.