Category: intangiblesPage 2 of 3
i am happy.
Recently I told someone I had a crush on them. (no… not that person. nope, not them. No…. oh just give up, already!). Briefly, the night before I…
I feel better. I deposited a couple big checks today. And given that it’s also the first of the month, which is when I normally pay myself, I…
This is an open letter to almost every woman I’ve ever met. It’s certianly specific to every woman I’ve dated, and even several of my friends recently. It’s not for one specific person, but there are certianly several people it can apply to.
You simply don’t get to be upset that I haven’t fixed a problem you never told me about. Or more realistically… you don’t get to expect me to feel bad about it. I didn’t know it existed… I couldn’t even contemplate it much less solve it.
And no… “I should have known” is not acceptable. If you have a problem, it’s your responsibility to bring it up. And no; hints and insinuations and a cold shoulder are not acceptable substitutes. I, and from what I can tell – most men, simply do not get a hint. Ever. At all. Period. This is not an exaggeration. There are no exceptions. I mean any hint. EVER. Period. Zero. Zilch.
I’ll be the first one to agree I can be an asshole. I can be insensitive. I can be inappropriate. But if I am one of those things, tell me. Because if you hold it in and it makes your life hell in some way, and you come back to me weeks, months, or years later… I am not going to feel bad. And that’s only going to make you more upset… to which, I repeat… I won’t feel bad.
Most of the trouble I cause in my world comes from an inability to stop myself from talking. At least 95% of those instances revolve around me being agitated to one extreme or another about something. And while I well know I should keep my mouth shut when I’m worked-up, I’m not always succesful. I could argue that most of the agitation is caused by someone else making inappropriate comments in a similarly excited state. But being occasionally unable to ignore such provocations–as you would expect from any rational person–isn’t something to be proud of.
I seem to be able to better handle it in business than my personal life. But then you won’t survive long in business if you take it personally, for various reasons, (mental health, upset clients, lack of objectivity, blah blah blah). And I’ve found that even when a client does go off the deep and attempt to take me with them, if I just keep quiet and wait a day or two, cooler thoughts will prevail without any intervention from me.
Failure is being without resource or hope. You have nothing and nowhere. You’re not only homeless, but literally on the streets, with nowhere to go, and no one to turn to. And you have no idea what to do to make it better.
To me, that was always the ultimate worst outcome of failure. (Sure, you can argue death would be worse, but if I died, I don’t think I’d care any more about the failure aspect. And I’m looking for real suffering, here.)
But…
Look at street people. Talk to them. Or, try to anyway. Most of the real, hardcore street people are not there because of a single bad turn of events in their life. Losing your job and getting kicked out of your apartment does not directly equate to peeing yourself and sleeping under a bridge for 15 years. I’m not trying to make any judgement call about these people except to say that they’ve usually got larger issues than a rough patch in life.
So barring extraordinary circumstances, no matter how bad the average, healthy person fails, they’re never likely to hit that perceived rock bottom.
The whole point of this is then to ask: if I simply cannot fail like I always worried, then what’s stop me from trying… anything? What have you always dreamt of doing, but you feared the worst? Well if the worst isn’t a possibility, then what’s stopping you?
Sitting in a bar in one of those moments where I have absolutely nothing to say to the person across from me, a thought popped into my head….
So I get off the metro around 3 AM, and start walking up the street to my apartment. Not for the first time, but for the strongest in…
I went on my first bike ride of the year, today. This of course means I’ll be walking bowlegged tomorrow. But in the meantime, it felt good. Afterwards….
Went to see Walk the Line tonight, with Shannon, Ash, et co. Joaquin Phoenix really did an amazing job of mimicking Johnny Cash, right down to the smallest…
There are really times that I hate the world. Being mugged on my doorstep. Having some punk-ass fool threaten me when I go to the mailbox. Have people…
I’ve talked much shit, in person and in this journal, about the strength necessary to work for yourself. The ability to even conceive of something so outside the…
I don’t go more than two days, without thinking of something I want to write here. Some of them are so prolific and meaningful, that it almost makes…
I’ve been watching them as they put an addition on the top floor of the building across the street. They’re about ten stories up, and roughly horizontally parallel…
It’s a beautiful day. I sat in Lafayette Park behind the White House, eating lunch and reading Cory Doctrow’s new stories. A cloudless sky and bright sun was…
Have you ever been floored by the intensity of the moment you’re in? That feeling that there’s something so special about where you are, right then. It’s one…
There are times where I manage to get outside myself. Where I can stop thinking about my issues, stop thinking about the things that are hurtling towards me….
Is there anything on earth that smells better than the freshly washed and still damp women’s hair? I just wanted to grab the head of the girl in…
Since I bought my new computer, I tend to sit on the end of the couch typing. From that position, I have a direct view of the flight…
Do not go gentle into that good night “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage…