optimism aneurysm

I think most people who know me would say I have a generally sunny personality. Sure, I can be a bit sarcastic sometimes when the moment calls for it, but in general, I'm an optimist. Historically. I think maybe I should have bit my tongue the past few years when I said how lucky I felt that I had a good life, and people in my life had been so good to me. Did I some how cosmically bring a shift of luck, a dark cloud over my life? I don't know.

In the past year I've been faced with some really hard situations, and have been going through a lot of transition. I've lost quite a few things I valued, from friends and relationships, to family and home. It was more than I thought I could deal with at times. The only thing, ironically, that seemed to remain constant was my job, which I love to groan about. There were days, many of them, where I just wanted to stop existing for a while, stay in bed and disappear, not have to feel anything, or deal with anything anymore. But of course I had to go to work, even if I couldn't work well, and just stared out the window at the cars passing on the viaduct in front of the bay. It kept me with something to get up for every day. My coworkers were there for me, and I will be forever grateful for them.

Through all of this I realized that one of the things that made much of what I was dealing with so hard is that I value kindness and consideration so much, I am so sensitive and thoughtful to a fault (it sounds self-congratulatory, but it's really an exhausting way to live), that I let the crappy way I was treated break me. I spent a ridiculous amount of energy explaining things away, wanting to believe that everyone has the best of intentions and maybe sometimes the way people behave is my fault, a result of my actions, until it hurt so bad, there was no way around the fact that I was receiving a giant, painful, slap in the face. I have spent too much time in my life saying that people "mean well" to try and explain painful things away.

There are too many selfish assholes in our society. I want to believe people are good and kind and well-intentioned, but I'm not sure if I can apply it as a rule as I always have. There are too many self-centered, immature people who will coo at you, tell you how wonderful and important you are, how proud they are of you, how you are the center of their world when it is easy for them, hugging and crying with you one day and then treat you as if you were just another one of the people they pass on the street later when your interests have diverged. Because I am an extremely deliberate and sensitive person, I am constantly aware of what I say, being wary of misleading people into assumption, commitment, or eventual disappointment. I want people to be happy, I am afraid of risking disappointing people for fear I will lose them, says my therapist. So in this way I set myself up, I guess. I have always aspired to honesty and openness, and it may again sound like a holier-than-thou attitude, but even though oftentimes it can be hard to be upfront and honest, I cannot come to terms with the dishonesty and overt lack of consideration that I've seen recently.

I love this quote by Woody Allen in Manhattan when Diane Keaton is calling off their fling and tells him she finds it disturbing that he won't express any feelings about the situation: I don't get angry, okay? I mean, I have a tendency to internalize. I can't express anger. That's one of the problems I have. I, I grow a tumor instead. I'm a lot like that, but I'd like to work on it. I'd like to tell people when I'm pissed off, and not run home to be alone to stress out about how it might have been different if I'd have handled it better.

You fucking ass, how could you? Someday I'll say that to someone, it will blow them out of the water. And I won't laugh, or smile, after, the way I always do to make things blow over. I'll let it be on their shoulders.

Some of it is likely a societal thing. I think too many people in my generation have been coddled by their parents, given too much and placed their own comfort and desires above all in their comfortable, middle-class american sphere. But it's not just young people who are a little slow to act as mature as their college degrees try to make them look. I'm beginning to think some of it is nature to many people. I want to believe people are better, but I'm beginning to doubt, and it hurts. How does someone profess undying affection for someone at one point, claim they know that they are the only person who could ever fit them, and then turn their back when that same person cries for support a few months later and it's not convenient for them? How could someone hold something in trust that they know is very important to their own family, but sell it to the quickest bidder nonetheless? And do it over and over? How can one lover leave another to clean up every last bit of a dying life together, and refuse to help when asked? How can adults act like this? It's embarrassing to someone who always aspired to the idealistic notion that people "mean well."

The soundtrack to my life has changed recently. I kind of want my Amelie back; I don't think it's ever been Radiohead before.

politics are sexy

....but some of us already thought so, right? right now for the seemingly first time in popular culture it's actually hip to be (or at least sound) politically aware, and when it comes down to it, it is all about popularity.... Here's to consciousness, for what it's worth, as long as the trend lasts...

grey on grey on grey

I noted to a friend today that while I was at work today, instead of drafting construction documents, I was staring out the window at at grey gull sitting on a grey lamp post on a grey viaduct in front of a grey sky. Also happened to be next to a grey building.

Day after I wrote my last post we got our Seattle weather back. Coincendence...?

Today as I stood at streetcorners, waiting for pedestrian lights to change, the drizzle felt like baptism.

and how about that weather

Seattlites like to joke about our seasons- 9 or 10 months of rain during the fall-winter-spring, and one fantastic summer, comfortably warm and dry, which begins July fifth. Some like to joke that people who end up moving here invariably come during one of our two dry months and are consequently unprepared for what they've gotten into. Enter Global Warming. We had a weird summer, a shy and temperamental one, this past year, and now we get a real winter. Snow here and there the past couple months, and plenty of freezing temperatures and cold wind. And on top of that, not as strong a presence as we're used to of precipitation. We had multiple consecutive-day streaks of cold, sunny weather, where the direct sunlight was gleaming off the Cascades and Olympics over the water. It was stunning, and looking out from my desk over Elliot Bay (through that beautiful structure we call The Alaskan Way Viaduct) in my usual distracted state, I thought, where are we? With the overnight snows unexpected by the weather forecasters, and the clear presence of sunlight, it just feels eerily unlike Seattle. I'm used to grey blankets of drizzly clouds draped over the city for weeks; the mountains, opposite shores, and sometimes even nearby neighborhoods obscured from view by their ubiquitous murk. Don't get me wrong, we've still got that lovely oh-it's-nice-to-get-out-of-that-and-come-in-by-the-fire mentality, with the cool temperatures, that inspires the clasic coffee, microbrew, and edgy-music-scene culture. However we're maybe feeling less waterlogged and more exposed and wind-parched, coming out on our lunch breaks like disbelieving mole people, adjusting our computer-weary, beady winter eyes to the unusual weather.

It snowed a week or so ago unexpectedly in the early morning hours, and for some reason I couldn't sleep and was pleasantly surprised to see it falling outside my bedroom picture window. When it was clear that I wasn't going back to sleep after my uncharacteristic 4:30 awakening, I got up and walked to the top of the hill to enjoy the quietude of the snow falling over a dark, still-sleeping town.

link to flickr set

I traipsed around my neighborhood and enjoyed the peacefulness of the city from her most stunning overlook, Kerry Park. Still catches my breath every time, no matter what the weather. And even though I missed the last on-schedule bus by a block and had to walk halfway to work, I still got into the office two hours before I usually do (which regularly means nine twenty-five, and late, groggy, and a bit of a deaf-mute), impressing the typical early birds.