(and i'm trying to think if i've used this title before??)

no seriously, what have i done?  one of the reasons that i didn't go home for the holidays, and please don't tell my parents this, is that i like having a few days - a week? - to myself where i don't have work to do, people to see, drinks for which to go out, or any of that.  it sounds pretty solipsistic, but really, there is an upside.  i get to settle into my head a little bit (more than is usual or safe) and take account of what's gone down in the last year or so.  this isn't the really BIG accounting post for 2007 - that one will be coming in new years.  this is sort of the warm-up.

this year has been really really positive for me, and even i am having a hard time denying it's recuperative effects.  although it started out a little bumpy, and in some ways, stayed bumpy up to now, i managed to straighten out a lot of doubts and fears about myself and about my life this year!  i took a much more involved approach to life - with my little adventures and a slightly more adventurous social attitude than i'm used to - it really has made a world of difference to enjoying life.  my work life has never been better.  i have fabulous friends here who are amazing and admirable.  i have truly spectacular friends all over the country, some of whom i've had a chance to see this year, and others with whom i've only been able to abstractly communicate over facebook or email. i'm stronger and faster than i've ever been, and even my wavy superman-hair is back.

i drew this picture for a christmas card five years ago, and it's interesting for me to fish it out now. i had just returned home from a failed year in toronto and was feeling miserable, alone, jaded and defeated.  it's been five years (of pretty intense messing things up just to get things right again), but i feel like i've come so far from that point.  i'm still sort wandering the city alone and appalled at christmas commercialism, but my colours are so much brighter now.

that's my christmas wish for everyone this year - may we all take the time to see the brightness of the life all around us sharper and more vividly than before!!!

- g

song of the day (as if there could be any other): happy xmas (war is over) , john lennon.

ps.  if next blog entry is delayed, it’s because i am going to try and build a new blog engine for 2008 that will be more powerful and have more features than this aging, decrepit thing that i wrote years ago. - g

 

it’s been a while since i’ve had a truly self-indulgent whine-fest here on my blog, and i don’t want people to think that i’ve lost that (blunt) edge of mine (i so very much wish that i could be more like my buddy, jim, who can write so effortlessly about current events of global importance, but then again, i’m not on a month long vacation in china with my gorgeous girlfriend, so this is what i got) – so here goes!

it dawned on me today that there are two ways of going about one’s life: you can climb, or you can slide.  snakes and ladders.  you roll the dice; you make your move; fate hands you progress or it hands you a smack-down.  for both outcomes, you invest the same amount of speculative energy and anticipatory stress, but ultimately, there are simply too many variables in life for you to be able to accurately plot a way through the path of least resistance.

i’ve been climbing ladders for so long now, i don’t even feel the tiredness, or at least that’s the way that it feels.  i was sick this weekend – exhausted and ripped down from the level of accomplishment  to which i have become too accustomed.  i’ve been doing this for over 20 years – never saying no to a worthy cause or a friend in need – and it has been a little exhausting.  it’s taken me about half that time to recognize that i do this, and this full time to think that maybe i should do something about it, while there’s still time to enjoy life.  the worst part of it is that here in this new city, even learning to relax and enjoy myself has been another task on the work queue, where i need to have as much fun as possible in the allocated time, or i would feel like that off-time is being wasted.  it’s like running – you can’t always be pushing your pace – there has to come a time when you can just shift in to a pace that is comfortable and enjoy the moment, or it becomes a burden, a chore, a pain.

i need to learn to really RELAX.  i need to learn that everything isn’t a task on a list.  i need to learn that there are things that just come naturally.  i need to land on a square that doesn’t have a snake or a ladder.  and i need to learn how to live in this life that i’ve got and love.  once i’ve done that, then i’ll really be ready to appreciate myself and the glorious people around me.

i came to this epiphany as “money can’t buy it” came up on its random rotation on my iPod.  annie lennox is just about the most beautiful, talented, sexy, impossible woman on the planet and if there’s anyone alive to shock someone into focus (15 years after she released the album!), it’s her.  you should all revel in her beauty and genius.  thanks, annie, for saving me and giving me a ladder instead of a snake.

- g

last week, kerri at work sent out an email to our jokey mailing list for amusing subjects of a lego animated interpretation of the star wars universe. i didn't watch it right away because i'm super-busy at work, but in a couple of days, i got around to watching it. it was... hands down... the funniest thing i had ever seen. so what do you do with funny crap that people send you by email? you send it to everyone's email address in your contact list - that's what!

i went out later to meet some friends and they were going on and on about all of the other funny bits that the author of the skit had done! eddie izzard, a self-proclaimed "executive transvestite", has the best comedy bits i've ever seen - touching on all the great subjects like religion, multiculturalism, psychology, greek tragedy, american blockbusters and of course, cats. i spent most of my free time on the weekend watching eddie izzard sketches on youtube, and here are some of my favourites.

death star canteen brought to you by lego (the original hit that got me hooked)

eddie izzard - pavlov's cat - clearly showing eddie's recognition that cats are crazier than dogs


and the coup de grace - eddie doing Christopher Walken doing Shakespeare!!! (almost all of my favourite things in one sketch - this is absolute gold!!!)

 

go and seek them out - watch them all - tell your friends and family that they won't see you for days on end, because you'll be watching eddie izzard clips over and over and over again because they are bloody hilarious!

- g

what a fun tune!!

i'm pretty certain that my immediate love for this piece of pop-puff-pastry reveals one (or more) disturbing fact that can no longer be denied:

• that i am actually a 13-year old girl living in a perpetual pajama party;
• that videos with skinny blonde chicks jumping around have mass-appeal among male demographics;
• that pop music is insidious because it perpetually finds new adaptive methods of getting to you - kind of like the T-1000
• any pop song that makes good use of both shmaltzy synthesizers and castenettes should be patronized at all costs. this song could only be made better by more cowbell.

- g

i was thinking today about my friends and was amazed that i have any at all.  not for the normal emo, insecure reasons that most people are amazed to find that they have any friends at all (e.g. that they smell funny, have no personality, that they stare at your breasts/crotch/mole/whatever), but because i have a fairly idiosyncratic negligence of most of my friends.  it all comes down to my recently discovered phonophobia.

i don’t like to talk to my local friends over the phone – it’s easier to send them an email or message them on their phones so that they can consume my correspondence at their convenience.  i hardly call my parents more than three times a month. my last girlfriend dumped my ass over the phone. hell, the very last phone call that i had was bad news, so why would i think of the phone as a bearer of good tidings?  i’m not sure if this is something clinical or just a temporary thing, but i found recently that i hate talking on the phone.  i love to see people face to face and i don’t usually have trouble dealing with people in a general sense.  i’ve isolated several things about talking on the phone that just rub me the wrong way.
the first reason is that i lack visual cues as to when the other person is done talking, and i typically try and talk before the other person is done, or leave long pauses waiting for the other person to continue which make me sound stupid.  if talking on the phone was a skill like a dungeons and dragons character class, i’d be like a zeroth level  phonographer.  telephone solicitors – they’d be like 20th level.  i’m so far beneath an average skill level in carrying on a phone conversation, it astounds me.  seriously.

then there’s the second reason which is that good news is rarely communicated over the phone.  say you’re calling someone you love – well, you’re usually expressing the despair of not being with them right then and there – that’s sort of negative.  if you’re talking to someone that you don’t like – then that’s intrinsically negative.  if you’re talking to someone near-by, then why don’t you just go over there and talk to them in person, and are you keeping them from doing something that they rather should be doing?  negative.

my final reason is that i have an overdeveloped sense of not wanting to inconvenience or hinder anyone – which extends to keeping them on the phone.  i tend to believe that most of my friends have 24 -96 better things that they could be doing at the exact moment that i am calling them, and so i am probably keeping them from doing those things at the exact moment that i am calling them.

that’s why i prefer things like email or blogs or even – sigh – facebook to communicate to my friends what i’m doing. 

so what is the profile of my average great friend?  someone who recognizes that i hate the phone, can go for long periods of time without “hearing” from me, and who, when i see them next face-to-face, will recognize that i love them just as much or more than the last time i saw them face-to-face.

i recognize that this is abnormal.  i am working on fixing it.  i’m willing at this point to declare 2008 george’s year of the phone, where i make better use of my unlimited long distance plan and cellular plan, and bother the hell out of all of my friends.  but until then, just hold on.  i know that you’re out there and i’ll try and get over this.  or get a blackberry or something that we can message on.

- g

song of the day for admiring the friends who still try and keep in touch with you: it’s not unusual, tom jones