Maybe I am just a bad listner

Am I just a bad listener or am I surrounded by people who have nothing interesting to say?

I can't help it

Two persons make me laugh, real hard, and I am one of them.

Seriously,

This I find to be a good piece of advice: be serious about what you do, do it with a great deal of seriousness, but never take yourself too seriously.

Meet the fake me

Someone I recently met said to me: you don't know your strengths and skills and you cover this up with lots of smiles. Obviously he doesn't know me at all and I can't tell him, those smiles are a cover up to how much I am bored with what you say. When some people got it all wrong and when those people think that they are always right, I let them be right and give them an additional wrong reason to be and I display some more of my bored smiles.

Vanity

As soon as I manifest the slightest signs of arrogance, I flip somewhere, I do or say something stupid, reminding me to tone down my vanity.

Special treatment

I was at a dinner occasion yesterday at a very fancy restaurant with around ten other people on my table and I noticed that the waiter took a special liking to me. He would blush a bit and smile generously to me then pour some wine in my glass. He would come every now and then and ask me if I needed anything, if all is up to my expectations, change my barely used ashtray, and then refill my glass replacing each drop of wine I consume . He did serve the others really well but I was sure that I was getting a special treatment. At first, I entertained the idea that deep down he felt that I belong to his social class, not that I don't, well fine, I probably don't, but I thought that he was probably thinking: what are you doing here among these pretentious, fake, and snobbish people! Then I observed the others for a while and I realized that they don't actually see him. If I had asked them at the end of the dinner how the waiter who was serving us looked like, I am sure none of them would even be able to tell if he was tall or short, bold or hairy. The special treatment and few genuine smiles I got were simply because I saw him. I mean how could you not see him? A woman with us was licking the ear of the man next to her while the waiter was replacing her plate. He saw me looking at the scene and smiled then came closer and poured some more wine in my glass. A few moments later, I too stopped seeing him, literally.

Trust me...

I don't believe most of what people say. I don't have trust issues, some people are simply liars.

Confession

One more thing about my class. I know that I was a nerd back in school and at college though to a lesser degree (but always social, let's say a social nerd). I didn't realize back then that I was indeed a nerd, in any case, I only understood the word much later. Now I admit that I indeed was, and taking a class again, I am consciously trying to undo my nerd-ish tendencies but I realized that once a nerd, always a nerd.

A glimpse back

Sometimes I read some of my older posts again and I feel that I am reading them for the first time, as if someone else wrote them, and there are times when I truly get interested and start nodding in a sign of approval, but there are other posts which I totally don't agree with. Is that weird? Is it a matter of forgetfulness or am I just changing (let's not say growing)?

Another small confession

Speaking of memory, having a selective memory is annoying but can be fun too. I can watch a movie and then forget all about it and then I can watch it one more time and enjoy it all over again. The fun part is that my husband who has a very strong memory watches me in amazement cry over the same scenes and wonder what will happen next and laugh my ass off at a joke that I heard not long ago. Okay, I am exaggerating a little bit here, or not.

My selective memory

I have a selective memory; no matter how I force myself to remember something I am sure I know, I know I will fail; I had never saved it in the first place. I don't remember the names of many of the people who work with me, who have been working with me for some time, I just don't care to remember their names. I can make an effort but why bother, if it mattered it would have stuck. Again, why would I? Unlike them, I live in the margin. I will never be part of their world and they will never enjoy the life on the margin.

On the margin

I have this constant feeling that I live on the margin. I do have a whole life but it's one on the margin. The margin space is huge and a whole population inhabits it. Sometimes, the feeling is so intense that I feel that I live on the margin of the margin or that I have become the margin itself, that space where you scribble missing notes, sketch down shapes of your boredom, or leave neatly blank. There, you only contemplate the solid paragraphs, the letters perfectly straightened from top and below, sometimes justified, other times aligned right or left, you know that you will never be a word in their bulky world, or even a comma, anyway you never fancy to be. You cross your arms and watch. Power is them, you know that, because they stick together and you roam astray. You dream of the day when you turn or be turned into an eraser. Then you will have all the space there for you alone, you can invade them and expand the margin, but you are convinced that all you can ever hope for is for them to allow you to keep that small space you enjoy. There on the margin, you can be a sticky note, a red mark, or a stain, but for sure one that stands out.

Critique and self critique

I love when people say things about me (good or bad) that I don't already know about myself. It's rare but when it happens, I am impressed. One of them is that "I have the talent to change the subject without giving my interlocutor the time to react". How annoying!!! and yes, I do this sometimes.

Ego confession

I can be objective but never neutral,

I am balanced in the realm of my mood swings ,

I can end a sentence that started with 'I love you' with 'I hate you',

I have convictions as static as a river,

I can change my mind every minute (now every 20 minutes),

Decisions, I take them based on the weather and the chemistry between my pillow and my neck.

I believe I would make a very good dictator.

Confession

I might not be modest but I am humble. I am not arrogant but vanity spills all over me.

P.S. After writing the above confession, I discovered that Jean Paul Sartre has a saying: I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm. This reminds me: if you discover something that was already discovered but which you had no idea existed or how it came to be, or if you say something already said which you have never heard of, and although you will not be credited for it and although you will still be bound by copyright laws, that does not mean that you cannot credit yourself with such a discovery. You reinvented the wheel, maybe, you were not the first, certainly, but it is still your invention.

The 20 Minute Plan

A friend gave me an advice that I think is worth sharing here. I would like to call it the "20 minute plan". He advises to plan your schedule in 20 minute partitions and every 20 minutes plan what you will be doing in the next 20 minutes in order to manage your multi tasks. I tried that although at first it took me twenty four 20 minutes doing one thing and then only half a 20 minutes eating (I spent the rest of it thinking where words go after we say them) but it did work after that. I watched 20 minutes of a usually 2 hour political talk show and I worked out 20 minutes on my treadmill instead of 40 (I have to thank him for that) and then I skimmed through the newspaper for another 20 minutes and only managed to read up to 3 articles but I assume I maybe need not read more. Now blogging should not take more than that either and if I do stop in the middle of a sentence, I trust that you won't wonder.

R.I.P Me

If, no when, the war breaks, I want to have lots of reserves of wine and cigarettes; one to help me survive so that the other can kill me. I don't want my name to figure among innocent casualties. They can write on my tomb: Nicotine killed her. May she rest in peace.

My mental blog: Subscribe now

From the moment I wake up in the morning, and while I am brushing my teeth, sipping my coffee, and driving to work, I am mentally blogging. Posts rush to mind every time I look around. If I saw a baby, I mentally blog about how we are born with the inherent thought of inevitability of life; if it rains, I mentally blog about how you cannot enjoy the smell of the first drops because you cannot open the car window lest dust blows in your face and eyes; if I am sleep driving to work, I mentally blog about my bodily productivity clock. Then, the moment I arrive to the office, and open my blog to scribble down all these stupid thoughts, my emails start popping up and by the time I finish the urgent stuff I have to deal with, I can't even look at the screen let alone post "today was another day crossed off the calendar for nothing". Now, here I am ending this post without even getting to the point because I have to rush to a stupid meeting.

Weather Forecast

The sky is cloudy, but the clouds are empty.

Taking matters into my own hands

It's Monday. I am supposed to have rested for two days and re-filled my batteries for yet another round of harsh reality: work. And work can be or is a form of prostitution but this is a subject for another time but for now, instead of a supposedly fresh start, I had an injured knee, I was sleepy all day long, I tried in vain to find an optimal relaxing sitting position, and I just burned by hand with my own cigarette. So, I decided, to extend the weekend and to take two days off work starting tomorrow. I will go to the beach, take a long swim, lose any feeling in my legs in the pool, read in the sun, and blog from the beach bar. This I call taking matters into my own hands. Finally, the mirror smiled back to me.