"are you on your period or something?"

Cramps got you down?

Feeling shitty because your uterine lining is falling out?

Just remember, you’re the gender that gets paid less in the workplace, harassed and belittled for simply being your gender and told you’re crazy, irrational and silly on a regular basis.

So cherish this moment.

An analogy is like a writing desk

I have my reasons for the wall. Some people have gotten inside it simply because I opened the gate, and they strolled on in like it was an open house, kicking stuff over and knocking things around and generally fucking shit up and never paying for the damage. Some people have tried to pry their way in, removing brick by brick by brick, only to find I’m adding more bricks as they take them away. And some are in the entryway, standing somewhat awkwardly with their coat in their hands, wondering if they should get comfortable or just put their coat back on and leave. Some people talked to me from across the moat, listened to me, shared things with me, maybe they swam across once or twice just to hear me better, and eventually were invited inside. Sure, maybe they accidently knocked over a lamp once or twice, but I can get over a lamp. I can’t remember how some people have gotten inside because it seems like they’ve always been there, giggling and whispering and playing and crying with me since before I can remember.
I have my reasons for the wall. But I wish I didn’t have to have it in the first place. I wish I never built it. I wish you never built yours, either.
We all have our reasons for being guarded, some more than others. And it’s not a terrible idea to have some alarm systems in place. But I’m tired of keeping it up, of worrying about it. Bored, even. I don’t know what it means to not have those walls up; how to do that. But people aren’t paying attention to each other, anyway. We’re all walling ourselves away so that—what?—we just end up alone in a room by ourselves.

I’m tired of feeling delicate.
I’m tired of pretending I’m not.
I’m tired of being treated like I’m not.

Your Assistant girl

Remember when I had that brilliant idea to start that one work-related blog and I was all excited about it, and then promptly forgot about it? Me, neither.

-warts

I'm a worrier.

You've heard of us before. Your mother or father is probably one, maybe your weird aunt cindy who collects cow figurines--but you know who we are. We're the ones who fidget in our seats, crossing and uncrossing our legs; the ones who do that annoying clicky thing with our fingernails when we're anxious; the ones who ask you a million questions? about when it's going to be done? who's taking care of it? if you have everything you need? is there anything i can do?

We can't help it. I can't help it. Half the time I think I'm not actually worried or anxious, I'm just so habitually inclined to demonstrate the mannerisms. (Which is to say, I'm probably deluding myself into thinking I'm more laid-back than I really am, or I'm severely misunderstood, and most people are not, so ergo, I'm delusional.)

I don't know when it happened, or where it started. I don't know where to pinpoint the dawn of my obsessive tendencies. Are we born high-strung or do we just end up that way? And that's what it is, too--worry is just obsession. And both (or "it," if we can agree they're the same thing) are tiring. Tiptoeing is exhausting. Framing your questions the right way, wording your email just so, making every move with determined hesitation because Don't Fuck This Up runs on repeat on a banner across your brain like a stock ticker or a digital display in Times Square.

At some point you fuck up anyway. That's normal, it's natural and it's unavoidable. But for you, the worrier, it's not. Because other people fuck up. But you're careful. You're detailed. You're good at multitasking. And you worked goddamn hard to cultivate your precision, your craft.

But what's the point? If it's inevitable that your perfection can't last (and was never there to begin with), why bother? The stress you hold in your back and neck and shoulders isn't benefitting anyone, certainly not you. Your carefulness can just as easily be maintained. So you know what, go ahead, let's grant ourselves permission:
We can chill the fuck out.

joshua

The desert was our playground.
We ran, we jumped, we climbed, we hid, we wandered away and back and crawled through crevices and scaled boulders.
We dug our fingers into the dirt and watched giant beetles crawl into our hands.
We left our bodies behind. We left our worries, our anxieties, our apprehensions and our deadlines.
We played make-believe. We played hide-and-seek. We hopped from rock to rock and on your mark, get set, go, we raced across the sand to see who was the fastest. We walked with our arms at our sides like penguins and we sprawled out on the ground to soak up the sun.
We got lost and we got found. We came back alive. And we ate kebabs.

Ramble on

Oh you know, just sitting at my desk, polishing off a burrito after I’ve already eaten a Chik-fil-a kid’s meal, planning on where I’m going to source some chocolate from (vending machine, co-workers, purse, …trash?) so I can continue today’s tradition of eating nonstop since I had a giant chocolate chip Vietnamese pastry for breakfast, feeling, among other things, sorry for myself—not because I’m some sort of fat om nom nom monster today since I’ve already come to terms with that, but maybe for some reasons I don’t know, though I know, mostly, and I can’t stop listening to St. Vincent even though she’s all I’ve listened to for about three weeks straight now, but her music is beautiful and discordant enough to be just the right amount of imperfect so that it’s perfect.

There’s a bottle of children’s cough syrup on my desk because a company sent it to a name of someone who works here who doesn’t actually work here, and it looks sort of like I have either a childlike disease that requires a child’s medicine or like I’m trying to prove I don’t have a drinking problem, “See? I don’t have to have it to get me through the day,” but then again I also had a plush bumblebee with an asian baby’s face sitting on my desk for a while, so maybe I’ve inadvertently been sending signals for people to stay away from my desk/me, but nonetheless, awkward IT people seem to think it’s totally fine to randomly walk up to my desk apropos of nothing and grab my box of peanut butter Puffins cereal and read the label and go, “hm.” and walk away.

I’m starting to wonder what I look like to other people. How I seem. I used to be so wrapped up in my head and so “self-aware” and touted my “self-awareness” as some sort of badge of honor or a reason to think I was better than other people or maybe just a way to say, “I know I’m like this, I’m sorry.” And over the past year or few years, I’ve lost that overburdening false sense of self—because you can know as many things about yourself as you want, but you still end up missing everything around you anyway and you think you know how people perceive you and what everyone’s thinking and you don’t because you’re just selfishly balled up inside your brain, berating yourself and judging others and you somehow don’t see that you’ve been upside down this whole time even though you “knew” you were upside down or that everyone else was upside down—and now I just … am. I be. I exist. And now I selfishly wonder what that I am be looks like to other people. Maybe I’m just using it as a way to analyze myself because I’m missing something about myself? I see a dichotomy between who I am and what people think of me, but maybe everyone sees me exactly how I see myself. But I don’t see myself anymore because I. am. myself. What were we talking about?

I’m on a mission to stop saying sorry about things I don’t need to apologize for.

Mmm, brains

I took a left/right brain quiz on some stupid random website, and the result was surprisingly (and unfortunately) perceptive.
An excerpt:

Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.
Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty. You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you.

In conclusion:
I am German.

Triple word score

Sometimes I feel I'm thisclose to discovering something about myself artistically.
And then I
fall asleep
start thinking of last night's dream about making out with Enrique Iglesias
get distracted by the new issue of Wired
start a new game of Words With Friends on my phone
opt, out of laziness, not to open my unbearably slow PC and just write one damn sentence
combinations of the above

In conclusion: foiled again, self-inflicted.
I am a pathetic little fool in my small, yellow, tv- and internet-less apartment.

At least im winning on WWF.

Nightlighttenment

You stop reading for a while, maybe accidently, maybe purposely, maybe both. You maneuver—both subtly and sharply—into a land where there is no time for such things; exhaustion wins, iPhone games overrule. Then you read something great and think, Holy Shit. You read an article in Wired and think, My god, that was well put-together. You aimlessly—finally—browse those piled-up, unread issues of Harper’s and laugh, almost cry, and remark—out loud—to yourself, “Fuck.”

For the past few weeks I’ve been doing everything in the dark; someone flipped on the switch, and I now see, Oh yes, everything’s much better this way.

It’s baffling I could forget the enjoyment of words, the turns of phrases, the dichotomy of diction. Do you write to live or live to write? I’m sure that’s some well-worn cliché—but suspend the rules: Isn’t it both? Ignoring the financial implication and taking it literally: Wouldn’t I die if I didn’t write?
Don’t I start to every time I forsake it or ignore it because I’m too busy; too stressed; too distracted? So I feel like I’m experiencing the Age of Enlightenment from a short story about a father, a fishing hook and a rabbit; from a list of descriptions of the sun compiled by Alzheimer’s patients; from an essay on modernity’s twisted take on happiness and suffering that reflects what I’ve been saying all along but of course says it a thousand times more eloquently and articulately. And—because I am Enlightened!—I must finally write, because I’m writing in my head as I shower, afraid I’m going to lose the Enlightment!, so I must get it down on paper (albeit virtual paper); must overuse semi-colons because Why not? this is writing and it can be whatever I want. I could BEGIN WRITING IN CAPS IF I PLEASED, MERELY BECAUSE THE OPTION HAS BEEN PLACED BEFORE ME AND IT IS YET ONE MORE WAY TO CONVEY MEANING.

But of course, the fervor, as it must, as it always does, won’t last. It will retreat slowly, unnoticed as time passes, because Enlightenment! cannot last—if it did I might die from sheer pleasure—because it comes in waves, rolling in and out, sometimes the tide lasting longer than others. So I hope, probably naively and uselessly, that this one can last; that I can read and recognize the well-done as I devour; that I can appreciate the crafting and refining—the shaping of the big: the theme, the angle, and the minutiae: the nuances, the subtleties, that without them would render words just letters on paper (virtual or otherwise)—before the light gets turned off, and I am once more unaware.

sometimes your brain melts

e-quail
(ˈkwāl\) n.

A technologically savvy avian that has learnt to use its talons for internet pursuits, whether work or personal, and contributes regularly to online quail culture (commonly known as quailture). Most likely proficient in QuailPoint and C++.