9/29/2004

Manizing.

How come "izing" only comes in the form of women? As in "He's a womanizer"?

I think it's only fair that us girls are allowed to be manizers.

9/26/2004

Adventures In Relocation, Part 2...

(4:30 am) Panic. Terror. Can't sleep. Or eat. Fighting OVERWHELMING urge to flee for the airport this morning and just deal with the lack of housing or employment *there* (commonly referred to as "burying one's head in the sand"). I miss "there" already... there is where I am confident (okay, sometimes cocksure but isn't everyone at some point?). There is where I have a safety net of friends and the familiarity of all I know (I'm sick of) and love (to hate) to support my chicken-shit, tail-between-the-legs self.

(This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful life.)

(9:10) Zombie. Sleepless and terrified. Completely neurotic and irrational. I'll be better once I get on the road to the office. Driving always soothes me.

(9:15) Idiot!! Driving in LA traffic couldn't soothe anyone. Even with heavy medication taken prior to the 405.

(Noon) Strange sense of deja vu and a little awe... like the first time I drove around Silicon Valley and flipped out over driving past the likes of Yahoo! and eBay and all of my idolized tech giants at the time. In LA it's more a sense of "Huh. MTV Networks. I wonder if anyone famous is in there right now."

(9:30pm) Foggy haze. Mad apartment hunting produces UTOPIA!! Jesus, I must have cashed in some premium grade karma when I found this place... blissful, peaceful and PERFECT. So perfect I cried on the way back to the hotel. Thank You, Craigslist. You're the best, meng.

9/19/2004

Adventures In Relocation, Part 1...

New gig. New city. New and terrifying ways to question my sanity.

Day One:
(3pm) After countless issues and many (MANY) crying jags, I arrived. Five hours after my airplane lands, I'm not so sure I'm diggin the newly assigned job & manager switcheroo, lack of LA sunshine greeting my arrival or how little the new boss seems to listen to or even really like me all that much. *Sigh*. I can still run back home with my tail between my legs and forget all about this utter "I LOVE Southern California and I'm ready for a change" foolishness.

(6:30pm) New boss too swamped to throw me a bone (not so good). Chatted semi-intelligently with cube neighbors (who, unbeknownst to me at this point, are the founding members of my oddball team). Dinked around checking emails & printing Y! maps until it was time to leave. Walked outside to smoke my well-deserved cigarette and was struck dumb. The peaceful, tranquil, incredibly well-landscaped beauty of the building's designated smoking area was completely unexpected and jolted me out of the one-man pity party I'd been hosting all day.

Picture gently swaying bamboo trees, 30-40 ft. high, making a hypnotic swishing, shooshing sound in the breeze. They ringed a courtyard beyond a industrial style sculpture that looked like a big warehouse door. Dotting the lush green landscape and courtyard were green umbrella'd tables, palm trees, aloe bushes, a stepped fountain that sprang to life at random intervals (which startled the cigarette out of my hand and into the fountain, grrrr). This may actually count as the first entry in the "Pro" column; which is, at present, woefully dwarfed by the "Con" column entries. I'm not a pessimist... I'm not the person to ask if the glass is half-full or half-empty because I'll challenge your assumption that there is even a glass at all.

Let's just say I'm capable of skeptical cynicism and just leave it at that.

9/12/2004

Lonliness, Part 1

Life is unspeakably, relentlessly, bottomlessly lonely right now. A type of lonliness that has little or nothing to do with the number of friends on speed dial (pitifully few at present). The type that makes me desperately sad sad sad and lonely beyond definition of the word and relentlessly alone - Jesus, when did I last speak to another human who gave a shit about whether I bothered continuing to breathe? Alone - in a room full of people I still feel like a walker in a vast empty desert.

How do I change this part of my life? Is it even possible? Do I just want to be important to someone - even a single person - who cares enough to put in enough effort to find out who the real me is... what makes me tick (cuz, I've gotta tell ya - even I think they're pretty goddamn interesting... the complex, vastly unrelated and wildly unpredictable things that make me tick. Mind boggling really...)? Someone who asks the right questions -- and actually wants to hear my answers -- in a way that doesn't come on too strong, too scary so it turns me off. What if there really isn't a single human being out there who is ready to stop monopolizing the attention, the relationship (it's *not* all about you, around the clock, all the time, all the channels. Doesn't that narcissm get really fucking old after a while?!)? What if I never meet someone who bothers to notice any or all of the stupid little things that make me tick... happy and content (hah! As IF!) like handing me coffee I didn't have to buy or make myself in the morning... or that I prefer being looked directly in the eyes and listened to after soliciting my political views (and not just to start a fight)? Offering to draw a bath for me, using the jasmine-scented bubbles you've seen me use before, simply so you can experience the pleasure of washing my hair for me -- because you love it and not because it seemed like a good (albeit clumsy and transparent) ruse to get me naked and you laid. You'd be better off just straight up bribing me with a pan of Buca di Beppo tiramisu. That way you haven't ruined my enjoyment of having a bath drawn for me forevermore.

Maybe it's all of the heavy duty decisions I've had to make entirely on my own lately. It would have been less terrifying and isolating to have made the decision to move to LA with someone I trusted and felt more than mild ambivalence for -- because they respect, love and cherish me... or even just because I'm important to them for more than sex or picking out the proper tie and shoes in the morning.

9/07/2004

Michael

Michael died yesterday. I learned this news via email from a friend of his from San Diego. A friend I'd never met... or heard of for that matter. Which has made it easier for me to pretend it never happened. Like the email never reached my inbox. Or hasn't been opened and sits unchecked in my Yahoo email inbox. Or that this, in true Michael fashion, is just another of his more elaborate and dramatic practical jokes (although, why they're called practical is beyond me... there is nothing practical about trying to feel something -- anything -- and produce the shocked, devastated tears you know wait just below the surface while you're, at the moment, locked tightly and comfortably (thankyouverymuch) in your post-surgery, Vicodin-induced stupor) and he's simply measuring everyone's love for His Royal Fabulous-ness based on how many seconds it takes for us all to rush to San Diego. In which case, I'm probably at the top of his shit list.

Because I don't believe he's gone. Not for a second.

The email (that I never received... never read...) said nothing about cause of death. Phone number of sender was included in email but since I never got the email or read it, I can't possibly call to find out why... how... who... when... where. That kind of phone call will only produce one result. Confirmation that truth or elaborate Michael-hoax, I don't want to know. Ever. I realize that this is a completely selfish, self-preserving act... I'm okay with that. Besides... suicide is the most selfish act anyone could succeed at.