Perils of I-Socializing

I've had a MySpace page for about 6 months now and until a few months ago wasn't particularly crazy about it, but something within me snapped and I suddenly became obsessed with increasing my number of friends. I felt I had calmed down on this tip and even though I had become a collector of sorts, gathering MySpace info when I met new people, I felt I still had standards I adhered to during the collection process. If I wouldn't actually want to hang out with them in real life, I saw no point in adding the person to my list of friends.

But one slipped through the nets.

After the Meet and Greet at the Collingwood Art Center last night, where I had done a fair share of meeting, greeting, and collecting, I was pleased to find that someone had sought me out. She looked slightly different in her photos than I remembered her looking last night, but I figured I was quite drunk at the time I met her and that could account for the discrepancy. So, without a thought I added her to my list. Then, curious what her profile looked like seeing that she is a photographer, I popped on over for a peek. I was surprised to hear Top 20 pop music with a shockingly pink background baring the quote "I sell Mary Kay!" I remembered that girl was slightly surly and healthily snarky, so I thought perhaps this could all be part of an elaborate ruse. I read on. "I love to read books about aromatherapy, angels, healthy healing by linda page, and most important of them all THE BIBLE!!" Ouch. But I continued, growing more intrigued with her sense of humor. Thinking (maybe hoping is a better verb here) perhaps that she had concocted a totally fake page, I glanced at her friends to figure out who we knew in common, surely this would betray her true self. Not seeing any familiar faces and an impressive amount of chatch, I began to suspect something was amiss. Shortly after I read about how much she loves her husband Frank and saw the pictures of her posing with the Frat she haus-frau'ed, it finally occured to me the sad mistake I had made.

I was now forced to a decision I'd never before had to make in the world of I-Socializing: Whether to drop my new friend or keep her around and hope no one ever looked her up. When I saw that she had immediately left a comment I knew what kind of friend she would be. She would not be the type to hang idly by in my list, inactive and silent. She would there to leave pictures of bunnies and post bulletins about the newest Mary Kay line. The answer became clear. The girl had to go.

And so as I clicked the box next to her photo, deselecting her as a friend of mine, I reflected on our brief friendship and realized how similar to and different from bar socializing I-socializing can be. Sure, you start a convo in a bar or similar setting with someone who seems interesting. You realize halfway into the conversation that the person is a/an idiot, jerk, etc. In that space you can walk away and no one is ever the wiser about your brief flirtation with friendship. However, in MySpace, there is a lingering record where Jacqueline/Jacquie is concerned. Her sadly doomed overature of friendship comment lives on for all to see, or at least until I make the effort to delete that too. Who knows how long that could take.

Dumbass

And broke because of it.

Let's just say this month hasn't been ideal working at the SB. We had no business, no tips, and I barely made enough money to pay my bills. Luckily, my dumbass scheduled two payments for my student loans and overdrew my account by a couple hundred dollars. Yippee. Sayonara to that sweet $30 cushion I was sitting on.

Sadly, it looks like I'll have to downgrade that wedding gift for the early May wedding I'm attending. Instead of potholders, looks like my smiling face will have to suffice. I am driving two states over, after all. Maybe I could give a handcrafted Macaroni pencilholder! I could pretend I bought it from Pier 1 for 25 bucks and that it was made by Guatemalan children for 2 cents an hour.

Anybody got ideas for cheap and ideally desirable gifts?

Something is marching in

So as to not waste my day off and also neatly avoid writing my statement of purpose, I've spent about an hour teaching myself how to play the recorder. So far I've mastered Mary had a Little Lamb and am working towards When the Saints Come Marching In. All the while I'm dreaming about hoping a plane towards Reykajvik on the first leg of some Around-the-World ticket. I think it's the e-mail I got from a buddy in Dar-es-Salaam the other day combined with my boredom.

All this dreaming has gotten me thinking about places I've been before and things I've done. I'm sort of in the middle of this jarring juxtaposition between one of my loveliest memories (Sharing a few bottles of wine with some friends in a nearly bare and sundrenched apartment whose enormous windows opened onto the courtyard of a 500-year old church in Southern France) and currently sitting in my parents' darkened basement playing (quite poorly, I might add) a 20-year-old recorder I found.

I suppose I should get off my ass and do something more exciting. Luckily, I've got some plans coming up for this weekend. Woo art!

Nearly 13 months

I quit smoking just over a year ago, and so far so good. I haven't had one since I quit and usually don't want to smoke (with the exception of late nights at the bar), until, that is, I start thinking about the romance of it. Listening to neuva bossa nova with a cocktail in a sundrenched minimalist room, or hanging out in a coffeeshop watching the world walk by always brings out the desire for tobacco. These images form the last attachment I have to smoking. Sure, in all other meaningful ways I've lived and accepted myself as a non-smoker. It's only in the moments of imagining myself in some European locale that I wish I could be a social smoker, picking up and dropping the habit with ease.

Is it a problem that in my idealized picture of myself, I'm always smoking? How can I alter that imagery to incorporate a non-smoking ideal self. How do I let go of the romance of tobacco? Any suggestions?

Maybe I could start remembering the way my lungs felt after an evening of cocktails and cigarettes...

Mmmm...the baby looks tasty!

I am looking for a way to eat babies, but the threat of prison keeps stopping me! There's got to be a better way!

But wait, here's Marzipan Minis, the new baby-shaped snack!



Ok, actually the detail is pretty amazing and they're clearly not meant to be eaten...but still creepy.

A Show! A Show!

Despite the news about my brother and his continuing drama, I decided I would *finally* check out a band I'd been waiting months to see, The Anti-Villians. What really sealed the deal for me was finding out that both that band and The Ahia, band of my former special naked friend, would be playing together. Since I knew for sure I would know at least one person, awkwardly at best, I would go, have a listen, drink some good beer, and maybe meet a person or two.

It was super! Turns out that an old buddy of mine has a boyfriend in the band too, so we caught up and had some fun times. And after that it was as if people from the past had flooded the bar. I was worried I wouldn't know anyone when it turned out that I actually knew about 8 or 9 people. I was also lucky enough to meet some very cool cats too! So rekindled friendships, great beer, good music, *and* finding new friends? That is the kind of night I've been waiting for!

My brother

But now he's *back* in jail, and even though the faces may have changed, the hassles are just the same...

Thoughts on the 30 Days

The final conclusion of my 30 days experiment: My original intent was to consider the possibility that in the case of boredom, it's not the place that's boring, it's the bored person that is. So I set out to do something new everyday and make some adventures of my own around here. In the end, I realized that the premise is crap. I've done all I can to have fun here. I've been to art openings, shows, plays, coffeehouses, museums, bars, restaurants and shops. I've chatted with folks, although I suppose I could do this more and I'm still bored, but this doesn't make me a boring person. I've done a lot more new things than most of the people I know in the last 2 months, but that doesn't make them boring. Busy? Yes. Reluctant to try new things? Potentially. But they aren't boring people. There are cool things to do in the this town, it's true. But cool people are much harder to find. In the end, the saying is a silly motivational tool to give someone hope that they can change their situations by changing themselves. The falseness of it lies in it's claim that by changing yourself you will find happiness in whatever surroundings you are in. But sometimes changing yourself means that you don't fit in your surroundings anymore and that you won't be happy there. And while I still believe that you can stay in a place and make the effort to help it change with you, I feel like I'm alone in this desire. If there are others hiding out in Toledo, I don't know where to find them or how to reach them. It only took me 4 months to lose interest, which is sad, but I just don't have the energy to keep looking anymore.

30 Days: The Last 5 Events

A friend of mine mentioned the vaguely apocolyptic undertone of my countdown, but rest assured the end isn't coming neatly at the end of this 2-month-30-day countdown.

It must be said that I wished for the end around the middle of the 4th event, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

No. 5: The Wine-Tasting. I hosted a wine-tasting at the Scenic Rock Ledge Inn, a bed and breakfast in Port Clinton. It was mostly a family gathering with a few friends sprinkled in for a Wellness Weekend. I had spent a month preparing for my one hour of tasting, gathering wines, cheeses, making flyers, devising a gameplan, making notes, etc. And I was quite nervous beforehand although I wasn't admitting to myself how nervous I was. So, as everyone relaxed with massages, yoga, make-overs, and cocktails. I tried not to keel over from the seizing muscles in my lower back and hoped my voice wouldn't crack as I began my talk. Luckily it went well. Very well in fact, and that can be partially attributed to the conversation I had with Jim and Rachel about what wines the guests might prefer, sweet ones. So, I changed my game plan a bit and we tried a cabernet, a shiraz, a muscadet, chardonnay, and 4 dessert wines, instead of the 3-3-2 I had originally envisioned. It was a hit, the ladies came away a little tipsy, and a little more knowledgeable about wine.

No. 4: Sex Toys: Fun for the Whole Family? After the wine-tasting, I was beat down, a little tipsy myself, and ready for a nap or at least a little alone time. So I curled up in the bed, turned on the TV, and tried to quiet my aching muscles. My mom came to join me and we talked for a while before my aunt burst in and told us to get our asses into the living room for the last of the wellness weekend events, the sex-toy party. Yikes. Now, it wasn't the idea of sex toys that I found creepy, it was sitting in a room with my aunts and cousins talking about swelling creams and whatnot. My cousin Jim, who like all the other men, had been sent away for the day, came back early to check up on us and caught a glimpse of my Aunt Linda holding an enormous twirling purple vibrator. He didn't sleep so well that night. But, despite my fatigue, I stuck it out while we tasted lotions, smelled potions, and held jiggly plastic parts and as it began to die down I found a break and snuck off to bed.

No. 3: Being Stood Up on a Birthday. It wasn't my birthday or else I'd be livid, but I haven't ever been left out of the loop when someone asks me to come out on their birthday before. Mya asked me to get the day off work so I could have the crazy party times, but the day of not a word about what was happening. By the time I called her she was gone and I never did hear from her that night. Luckily, my other friends were unreachable so I ended up watching a PBS special about Jon, the man with Down Syndrome. Sometimes my social life is on fire!

No. 2: Coming to the realization that I hate my job. I didn't ever love it, but it was tolerated and at moments, even amusing, but after my third double shift making less than 100 dollars, I decided that it really isn't worth my time or my energy. I came home and woke up the next morning at 7 am to scour the want ads. To my dismay, I found nothing aside from welding jobs and teaching gigs for certified teachers.

No. 1: I've been delaying my Toledo sucks rant, because for a time I thought I might be able to enjoy it or find some cool people or make a space for cool stuff, but I haven't. I haven't met any new people after going out many times a week (at least not hanging out with type people), I haven't found anyone interested in making a new space or even meeting with me for coffee to brainstorm ideas), I have done cool things but always alone. This may be the direct result of No. 2 but I'm really lonely! I want a partner in crime! I want someone to do wacky things with! I miss all those people who would be interested in renting a helium tank to see how many balloons it takes to float a cat. They all live in Chicago or Minneapolis or Alexandria. I don't have any close friends at the moment since everyone is so busy. It's actually quite frustrating since I missed them so much in Taiwan and now I'm home, but we might as well be half a world apart from the amount of time I see them. So, I'm now looking for the first opportunity to get out of Toledo. A trip, a job, anything will do. I tried my best to make a go of it here, but it doesn't seem to be working and I don't really feel like there's a place for me here anymore. So, in search of greener pastures it is.