Nasty

A new and wonderful this has started: When I blow dry my un combed hair, strands clump together, they stay wet longer and blow around like strands of sunny kelp. They fall into configurations around my face that make me look like Key$a. It's off putting. Like wearing a wig for the first time, no way your face can look like that. No way you, your face can transform so much with something so arbitrary. If you've never tried it, it's $10 worth of fun from Party City.

I've worn wigs a good deal before, and never was I perturbed by their outcome. It''s awesome, in fact, to suddenly be a red head. Your own natural hair though,, and realize you suddenly look exemplary of many an abhorrent thing.

I look nasty, in fact. Slutty and mean. Not dirty with mud in my skin, but suggestive of it in a degrading and cheap fashion. I look ready to offend you just to watch you feel bad about yourself, like I might glean some vicious satisfaction from it. I look, suddenly, like I have undergone a serious change of personally and am now hard to dea with and nauseating to your own, higher sensibilities.

Luckily my hair dries, I straighten it and put it in a pony tail and arrive to work fresh and tidy, 10 minutes early. The next several hours are spent with a good deal of attention dealt to consideration of others, making their lieves easier and richer. For guests I am sweet and good humored and obliging. For co-workers I look for things they need help with and then do them.

So leaving tonight it's mentioned in passing that the innocent busboy with his huge liquid eyes, and nervous hand gestures should learn to be more nasty (implication to “stand up for himself”) and he can learn from Her---giant finger gestures at me.

Instantly three other coworkers chime in – Oh yea! She IS nasty!

I am surprised and a little offended. Who are these people, and what have I done to them? When did I cease being a skipping pollyanna and become a whip cracking delilah? If this is true, why has no one else in my life ever noticed it?

RegrEtsy

Zoids and her hubby, uh, Boy Zoids, are having a steampunk party in my sweet basment for Boy Zoids' b-day. I am their Organizer. I imagine myself as a blonde Jennifer Lopez from that one movie. I call and drum up ideas etc.

I have already experimented with some uber british olde recipes. I have rearranged furniture. I have draped everything in pretty cloth. I have started rigging a weird tutu/corset thing made of a wife beater and coat hangers. I have spent too much money on little brass studs to decorate everything.

Then I realized how hard some of these things are to make-- phew! Sewing!

I talk to my little friends on the facebook via some sort of new fangled ICQ and one, Card Shark, sends me a sweet idea for a steampunk bodice:

I take some issue with it, but am amused by the site it comes from "regretsy.com" and it occurs to me that if I can buy something this crazy on etsy, I must be able to find exactly what I want!

Here they are.

The only thing I have to regret is my life wasted as an artist and not an engineer so I cannot afford to buy such beautiful artistic things.

Encouragement

What is the difference between reactions to positive and negative feedback? What is more motivational? No witty story is going to grow here as I contemplate this. It's one of those less than fun situations where my brain focuses too much on the moment. Digestion becomes the thing to do later. I have faith my brain keeps the words and emotions in a bundle and unpacks them on its own time, like in my dreams or whatever, and that the confrontation with criticism will eventually prove to be productive.

If it does, I will consciously never be able to attribute the outcome to that person, that time, those words they used to mould me anew.

My current menial labor is in a restaurant. I started as a busser—that idiot who brings you bread, water and silverware, the unknowledgeable a-hole hovering with a fifty percent chance of screwing something up for you without you knowing it. Yep. That was me. I was taught a thousand tiny details about things you, a guest, are not supposed to notice. The fact that you don't notice them is what means I'm doing my job. So I won't enlighten you on what they are, only how I feel, emphatically, about it.

It is very noble work. Someone must do it so others can enjoy their lives. The sort of training undergone to make guests feel smooth and carefree is ongoing. Even after you are technically proficient other anal retentive people working higher in seniority and merit are going to continuously notice things you didn't do and should have. It is a steady stream. A steady stream of negative feedback.

Most people attempt to put positive spins on this negative feedback, to say it with a smile, or whatever. Most people fail at this.

It tends to come out as a very clever combination of “You're Wrong” and “You're Good.” Win for behavior, fail in execution.

In between these motions are little glimpses of social behind-the-scenes footage between staff members. In these moments you are not being criticized at all, but are on equal footing with everyone around you. It raises you way up. It has a Machiavellian way of eliciting dog-like devotion.

Bussing, in particular, is great for training people like you would train a dog, because of its monotony and eternally changeless repetition of movements. Constancy.

Personally, this is an ideal environment for accepting criticism. The stress of the initial criticism melts into the next and the repetition builds up awareness. Unfortunately, this too has its limits.

After so long, I get bored with the repetition and stop caring whether or not I'm being criticized at all. Improvement stops. It becomes no better than the all love or all hate environment. Which is only the fault of the task at hand. If it were a task complex as, say, directing films, I would flourish.

Variation with constancy? Is that what we've learned in today's rumination on mundanity? Ironic to anyone else?

Today's Gym Adventure

Middle aged ladies on a walk date. One is late because a kid had a sore throat. One is late because she has a sore throat, and we all know that you're about to come down with typhoid if your throat is parched from mouth breathing all night.

They also called in maintenance to complain about the smell in the gym. Apparently, it was like “vomit,” but I'd be running for 15 minutes at this point after a 10 minute warm up, and well, I guess my nasal passages are just out of touch.

In the past I would have disdained these women. In the past I'd have ignored them, let their story about a puking 9-yr-old and carpooling roll right by me. I'd come up out of the situation like a mermaid surfacing to clear, interesting conversation.

I am trying to be a better person, and see the relevance of their lack of pancakes yesterday morning. I decided good people do that. Give other people chances. Give the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they are an undercover spy and are suffocating. Perhaps I can relieve their bordom with sprightly and inspiring spontaneity. Maybe they really are interested in war, and ancient mosaics, or how magnets work.

It could be worth it to find out, right?

Self Improvement

Everyday is another Pollyanna/Lil Orphan Annie opportunity to become a better person, in some way. Either you help a blind person across a street, listen to someone complain, learn some new vocab, edit a resume, apply to a new job, drill holes somewhere, try hoola hooping for the first time, discipline your dog in a loving, gentle way, experiment with a new recipe, read a book... whatever. Well, I do half a dozen distinct self improvement things everyday, and I don't want to today.

Sitting at my new desk in the new basement looking at a gorgeous piece of Klimt art, and then my sketches for the painting to be replicated on the back of my door, and my guitar, all the collage cards I need to send out, the book I just finished, the millions of Monster.com responses I have two hours to respond to, the power drill on my floor, the endless more books to read, and I come up with three tears and three words like any good three year old might:

I don't wanna.

How much positive movement forward can we force out of ourselves before we need a black out day? It must be one of those things that requires inertia and desire. It probably depends on the person. Scratch that, it definitely depends on the person.

But, what are the reasons for breaking down? Smoothie had a breakdown apparently. Not too big, not that she couldn't easily recover from within an hour or two, but it was unexpected. What are the pressures that go into a person, and what are the devices in them that digest these pressures and relieve them to non-toxic levels?

Like always I am full of questions and short on answers. But, it shows forward movement that I've defined the questions, right? Now I can form a hypothesis and get on with the betterment.

Yes!