December 2007 Archives

Requiem for Dissent
December 25, 2007 | permalink

Merry Christmas, Gentle Readers. I hope that wherever you are, you are surrounded by friends, or family, or both, and are having a grand ol' time.

I am in Virginia, visiting my sister K. She and her husband have just had their first baby, an adorable little boy, and my Mother, Red, The Star, and The Rockette are here as well. It's nice and warmish and quiet, and I am simultaneously enjoying myself immensely and bored out of my skull, a combination that I think only can come about when you are with your family. Perhaps you know of which I speak? (Not that I am complaining, understand- I love them dearly. And the baby really is adorable...)

I hope you have a great day!

Posted in Holidays
(1) Comments

Cool Water
December 16, 2007 | permalink

Hey, guess what? My sink got fixed this week! It only took three and a half months.

And people say that the days of prompt and courteous service are gone...



Posted in The Home Front
(1) Comments

haiku 145
December 14, 2007 | permalink

Haiku No. 145 (Infinite Space in a Nutshell)

I dreamed a fine dream
last night; full of boundless joy,
being bound to you

Posted in Miniblog
(0) Comments

Laughing Cavalier
December 14, 2007 | permalink

I had quite an adventure last week.

I was in Miami on a job, and I went out to a late dinner with The Boss (who is the very model of a charming Englishman), The Cylon (one of the designers I work with, whom, as you may guess from my nickname, is literal-minded, has a big brain, and over-analyzes things), and Uncle Mike (a boisterous and gruff ex-roadie who now runs one of the companies that we often deal with). We were perusing the menu of a place with a bunch of outdoor tables (actually, it's Miami Beach... they all have outdoor tables), and a couple of women went by and made some comment to the effect that we should pass that place by. Uncle Mike goes after them and strikes up a conversation, in the hopes of securing a good recommendation for dinner from a couple of what he assumed were locals- both he and The Boss have a pretty discerning palette.

In his absence the rest of us decided that we were too hungry to go on looking, and got a table. Uncle Mike came back in a few minutes with the women in tow. They were, it turns out, not locals at all, they were just giving us a hard time. They were also completely trashed, really loud, and had invited themselves to dinner.

Gentle Readers, they spent the next two hours mercilessly hitting on me, much to the amusement of not only my dinner companions, but (as we later learned) of the people at the tables around us as well. I will not repeat the innuendo and double entendre that I was subjected to- but I am sure you can imagine the kind of things that a couple of drunk, trashy, 48ish year old women, one of whose husband was wandering the area in a rage looking for her, might say. Suffice it to say, it was more attention than I am used to getting. I am not exaggerating to say that if I wished (and believe me, I did not!), I could have taken at least one of them, if not both of them, back to my room for the remainder of the evening.

The Boss was so amused that he lost no opportunity to relate the story to the other people that we knew working on this gig. For days I was getting good natured teasing from even the producers, including the woman who is the top dog and, quite frankly, someone who I doubted had a sense of humor in the first place. And I have to admit that I do think the whole thing is funny, and I am getting a good smile out of it even now. Not to mention the amusement I feel to learn that I am, apparently, a cougar magnet.

Posted in Out of Town & Random & Social Life & Working
(1) Comments

parkour
December 5, 2007 | permalink

This is what I learned about today on Wikipedia: Parkour, the Art of Displacement. Founded by David Belle in France, parkour focuses on practicing efficient movements to develop your body and mind to be able to overcome obstacles in an emergency. Also may be a form of entertainment or as a pastime.

Posted in Miniblog
(0) Comments

Miami Beach
December 2, 2007 | permalink

I hear it snowed in the good old Big Apple last night. I am currently sweltering in Miami Beach on a gig, and am sincerely jealous of the cold and snow. Anyone want to swap?

Posted in Miniblog
(0) Comments

Never Said
December 2, 2007 | permalink

Hello, Gentle Readers... It's been a while, hasn't it? More than two months, which I believe is the longest break in my writing to date. Which really was not a good idea. I let myself forget how much of a stabilizing and sanity inducing influence this writing is, and only now looking back at the last couple of months do I see how much I probably would have benefited from being diligent about writing.

Not that you should get the impression that these last many weeks have been full of unbridled misery; far from it, there have been some really fantastic high points, and I have no complaints about my personal life and relationships. It was the job. I did a gig in October that broke me, and I have been feeling a little less confident, a little less extroverted (or more introverted, I suppose, would be more accurate, since extroversion is not really a strong trait of mine), and a little more passive since then.

The job in question started out fine, but slowly turned into a grueling clusterfuck. Some of it was foreseeable, and just not noticed in time by me (though I am assured that this is far less true than I think it is), some of it unforeseeable, and some of it was just bad luck. Towards the end I reached a real low point, and my morale broke.

I do not mean that I was feeling discouraged, or frustrated, or even depressed; I mean my morale really broke. I gave up. I ceased to be leading the crew, I ceased to be the boss. I ceased to be the motivator and the encourager and the example that a leader is supposed to be. All I wanted to do was slink away and hide in a corner, alone with my misery.

After a few hours (which seemed eternal, I assure you) of despair, I pulled myself together and took charge again, rallying the crew as I rallied myself. Which is good; judging by how crappy I still feel over my temporary lapse, I have trouble imagining how terrible I would be feeling if I had not managed to get my shit together and salvaged that job.

I have never, in my entire life (which, if you have been reading, you know has encompassed some difficult challenges) felt so completely defeated and broken. And frankly, I would not have believed that I could feel such despair. I always thought that I was too tough, too tempered by previous challenges. But it seems that I was wrong.

Even now, writing this, I feel a deep shame for having so unequivocally surrendered. Which I suppose is the real reason I haven't written in so long; I didn't want to really admit out loud my surrender and the resulting shame I felt. But I wasn't able to write about anything else, either. It seemed too disingenuous to just let it slide away and not acknowledge it here, to you.

So that's my story, Gentle Readers. And now that I have aired out the room, so to speak, the writing at regular intervals will resume...

Posted in Blogging & Musings & Working
(4) Comments

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