Everything In Between

While I was not as productive as I would have hoped last night, I was plenty productive today. In fact, I’ve had one of those incredibly full days again, though in light of my current state of literally painful exhaustion it will not be documented as thoroughly as it might otherwise have been. That is another one of those good signs that means I’m really beginning to get myself on some sort of roll, even if I’m not sure what that roll is yet.

Squash the Schooling

I was smart enough to try and, thankfully, actually able to take a nap sometime around eight o’clock in the morning today. Since I had woken up at seven o’clock in the evening the previous day, I knew that I was in danger of fucking up my entire Sunday if I either did or didn’t take that nap. I really didn’t know what was going to happen today, but the nap actually saved the whole day.

I woke up at around 12:30 PM when my alarm clock went off for the third time. (I snoozed.) Getting up was the hardest part. Nevertheless, I made it out of the house on time and headed toward my uncle’s for our scheduled Squash game.

The game went swimmingly, though we didn’t have as much time on the courts as last time. I made sure to stretch thoroughly both before and after the game this time, since last week I forgot to stretch after playing and my whole body ached for days. I’m also getting noticeably better remarkably fast! (Yay.)

After that, we stopped off at Gray’s Papaya so that I could try, for the first time, one of their supposedly mindblowing hot dogs. They were extremely good (admittedly the best hot dogs I’ve ever had) but I wouldn’t have given them that much praise. Perhaps I’m just not a dog person.

Anyway, I shared the excitement of my recent communications and hypertext experiments with my uncle. Somehow, the conversation strayed off onto the horrendous copy I have written on my web site, and from there it strayed further away towards schooling. I’ll be tight-lipped about the whole thing and just say that I quietly waded through at least a good half-hour lecture on the importance and benefits of schooling.

I’ve heard that lecture before, and I don’t even disagree with it. Nevertheless, I am always frustrated when people try to convince me of things that they seem to think I am not convinced about. I’ve learned to just quiet myself instead of arguing with the person, since this conversation never goes anywhere.

However, one of the absolute gems I gleaned from the conversation was that in order to write effective marketing copy (which is essentially what business web sites are), one needs to ask oneself a single question. “What is the benefit for the client of my product or service?” When I got home, I started re-writing my entire business web site while trying to keep that thought in my mind.

I think I did a pretty good job, but I’m sure that it can still be improved. My uncle and I have another Squash date next Saturday, and he offered to give me his input on my web site if I arrived early. I would like to take him up on his offer, as my uncle is probably the best businessman and marketer that I know.

BYTE the Dust

While I was still working on rewriting all of the copy for my business web site, I got a phone call from the person who invited me out to the BYTE party tonight. We made plans to meet and I started getting ready to go out. Our plan, which we kept, was to meet at 11:45 PM (too late for my liking, but that’s how these parties work) and would head to the club sometime shortly after midnight.

As I feared, the party was a rather typical stand-and-model affair, not something I generally enjoy. The music was preposterously loud, the venue was ridiculously small, and the crowd was…actually the crowd was the best thing about the whole affair, but I was still left feeling pretty bored for a great deal of the time. Thankfully, I ran into someone I knew from my old affiliations with New York University’s WHAP club, an extra-curricular club which has since dissolved. Meeting him and getting to catch up on some old times literally saved the night.

At worst, it was a boring parade of fashionistas and snobbish, drunken partygoers whose apparent purpose in life is to rock out to techno and trance. At best, it was a night out trying to be social in spite of the loud, pounding music, a chance to let myself practice having fun in relatively unpleasant social situations, and a constant show of tight clothes and lots of flesh. I have absolutely no intention of doing this on a regular basis, but the fact that I haven’t been out in so long made tonight far more palpable, even to the point of almost being truly enjoyable.

Interestingly, I also ran into an ancient acquaintance from the BDSM scene. We chit-chatted a little, remarked on how long it’s been since we saw one another, and caught up on some of the shallower aspects of each other’s lives. I have no doubt that there will be talk of me in my old social circles now, and though I expect no repercussion, I do wonder what inevitable ripples may come of it.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Other things that either happened today or that I thought about today:

• I gave Danica a call to pick up her things, and she said she’d come gather the rest of her belongings tonight. When I left the house it was nearing eleven o’clock, so I gave her a call and told her to reschedule for another time since I knew it would be impractical for her to lug her suitcase up to my apartment and then all the way back down so late at night. She left me a message apologizing for the ill-concieved planning, and I responded with a SMS telling her not to worry, but to pick up her things as soon as she could.

• I toyed with the idea of writing a “Ten Things to Watch Out for in Underground Nightclubs” list, but could only think of three off the top of my head, so I’ll leave that for another time.

• NYCwireless, an organization promoting the adoption of wireless networking technologies in New York City, has sent a call for volunteers to aid in the implementation of a new design for their site in CSS. Feeling somewhat more confident of my abilities after my recent experiments, I sent them a letter offering my volunteer services and will see what comes of it.

Taking Care of the Apartment

The other day, I went shopping for some housewares. I got myself a new kettle, Brita® pitcher and some filters, some large tupperware, scissors, and other assorted household necessities. I spent an outrageous amount of money (including groceries for the week), but it felt more than good to actually get that stuff over and done with.

Next came household maintenance, including vacuuming (still need a new vacuum cleaner), taking out the garbage, fixing my paper towel holder thingy which fell off the kitchen wall, dishes, cleaning the bathroom a little, and yet more. Danica has been clearing her stuff out of the way for the past couple of days now and it finally began to show some visible progress two days ago. While the majority of the floorspace is still littered with her stuff and large cardboard and plastic boxes, there is actually more space to spread my own things out now.

Most of the cleaning involved picking up discarded tissues, toilet paper, and napkins that had been left by Danica. I tossed an empty toilet paper cylinder (at least she had replaced it on her own this time), did some of her dishes, wiped down the table and kitchen counter, collected some of her reciepts and papers into more manageable piles, and put some of her knick-knacks into her moving boxes. It will certainly be a relief not to have to continue to do this sort of cleaning up after her. (Note to self: if I get a roommate, ensure that they are capable of actually keeping a tidy space.)

I don’t have nearly enough crap to fill up the whole apartment, but having extra space is always nice. She has called the movers and set a date—this upcoming Wednesday, which would be the 9^th of March—for the (major part of the) move. This means I intend to collect no less than one-and-a-half week’s rent money from her immediately, and I left a note for her to that effect just now.

Nights are Quiet

Interestingly, Danica called me about an hour ago and told me she would not be coming home tonight. She is spending the second night in a row tonight babysitting a co-worker’s pet. In fact, she is adopting the pet. When she called and told me that she had been given cat food and booze, I told her to remember that the cat food is for the pet and the booze is for her, and that it was very important that she did not mix the two up.

Keeping a sense of humor about such things is very helpful. It’s also easy for me to do when I’m exhausted. I only managed to sleep about three hours last night and still kept my Squash date with my uncle. Playing Squash was an intense workout, but it was also very fun. I’m looking forward to another game next Sunday.

It’s still very hard for me to be alone here. When Danica is fully moved out it will mark the very first time in my life where I am truly, completely alone. I will somehow have to make a home of this house, at least for the next year, and right now that seems impossible to do when I have to do it all on my own.

In Other Personal News

The other noteworthy events that have happened over the past couple of days are fading from my memory very quickly. I have little desire to save them from slipping away, however, because I feel they are mostly superfluous to everything I have already written about with one exception, which is still too half-baked and personal for me to feel comfortable sharing with the world. This is the reason for my lack of intense self-reflection lately.

Instead, I have been a bit of an online social butterfly lately, engaging in various debates on online sites, friends’ blogs, and the like. One particularly interesting conversation took place with a pastor’s wife and involved the controvercial Vagina Monologues play. I was proud of myself for showing such intense and fierce loyalty to my friend in this discussion.

Short Self-Studies on Abraham Maslow

I’ve also been doing some very general research on a one Abraham Maslow who is most famous for his theory of the so-called Hierarchy of Need among living creatures. I never heard of this before, nor of the man, but apparently everyone else has.

Reading a few articles on his work made me feel exceptionally bright; I have been articulating many of the same things as he said years ago for a long time in various forms. In fact, I was reminded of the time when Charla first introduced me to Ayn Ran.

She had said, Are you sure you’ve never heard of her before? I assured her I had not, and wanted to know more about why she was relevant to our discussion on ethics and morals. She told me, and I will never forget this because it makes me feel so validated (and smart), Because you’re saying everything we learned in our lecture today about her. Those who call me arrogant are absolutely correct in their assessments.

Anyway, while reading about Maslow’s theories, I was very glad to notice many traits of what he termed self-actualizers in myself. I noticed both the positive traits and the negative traits, however, so this self-study has not helped me reach any conclusions to the question, “Would I really prefer to be an average person?” (Sometimes I ask that question hourly, usually triggered by different things, and usually set aside with the temporary conclusion that no, I would not prefer it.)

Nevertheless, it was educational, informative, and now I have some ammunition to back up what I’ve been saying about people and their motivations, wants, and needs (and the difference between the three) for a long time. Personally, I found plenty of his work to be extremely simplistic, but Maslow himself admitted to this and this mitigates my scorn of some of his methodologies and conclusions. There is no doubt that there is much ground left to cover for future philosophical psychologists.

Hell, maybe I should be doing that instead of writing computer code for a living.

Back to the Practical

In the meantime, however, I have a dental appointment scheduled for eight o’clock tomorrow morning (er, this morning now) so there isn’t much time to be contemplating what my calling is. I’m a little pissed that I haven’t figured that out yet. I know, I know, patience is a virtue.

After the dental exam, I don’t have any concrete plans for the day. My calendar is full of Meetup meetings, starting with Tuesday’s Mac Meetup Group (which I currently organize) and continuing every day with a different group until Friday’s Rubik’s Cube Meetup (which I also organize, but which currently has only one local member—me! Come on and get out here folks, I’ll teach you to solve it yourself in a matter of days). I am hoping to meet some interesting people this week.

I desperately need an extended social life. I love you all (I’m speaking to my frequent commenters now), but none of you save for family is in New York, and now that I have my own bachelor pad, I should probably be putting it to good use with parties and whatnot. Or at the very least haul my ass off to other people’s apartments for parties.

This seems like as good a way as any to expand my social horizons, so I’m going to see what comes of it. Of course, I have no interest in getting to know people I don’t like, so clubbing and hitting the bars are out. Since I don’t go to school or have any other structured social activity like a nine-to-five, that pretty much forces me to get creative.

Feel free to pass any suggestions you might have my way. Many thanks, and a Gmail account to you and a friend of your choosing if your suggestion nets me a new acquaintance.

As a fitness dummy, the book Fitness for Dummies has been extremely helpful for me. One of the recommended best-practices the authors write about often is keeping some sort of log of your work outs. I’ll be trying to follow that guideline by blogging about my gym experiences, along with whatever else happens.

The Morning (er, Afternoon)

I woke up a little late today, again, due to falling asleep at an ungodly hour near sunrise. It was two o’clock before I knew what had happened. The morning went smoothly. Danica had gone out right after I woke up (we woke up at about the same time) to fetch breakfast from Dunkin’ Donuts. She bought me an apple pie, which I ate half of after eating a mushroom and shallot omlette.

Sleep was not as good as it could have been, however. I am pretty sure I’m coming down with some form of sinus cold. My head is hurting right now, and I’ve had an unusually dry mouth all day long. Nothing, not even drinking water almost non-stop throughout the day, has managed to help.

Before I left for the gym, which I was determined to do today, I called my dentist (something I had been meaning to do for several days) and set up an appointment for the second week of March. Hopefully, everything regarding my missing canine tooth will still be peachy keen by then and the implant procedure can proceed normally. Otherwise, who knows what I’ll have to go through (again) to get this behind me.

Work Out Routine

Finally, at about three o’clock, I left for the gym. I read more of Fitness for Dummies on the subway. When I got to the gym, I changed into my Under Armour gym clothes and hit the floor.

Warm up consisted of five relatively painless minutes on the erg (rowing machine), since that’s the only thing I really know how to do. Then I stretched for about ten minutes; hamstring, calf, thigh, butt, and back stretches. For some reason, my mind seems to enjoy wandering when I’m stretching, which is good because I end up holding the stretch for longer than I probably would otherwise. Shir told me I’m supposed to hold them for at least thirty seconds, though ideally each stretch would be held for a minute.

Then, after the stretching, it was back to the erg. I didn’t push myself as hard as I did the last two times because of my sinus discomfort and dry mouth. I made sure to drink a lot before and after the warm up as well as after the stretches and before the work out, yet I still felt parched within the first five minutes.

To make matters worse, by now I was feeling a slight pain in the back of the roof of my mouth when swallowing. This is a sure sign of a sinus cold and so I did not want to push myself harder than normal. Instead, I set the work out for forty-five minutes and did my best to stay at a split of under 2:30.

In the end, I managed to do pretty well, I think. I averaged a 2:28 split (a split is the amount of time it takes you to row five hundred meters), burned around 540 calories, produced 108 watts of energy, and rowed 9,100 meters total. Not too bad for my fourth time on the thing ever.

After the rowing work out, it was another session of stretching, and then off to the showers. I cleaned up, got dressed, and headed out to street level. When I left the gym, the weather was no less than a blizzard.

Post-Workout Recuperation

I felt pretty good after the work out (I always do), and so I glanced around and decided to eat at a nearby cafe. I was also right next to a bagel store, a great one (mmm, H&H Bagels!), so I called Danica and asked if she wanted a bagel. She said yes, with lox and cream cheese and cucumber, so I bought her two everything bagels, a pack of cream cheese, a few packed slices of Nova-Scotia lox, and two cucumbers from the nearby grocery store.

For myself, I bought a soup-and-sandwhich combo consisting of a toasted panini with proscuito, basil, tomato, and mozzorela (the mozzorela cheese was a bad idea, considering my sinus cold) and a Thai lemon grass chicken soup (which was a great idea for many reasons). I also bought a bottle of carrot juice and a load of fresh carrots to bring home so I could make more.

On the way home, I read more of Fitness for Dummies, and that’s when I read about keeping an exercise log. When I got home, I gave Danica her bagels and cream cheese and lox (she totally forgot about the cucumbers) and went online to catch up with email. I was still drinking about three glasses of water every five minutes, but my sinuses continued demanding more.

Finally a Truly Calm Evening

I had planned to go to my mother’s to do some much-needed laundry. Danica had sorted our laundry from one another’s so we now each have our own piles to do. She told me she would do this before she left, and I was glad to see that it had indeed been done.

Unfortunately, feeling under the weather as I was (and considering the actual snowstorm going on) I decided not to go to my mother’s tonight. I can always do laundry later. Instead, I started preparing carrots for carrot juice.

Danica came into the kitchen during this process and told me she had found plenty of old lyrics she had written years ago. She laughed as she said, You could beat me over the head with it! I’ve been making the same mistakes over and over again, and you know how I know? Because I keep writing about the same thing after each relationship! Naturally, this piqued my interest and when she asked if she could share some of the lyrics she had found, I gratefully accepted.

I said little throughout this entire “heart-to-heart” (no one’s words, just my description, in quotes because it was rather one-way) and I think not saying anything was actually more helpful than sharing my own opinions. Like my father, Danica can easily misinterpret my intended message when I say things (or write things), and I was too busy making carrot juice to risk getting into an argument. (Yes, Aba, I think you have trouble understanding my intentions when I write about them sometimes, which is why my replies to your comments seem defensive to you. On the other hand, I’m still open to suggestions on how I can improve the accuracy of the messages I communicate.)

After I finished preparing the carrot juice (and washing all the dishes, and clearing some of the silverware, and cleaning some parts of the floor), I sat down to have the last bagel. Danica shared some music, I listened and ate quietly. It was now reasonably late (I am guessing that it was sometime around 10:30 PM), and I was getting tired.

When I hopped into the shower, Danica needed to pee. Our shower curtain is somewhat see-through, a remnant of our shopping together as a couple (don’t ask), so whenever someone’s in the shower anyone else can easily see the so-called full monty on the other side. Thanks to our good spirits, Danica and I were still talking.

I can’t remember how the conversation got around to it (she must have been talking about her past), but at one point she brought up certain aspects of the abuse she went through, and I asked a question about it. Her mood instantly shifted, not to anger or any other externally-focused upsetness, but just shifted. She didn’t say anything and instead she took off her clothes and joined me in the shower.

She hugged me and, somewhat taken aback, I didn’t really know what to do. So I hugged her back and tried changing the subject. To make a long story short (and to spare the paragraphs necessary to recall most of our inconsequential conversation from that point on), her happy mood returned shortly thereafter. We ended up showering together, sort of.

For the curious: yes, showering together is arousing. No, nothing really happened. I made the mistake of doing my thinking with the wrong head a few days ago, and I wasn’t about to do it again. It was extremely tempting, however, and Danica’s presence (as well as what she was doing with her hands and other body parts at one point) made turning sex down even more difficult. Nevertheless, reason and emotional awareness did prevail this time. Of course, I ended up waiting for her to finish her shower so I could, um, finish up, on my own.

After that it was email, quick snack (of more carrot juice and a few nuts), and then this entry. Now, it’s off to bed. I still have to get moving on that programming job, do the laundry, buy a vacuum cleaner, and a bunch of other things, but at least I don’t feel so horribly bad anymore.

I have been struggling with motivation woes once again. It is pretty annoying, actually, that most of the times when I have an opportunity to do something I would ordinarily really enjoy working on the main thing holding me back is me. Frankly, that’s just unacceptable but I’ve yet to find a workable solution for this monstrosity of a problem.

Fights with Danica Continue

Danica and I have been fighting somewhat frequently over the past few days. I fault myself for it just as much as I cite her (possibly unconsciousness) instigations. I have asked her not to talk on the phone with Randy when I can’t get away from it (i.e. whenever we’re both in the apartment) and if she should talk to him online I have asked her not to tell me about it. Most recent fights started because he or something to do him was the subject of conversation.

I don’t even know if they are fights so much as just frustrating arguments. When she tells me something like how she “prefers” to communicate with the minimal amount of words as possible pretty much across the board, I get frustrated because it was that mentality, incongruent with several other supposed principles or goals that she holds, that caused our break up. I keep thinking (and occasionally saying) “And how’s that working out for you?” with the obvious implication being that it doesn’t, and that it should probably be obvious by now.

But it is utterly useless, I know, to even attempt such arguments. For one reason or another, and probably more than a single one, she is unwilling to accept what I say and in all fairness I am unwilling to accept what she says. We keep butting heads and the only thing we do is feed our mutual frustration with the other. I think that by now we are both looking forward to when she will move out.

Side Notes on Moving Out

Things have been slow going in her quest for a new apartment. She has decided that Randy’s apartment is the perfect one for her (or is at least in the perfect location), and since he is moving out she has been hopeful that she can get the apartment. Of course, it has taken until yesterday for her to get the realtor’s number, and she has still made no phone call to either her mother or the realtor regarding her specific intentions to move in there.

Nevertheless, regardless of what happens, the locks are being changed on March 30^th and she will not be given an extra key. One already broke, but my landlord has not called me back about fixing the door. I will have to call back again, and then again, and then probably yet again.

Going to the Gym

One of the reasons I have not been writing as much lately is because I am tired and (get this) able to sleep full nights these days. When my brother came home over Presidents’ Day weekend I started going with him to the gym. He showed me how to use the erg machine (the one that simulates rowing) and I’ve been keeping a pretty consistent routine with that.

After the work out, we go to eat. In the evening, I am so tired that I have managed to sleep eight hour nights or longer. I’ve been shooting for sleeping between eight and ten hours because that’s the window in which your body can recover from the previous day’s work out, or so I’m told.

Getting out to the gym is a bigger hassle than I would have liked. I have to take the subway downtown because there is no New York Sports Club in my neighborhood. Also, the membership is crazy expensive. I don’t yet feel like it’s worth the money, but I am willing to give it some time. Their stupid ten day trial is not a reasonable timeframe with which to judge the effectiveness of a gym anyway, so I’ve resigned to paying through the nose for the time being.

All Comes Back to Money and Motivation

Of course, that means I’m pretty strapped for cash, or will be when all the bills roll on in. I just recently paid my first (prorated) Verizon telephone bill for my new landline. I am thinking about cutting off long-distance service, since I don’t really use that often anyway.

The only thing to do, then, is make more money. That’s where it all comes back to motivation. The programming job I got that I’m having trouble getting started with is a small project to build an extranet for a company’s promotional sales so that communication between folks in radically disperate timezones will be eased.

The trouble with this project for me right now is that it is not directly in my field of expertise. I can do it, but instead of feeling motivated I feel overwhelmed and outclassed. If this were a CSS project or some other web front-end work, I don’t think I’d feel this way, but it is instead mostly a back-end programming job that I simply haven’t the guts to tackle right now.

Things to Do

• Buy a Squash racquet in preparation for playing Squash on, hopefully, a regular basis.
• Call my dentist to proceed with the tooth implant appraisal. (Fuck, it’s past four. I guess this will have to wait until tomorrow. Again.)
• Get the programming job started, at the very least.
• If not, then at least work on Maymay Media’s web site, which for now is actually front-end only.
• If all else fails, I should have gone to the gym today, but it is already five o’clock and I don’t think I’ll realistically make it out.
• Try not to mope for the rest of the day.