MadMup.com

I’ve started this entry three times already and erased all of it to start again, trying to find the right way to explain what’s going on in my head these days, when it hit me - that’s exactly it: I’m trying to figure out a way.

See, I feel like I’m at a crossroads in my life… but not really. I have a good job, a nice apartment, all that stuff, so I’m fine, really. But I feel the need for … something. I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. It’s not that I feel unsatisfied (or any more unsatisfied than most everybody feels about something or other most times, anyway), I just feel, well, done.

When I was in college, I had the opportunity to be in several plays. We’d rehearse for a couple of months, and then the last week before a performance we’d rehearse all the technical parts and have a dress rehearsal and it’d take hours and hours that last week. Our first show would be Friday, with another performance on Saturday. Thursday’s dress rehearsal always felt like a performance (as it should!), but really we had the two main performances.

Later on in my college years, the school started adding a performance on the following Monday, a matinee. A few hundred retirees would come from all over the state, have a nice lunch, and then see a performance of whatever play we were putting on that semester. By the time those Monday shows came around, the cast was pretty much done with the play. The adrenalin of Friday night’s show followed by the smoother performance on Saturday pretty much rounded out the whole experience. By the time Monday rolled around, we were ready to strike and move on to the cast party where we’d watch a video of the performance and wisecrack through the whole thing. Certain actors were given to playing on-stage pranks during the senior citizen’s show, and I remember one fellow got himself slapped by the director for fooling around onstage during the performance. I never went in for the pranks myself, but I understood the feelings behind them: anything to liven up the atmosphere, because we were done.

That’s how I’m feeling right now. The show’s done, the performance was what it was, let’s strike the set and move on to the next town.

I like where I live, I like my job, and, for the most part, I like the people around me. There is no “ugh, I really hate this” reason for me to move on. Nor is there some “I wish I were there!” place in my thinking.

Earlier this year a friend of mine was going through some of these same exact thoughts. She’d lived her whole life here and she wanted something different. I remember when she first started talking about it, there were lots of “I don’t know”s and “I just wonder”s. From there it was “I have an interview in Colorado that I’m doing just to see” and soon after that it was “My house is sold and I found a place in Colorado” and then she moved. Just like that. She knew one couple out there, but the rest of it was a big unknown. She was back in town a month ago and we met for breakfast and she said this: “I don’t know if I want to do this job much longer, but I love the area and, more importantly, I love that I did this, made this change. I needed to see what it was like.”

As I so often did after the plays in college, I sit now out in the theater, looking at the stage, appreciating the set as a whole for the first time, remembering the performance (both the good and the bad parts), and wondering –

“Will I try out for the next one?” 5 comments

I've been looking forward to this weekend for a while. My school has Fall Break today and Monday, so I took vacation days to have the four-day weekend. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I've had the desire to go somewhere. It's weird because I'm so keen on turtling usually, but I've really felt like going somewhere.

Problem is, I can't find a place to go. Key thoughts were "cheap" and "someplace I haven't been before" and, as this weekend got closer, "less and less far away." You'd be surprised by how limiting those guidelines can be. Sure, there are things that fit in those guidelines, but nothing I really feel compelled to travel for.

I thought I might swing through and see some friends on my way to seeing other things (and, you know, hit them up for free lodging), but it turns out they're busy, or having surgery, or something.

So today hit and I still have no plans. I could still leave tomorrow or even tonight on my way somewhere, but... there's nowhere to go.

So I slept in til almost noon, went out and got some lunch and went to Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and a videogame store and now I'm back home. I guess I'll play a few rounds of Tiger Woods golf and try to figure out how to gel my desire to travel with my previous unwillingness to do so and my current inability to do so.

Sounds fun, doesn't it? 3 comments

For a few years now, I've been hauling around a Darth Maul bag as my luggage. It's the perfect size to pack for a weekend and I found out it's also the perfect size to put in an overhead bin on an airplane.

...but it's a little embarrassing. It hit me when I went to Canada this summer that I was now 34 years old and still hauling around a bag with a picture of a Star Wars character on it. I've never actually lived in my parents' basement, but anyone seeing me with this bag would guess that, not only had I, but I still was currently.

A few months later, I went to Dallas. And I felt silly again. I found myself turning the bag in towards me so Darth Maul wouldn't be glowering at people, but the end of the bag still says "Star Wars" on it, so it still wasn't ideal.

It was high time for a change. One visit to Target later, and I was set. Here's a comparison:

Much more grown-up, don't you think? Slowly but surely, one step at a time, I'm finally advancing into adulthood.

Now I just need to figure out where I'm traveling next.

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It isn't much of a change, but I wanted to mention that the "Some Favorite Posts" section over on the left has been updated. These are posts that I personally like for one reason or another, usually because I liked the topic or because I feel it reveals something about me.

The Movie Count on the right has changed, too. The fact that I'm on track to watch at least a movie a day this year probably also reveals something about me.

Labels: meta

2 comments

(Warning: morbidity ahead.)

Lately, when I shave, I find myself thinking about a section in the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (you might recall I read it recently). One chapter detailed the author's visit to a funeral home where she watched the process of preparing a body for a memorial service. One of the steps was to shave the recently departed male's face, a tricky process because, as the funeral director said, "Nicks and cuts won't heal." They always use a new blade and the blade is thrown away immediately after. I shave in the shower (too much information, I know) and haven't cut myself shaving in years as a result (there's something about the steam and moisture in the air that helps). But still, every morning when I shave now, I think about that last shave I'll ever have. Weird.

This past Friday we ended our improv show with Rapid-Fire Joke Cavalcade. As The Voice calls off each person, the person steps up to the microphone and tells a fast joke before leaving the stage. Since it was Friday the 13th, before the show I suggested we have monster-themed jokes ready. But, really, there aren't that many monster-themed jokes. I remembered a couple from an old joke book I had read as a kid:

Q: What do monsters eat?
A: Things.
Q: What do monsters drink?
A: Coke. Because things go better with Coke!

Q: How does a monster count to 13?
A: On his fingers!

But neither of those was going to cut it. We brainstormed a little to see if we could come up with new (and better) monster jokes, but didn't really come up with any. I particularly wanted to do an updated one if I could, themed off a modern movie monster - Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, one of those guys. But I couldn't think of anything. For some reason, I thought of Psycho, and I came up with this one:

Q: What does Norman Bates do for Mother's Day?
A: He shaves!

A couple of my fellow troupe members really liked it. The audience? Not so much.

Labels: improv, joke

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If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time at all you’ve probably noticed I don’t get very personal very often. I’ve taken an “editorial” approach here, using observances to make a point or to make a joke – what I like to call the “Dave Barry Approach.” While I think you can piece together an accurate picture of me from what I post, it is by no means a complete one. If you were to meet me, I don’t think you’d be surprised. I pretty much am in real life what I am here, all quirks and smart aleck comments.

But there’s plenty you don’t know about me, plenty I keep to myself.

That’s a function of two different forces, I think. First, I grew up in Wisconsin. There’s something about Wisconsin – and, really, the whole Midwest – that doesn’t encourage sharing. If you’ve ever heard Garrison Keillor talk about his fictional town of Lake Wobegon you know what I mean. There’s an encouragement to “soldier on” and be nice to each other without letting on about whatever turmoil rages beneath the surface. It’s fine to have strong feelings, just keep them to yourself.

The second force is good old-fashioned fear. I am all about honesty, but honesty is a double-edged sword. In the one direction, it cuts through all the nonsense and gives a solid base for any relationship. In the other direction, though, it lays a person bare, open to ridicule, attack, and disgust.

I want people to like me, as a general rule – even people I’ll never see again, like waiters or people at the register. I want them to look at me, assess me as nice, and continue thinking that after I’ve said something.

But as much as I want people to like me, I also want to be safe. Safety, in fact, can outweigh a hundred other things. While I might not worry that someone else is going to stab me (though I sometimes actually do worry this), I certainly worry that they won’t accept me for who I am. Think back to high school and that crush you had. Why didn’t you tell them? You were afraid they wouldn’t feel the same way about you and when they didn’t, it was going to hurt. Carry that to its logical conclusion, though: the only way to really feel safe is to not reach out at all. If you never reach out, you’ll never get hurt. I think the editorial voice I’ve adopted here is a safety zone of sorts. You might not like my cats, you might not like trips I take, you might not like a bunch of things, but if I haven’t revealed my inner self completely, there’s still a chance you could like me.

See, what I want is for you to think I’m worth the effort, worth getting past all the quirks and the failures. I want you to think I’m worthwhile, but I have no way to prove I am. (And, in fact, I have a whole pile of evidence that I’m not. I feel like anyone I think is really great and I’m interested in being friends with deserves to have better friends than me.) I think there should be some sort of “Friend Résumé” we could hand out: “Excuse me, hi. I think you’re really neat and I want to be friends with you. Here’s a list of my faults and failures, but this other list is of friends I’ve had who found the experience to be worth the effort. You’ll see I’ve included a few phone numbers – those are people who are willing to be references, so feel free to call them. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear back from you soon.”

Nobody wants to invest time in a bad friendship. How frustrating to keep working and working at something that ultimately comes to nothing. So often, though, it’s our faults that make the relationship stronger. What’s the best way to show love, by liking someone’s qualities that are likable? Nope, it’s by liking them in spite of their failings. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says love “does not seek its own.” 1 Peter 4:8 says “love covers a multitude of sins.” Think about the best friend you’ve ever had. Were things always perfect? Of course not. How’d you get past those times and remain friends? “Love covers a multitude of sins,” is how. One of the best friends I have right now I’ve known for over twenty years. Our Junior year in high school we were sitting at a lunch table and he was making fun of me for something and I threw an orange at him, hit him right below the eye. We got past that and a hundred other rough patches and here we are, still friends – in fact, I’d say we were better friends for it.

In the beginning stages of friendship, though, it’s difficult to know what to do. A series of faults right at the outset can strangle off what might have been a fantastic friendship given time, but isn’t it important to be honest from the get-go? How honest is too honest?

I think that as I get older, I’m coming to the conclusion that I want people to like me for who I am, not who I can present myself as. I still feel the same way I did in high school, not wanting to be hurt, but I think it’s more important that the other person not be hurt. “I think you’re really great and I want to be friends with you, but I want to let you know up front what you’re dealing with so you have the chance to back out now before you get stuck with it all down the road.”

I want to be worthwhile, but I guess that’s really up to you. All I can do is be who I am. And, just like Dave Barry’s writing, you’ll either like that or you won’t.

Labels: friends, life

7 comments

Apparently staff members at public schools get their picture taken every year. I don't know who thinks this is a good idea.

Actually, I do. For the most part. See, once all the staff memebrs have had their picture taken, they post a chart on the wall outside the main office with everyone's picture and name. I find it incredibly useful because I can stop there before heading to a teacher's room to work on their computer if I'm not entirely sure who that teacher is. That happens to me more than you might think.

The downside, of course, is it means that I get my picture taken every year, too. In last year's picture I purposefully went for a lopsided grin to effect a nonchalant, friendly attitude. At best I'd say the results were "mixed."

This year I had just eaten some chocolate and I was worried that I might have some in my teeth. The photographer said, "Let me look." Like an idiot, I fell for it and he took the picture. Argh.

I learned from a friend that sometimes blogs are good for getting a laugh. So, in that vein, I give you my school picture:

Watchful observers might recognize the shirt/T-shirt combo as my "Meeting People" outfit. I won't go back through and find (and link) all of them, but this shirt combo is in a lot of pictures where I meet people for the first time. Coincidentally, the color combo of the shirt and T-shirt are also the school colors where I work. Bonus!

And, just like when you got your picture taken in school, I received a little picture packet with two 3x5s and 6 wallet-sized pictures. Unlike school, faculty and staff members don't exchange pictures, nor do they write in each other's yearbooks. So I'm stuck with these goofy-looking pictures.

All I can say is - you better have laughed. 5 comments

I haven’t been to a dentist in years for no good reason other than I just never think to go. I haven’t been to a physician in years because I don’t want to hear him tell me I’m out of shape and need to eat right and exercise. And, up a week ago, I hadn’t been to an optometrist in 5+ years because I hate getting air blown into my eyes.

Nobody’s afraid of the eye doctor, as a general rule. I’m technically not myself, but I do have specific anxieties attached to getting my eyes checked (just like I have specific anxieties attached to most things in my life, really). I know they say the air-in-the-eyes thing is a test for glaucoma, but I think they’re having us on. I think they got together and decided that they could do pretty much whatever they wanted to us in the name of “Doctoring,” and that’s what they decided to try. Whoever it was that allowed them to do that to him the first time ought to be noted in the history books somewhere so we can revile and curse them.

The other thing I worry about is the Flippy Lenses Test. You know that old joke about worrying you were going to fail your hearing test because you hadn’t studied? It’s actually kind of like that. I can never tell enough difference between the two choices to feel confident about my decision. Reading letters off a chart isn’t a very good approximation of real-world reading situations, I don’t think.

Furthermore, when someone’s having the laser surgery done on their eyes, don’t they take measurements with a computer to know how they need to make the laser adjustments? Why can’t they just take computer readings of my eyes and tell me what prescription I need? Why do I need to take tests at all?

Turns out Mr. Smarty Doctor was all set with answers to these questions:

• Puff of air: “We can tell things with that test that we can’t easily determine from other tests.” Mm-hmm. Like, for instance, just how much people will let you get away with.
• Flippy Lenses Test: “We double-check without you knowing to make sure you’re consistent in your choices. We’ll go back and try a lens from before.” I guess that makes sense, but why tell me that before I take the Flippy Lens Test? Now I know the secret and I’ll mess everything up.
• Computer measuring: “Computer measuring can’t take into account the little variances and the ‘feel’ that person is after. Also, you’d be surprised to know how much of the laser surgery is based on the Flippy Lens Test.” Actually, yeah, I was. I thought that was pretty interesting, but it means I’ll never be able to go get the laser surgery done now. I mean, can you even imagine the anxiety of having that be dependent on my choices?

Before my exam I had looked over the available frames and had narrowed my choice down to two. They were pretty much two different versions of the same style and, really, the style was a big part of my decision to finally go to the eye doctor. I’ve had the wire-frames for five years or so and it was time for a change. I’d always liked Lisa Loeb’s glasses on her, and I’ve seen those more and more frequently in the past couple of years on people, and I thought I might like to try them on me. More recent examples and recent exhortations for me to try them on me pushed me to do so.

This, of course, leads to my third anxiety about going to the eye doctor: I can’t tell how glasses look on me because I have to take my glasses off to try the non-prescription demo models on… which means I can’t see myself. This means I have to rely on the opinions of others (who, I should mention, I’m more willing to trust on matters of my appearance than I am to trust myself). The only “others” around at this point are the people who work at the doctor’s office. One of the ladies said she’d help me out and looked at the two I’d chosen. She gave a definite “Those!” to one pair, so those were the ones I got. I was a little suspicious because they were the more expensive of the two and she does, after all, work for the office, but I decided that fake or not, her enthusiasm for these particular frames was inspiring. Done & done.

“They should be done in about a week.” Say what? I’m not used to having to wait for glasses. I’d gone to a “we’ll have them done in an hour” place before, so that’s what I was used to (which translates in Markspeak to “comfortable with”). Ah, well. Not much I can do about it, I guess.

A measly four days later, I got the call that they were in. Not a bad wait, really. I went in to pick them up and the same lady fitted them on me to make sure they were okay. She did a couple of “Oh, yeah, those are gooood”s, but I was still distrustful. Do I need to tip for compliments, you think?

A couple of friends have seen them now and ruled them “hip” and “appearance changing.” The changing I’ve noticed is that they are forming new dents in my head above my ears, a painful process that I hope is over soon. I also hope that the old dents go away, as it can’t be good to have more dents in your head than you need, can it? I’m still noticing the frames while they’re on me, but I’m glad I’ve had the weekend to get used to them rather than trying to do that at work tomorrow.

So what do they look like? See for yourself. Try not to be distracted by the huge forehead in the picture, a feature apparently enhanced by the haircut I got the same day I got the glasses.

11 comments