dear scott l: i will come and see you earlier than october 1, i promise. and reading your xanga is one of the highlights of my week. and, at american standard, they have a point system to win prizes for safety. if you don’t cut yourself in ten years, you might get a toaster.
~*~
i decided my new literary jaunt will be ulysses by james joyce. when i bought it nigh three years ago, i bought it with the caveat that it was one of the most challenging books in modern literature to read. with zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance down (and i actually understood the quality concept) i feel like i can at least approach the throne of ulysses. i understand why people say it’s rather difficult, though (well, maybe not difficult, but thick), because it’s taken me quite a while to get through the first couple pages. to think that it was banned in the u.s. because of obscenity almost seems humorous now in the double-aughts, but like i said, still have to keep reading.
time to knock something off the list – openness/vulnerability. in keeping with the brevity rule, i’ll parse my comments down, and feel free to bring up the topic if we happen to get together over a beer, a coffee, or something else.
towards the end of training, i had an evaluation to help me see some of my strengths and things to look at based on my trainer, ben beres’s, perspective. we talked about community interactions, and he said while i do a fine job connecting with many different types of people on many different levels, but sometimes i can hide a portion of my personality to them. in other words, i can easily be the laid-back joker, but i don’t always show that there is more to me than that. i’ve given that quite a bit of thought since then because a) i’m aware i do that and b) most people (to my knowledge) don’t pick up on it.
i seek to be a people pleaser. it’s my thing; it’s what i do. i feel like a better person and that i’m doing right if people feel better because i’m there – maybe i make them laugh, maybe i do something for them… either way, it’s my thing. but in some ways, that means that my personality to the masses is, for the most part, also fairly people pleasing. i would rather keep people peaceful by sucking up my own personal opinion than expense it at another’s expense, because hey, i can suck it up and deal with it. moreover, i know i am capable of dealing with disagreements with my opinion, and i know others can attach their ego to people agreeing with them. so better most of the time to satiate than to be right for the sake of being right.
i don’t really have a solution, don’t really want one. the solutions generate themselves so long as you are perceptive enough to catch them when they come by.
anyway, off to drop ryan back in pittsburgh and eat with my grandparents, and then hopefully off to see russel and chrissy, his girlfriend (russ – i almost committed the faux pas of writing ‘christy’… yeowch…). That will be a nice time for sure.