Party In My Pants

Must have these pants or a fab knock-off of 'em. Even if that means my arse turns lunar each time I have them on.

You see my clothing choices run two ways. There's the list in my head of clothes I'd give my granny for. Jersey maxis, tailored shorts, cute little fauna-print dresses and Peter Pan collars. Naturally therefore, if you're at all familiar with my world, none of these suit me even slightly. Originally I'm a pear shape. Currently I'm the shape of conjoined pears doing a great The Hulk. So instead of sitting around crying about it, I eat deep fried potatoes and go buy safe, characterless clothes that won't draw too much attention.

I want to slowly edge out of the dowdiness, one unthreatening yet unusual (for me) separate at a time. These pants combine my love for comfortable, slouchy silhouettes while adding structure and a bit of um...style even?...without too much choo-choo peh-peh.

I'm raising my mango lassi to change.

Plans for Getting Better

1) Finish all the books I started last year and didn't finish because I got distracted. For every Pratchett I read, I will read one of the classics or one non‐fiction book.

2) Quit smoking. And keep quitting every day, if it comes to that. Ditch the aerated drinks.

3) Return calls within the day. Keep phone conversations short. Twenty minutes will be my upper limit after which the mother will call me for lunch/I will be walking doglet in an area that does not have network/ the wraith‐like Anglo Indian I've hired especially for these occasions will vulgarly keep calling me till I hang up with you.

4) Gently exhort every clean shaven man I come across to consider facial hair. Unless it is Jon Hamm, in which case I'll be gently exhorting him to consider things of, one might even say, a hairy nature.

5) Comb my hair every day.

6) Write something entirely unrelated to work at least thrice a week. Even if it just means describing in tedious and enraged detail how the bathroom renovations we undertook TWO months ago have been jinxed in every way because we tried to save money and ended up with a contractor who should be handed over sole custody of the word 'moron'.

7) This is the year of Meaning and I will not piss it away to be instead, Well Meaning.

8) Don't be mad if people I like don't like me ‐ I can understand if petulant, cranky, and selfish is not your type. People who like me, I needn't like (What a load off when I finally realised this was an option).

9) Talk to the mother daily. With no distractions. Offer to help her around the house.

10) Stop saying 'I mean' every other sentence. I've played back some of my interviews with people and God, I sound like an idiot.

11) Get a little bit of the bitchery back. This nice girl thing is boring for everybody.

12) STOP BUYING LIP BALM, what I have will last me until menopause. Besides 'oh but look at all the pretty colours!' will not hold up under my CA's withering stares.

That's about all the character building I can assimilate for now. I will chart my progress here and hopefully I'll have to stop soon because consecutive self‐congratulatory posts saying 'I did it, I did it' tend to lose shine very quickly.

Skinny Soup

Careful.

People have often told me I'm a sucker for pain. That in my dealings with people, I show a worrying lack of self-preservation. "Are you crazy? Do you not remember what she said to you?" "How far do you need to fall before you realise he's not good for you? What will it take?" And I have always said that grudges are not my thing. Neither are hostility, vengeance and issuing comeuppances. I'm not very good at any of those and I'd much rather read comics and worry my dog than hatch complicated plots to bring about someone's downfall.

And that is the truth but it's not the whole truth. Because I have been to the other side. Experienced the kind of anger, hurt and bitterness that you can will to become something physical and tangible because calling them 'feelings' doesn't even begin to describe their potency. And they caused me to say things that, to this day make me wilt a little even if I just hear them used randomly or playfully. One day, that person on the receiving end dropped dead. And how bitterly theatrical is it that earlier that very morning, I'd woken up to the vacant, white, summery feeling of forgiveness?

Then on I promised myself I'd let go, a kind of atonement if you will. And once I began, I didn't stop. In time, quite Gyuri-ly, I lost sight of my reason and took it to the extreme. Soon it became a game of 'show me what you got, I'll still come back. You cannot shock me.' And to my horror I found that there is no dearth of people willing to take you up on that kind of challenge. A point that was finally brought home to me only very recently.

For the first time in years, my very dormant sense of self-preservation took over and the only words I could hear myself think were, "you went too far."

Good thing is I'll never be that angry 17-year-old again, screaming, thrashing and foaming at the mouth. Because she grew up and was introduced to their effortless replacements: sarcasm, irony and stone-cold indifference. Don't get me wrong, I still have impossibly high levels of endurance but now they come with a tipping point. Just that you won't see it coming, you'll only know when it's there.

You went too far.

Stay still

I find it's all very well to say that you must keep the ground beneath your feet. But what if all you've ever been standing on has been broken tiles at precarious angles? These days I have mustered a level of quietness that is a far screech from just a while ago when I was climbing up walls. Still I cannot say I know how to...be.

There's too much going on around us. A couple of kids walked into their favourite bakery and got blown to smithereens. A baby who doesn't know that his longstanding Tummy Ache is actually liver cancer. Less dramatic events like excruciating deadlines, falling hair, heart marauding loneliness.

There is greatness too, I'd be a fool to deny it. Complete strangers being able to spot in you what only should have been visible to lifelong companions. People showing up to their jobs every day for love and precious little else. Supernatural endurance? All miraculous.

It's just marrying the two that has got me in knots, you know. How do you make it through your day? What do you focus on? If it's just everything close to you, you stand in danger of becoming grossly insulated. If it's the world at large, you could start feeling very badly like a whiskey at 10 in the morning. Is the ability for balance a talent - you either have it or you don't?

It seems to me we all have to reconcile what we thought everything would be to what everything is. For now I take respite in the fact that I try, every day, I try.

If there is anything I want right now, it's the ability for grace. I think in my dealings with people I've managed to let near me, I generally think it's alright to have them see that unfettered, potentially vile side of me. I imagine that if they've come this far, they're willing to be privy to the awfulness as well.
Which they often have been and grateful as I am for that, I have abused it from time to time too. In the process I have been nicer to people who've never really cared for me, and the handful that have, I have tested them over and over again.
I always feel the need to test people who make it halfway across that moat that separates me from the general noise of the world. In the bargain I've let go of grace. I have spat, hissed and pummeled at them with fists, detailing their every failing, poking crudely at their every weakness. To fall like that from your own grace is painful. To step out of yourself and watch yourself become everything you hate, is frightening.
Over the years, after the disappointments and going through the motions, it gives me some solace that I have begun to get better but I'm not nearly as close as I'd like to be.

...

I am not generally given to loud, expressive fits of anger. This might be in part because I think loud fits of anything are genuinely warranted only in very rare cases. Also, I despise confrontations like I despise Criss Angel, that no talent, goth fuck. And usually before I work up to that kind of anger, I get distracted by whatever social networking site I’m using indiscriminately at the time or say like, a potato chip. Then there’s the fact that I stay calm to spite those people who say ‘let it out’ with those infuriating hand actions, heads cocked to one side, voice all calm and soothing-like. No bugger off, I’m keeping it in, I’m keeping it ALL in, go be Oprah some place else and get out of my face.
But a big reason, you’ll almost never hear me screaming or typing in angry caps, and I’m aware of how cutesy and made up this sounds even though it’s a 100% true, is the Old Spice song.

Remember that one? Unfortunately I can’t find it on Youtube so for those who can’t remember it, you may use Chariots of Fire as stand in, it has the same effect. If you haven’t heard Chariots of Fire, you’re probably deaf. In which case, nevermind the rest of this post.

Anyway.

Everytime I’m on the brink of blowing off some serious steam, the song starts playing in my head. Its rising crescendo perfectly accompanying the gradual slowing down of the words and expressions until it’s all very comical, I stop to chuckle and in the process the loud anger has dissipated. What’s left can well be dialed down to sarcasm, the odd snide comment and some heavy duty passive-aggressive bullshit like eating the last muffin I knew the person really wanted or uploading unnecessarily cheerful status updates that I know will piss him/her off.

Only recently it occurred to me that the latter method is long drawn, tedious and even more laughable than being caught Old Spicing. Also less fulfilling, because honestly, while I’m plotting all these abstruse ways of putting it across, the person concerned probably just thinks I’m having my period. Whereas a well-timed ‘Fuck you’ said at a higher decibel is succinct yet descriptive and clear as a bell.

That settles it. Come Monday (I hate starting new resolutions mid-week) and I’m really getting into this whole 'expressing self' business. I may end up feeling better or I may end up halving the number of people who put up with me always, to one. But that’s okay. No longer is a men’s aftershave lotion going to come between me and my true feelings.

Sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants before you realise you've got to learn yourself and fast if you're to keep your head above water.

I have decided I don't know myself very well. Or at all, for that matter. I'm one of those people whose answers to anything have always been something to the effect of "I don't know, could go either way." Which is why, too often, I end up relying on other people to tell me what to do or give their opinion way more consideration than I should.

Then it occurred to me that a big reason for this lack of self awareness is that I'm very hillbilly shit-kickerish with my introspection. For example I'll ask myself broad generic questions like "What do you want?" and I'll get broad generic rejoinders like "To be happy." And then I start thinking about potato chips and we all know how that story goes.

I'm very generic the few times I make a courtesy calls to God even - "Dear Jesus, give me everything I want. And also give everyone else everything they want. Thankyou." If I'm specific, I strongly suspect it's not the right kind of specific - "Dear Jesus, please don't let her (the parlour chick) fuck my eyebrows up. Thankyou."

I think the other reason I have failed to know myself enough so far is that I tend to judge my answers very harshly. The classic 'Damn, everyone else is asking for the cure for cancer and I'm asking for weight loss' syndrome. I feel guilty and lame and superficial and then I'll kid myself into thinking I want all those deep things when really I just want to very badly look smoking in my new pencil dress. Is that so wrong? I am coming to think not. I have just come out the other side of a very bad phase and even though I'm seeing lights in the distance, the repair takes time. I read these words recently and they made perfect sense to me:

"When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life, it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."

So I have decided to ask myself a series of very pointed questions to which the only rules of answering are - Specificity and truthfulness. Wish me luck. And if I feel brave enough, I'll put 'em up here. Now I go hold down my day job.

I'm bringin' appreciation back!

Call me a slut for encouragement (Today I asked a friend to transfer her appreciation for my blog from Gchat to here so I could have ‘comments’ [This is your mention Shwetters! *waves*]) or just freakishly addicted to American sitcoms, but I am really dismayed by just how rarely people high-five each other anymore.

We’re dedicated to keeping internet dialects of English alive and kicking, in spoken conversation, no less! We haven’t gotten sick of uploading heavily photoshopped pictures of every last mundane activity of our lives (and nature) to Facebook. Some of us *wretches slightly* are still giving the middle finger whenever faced with a camera lens. Excruciatingly cool.

So then what happened to high-fiving?

What caused the death of this sublime culture of expressing encouragement and appreciation via well-coordinated claps of the hands at a slightly higher altitude? Is there any way that is less pre-meditated and quite so spontaneous as The High-Five? Are we afraid it makes us look stupid? People are still actively wearing Crocs, so that can’t be it. Why will we 'Like this' the crap out of people's Facebook status messages but are unwilling to lift an appreciative palm to let someone know they did good? Is it somehow too juvenile for us now? I don't know about you, but I still laugh at names like ‘Wang’ and videos of kittens head-butting each other endlessly. I’m a fully paid up member of Juvenileville. So what happened then?

I thought I’d leave space to accommodate that deafening silence.

Fine. Nevermind why. I’ve decided to be part of the solution. From now on I’m bringing back high-fiving. Every time I hear a good punch line henceforth, I’m high-fiving! Every time a friend of mine fits perfectly into an outfit, I’m high-fiving! Every time less that a friend of mine (you know who you are) says ‘Lol’, I’M HIGH-FIVING.

High-five me back ok? Don't leave me hanging now!

I just had a really good day.

That almost never happens!

Wrapped up alot of work, worked out (WADDUP!), ate no junk food or in between meals and talked to my favourite people :). Now I'm going to bed. At 1.30am. That's about three hours earlier than I usually do.

Huzzah!

Gut instinct or just my lunch?

I have always envied people for whom their gut instinct is like a lighthouse, helping them navigate through the choppy waters of contradiction and indecision onto the shores of resolution and clarity. These people always tell me their gut instinct is audible to them, ringing clear like a bell. For example, my friend, who I will hereon refer to as Fat Pants, is one of these people who as a rule functions on merciless logic to get him to that point just before he makes his final decision. Then he lets his gut (HEH) take it from there. I asked him once how he's sure it is his instinct that he's listening to and not just another line of reasoning. His said two very powerful words to me. "Fucking. Introspect."

"Lock yourself up in a room, cry your eyes out if you have to, scream if you must. But don't get out till you have your answers," he explains.

Now here's where it all starts to go pear-shaped.
For someone who blogs about what she's feeling and thinking and opining, I really suck at introspection. It just doesn't come naturally to me. I blame it on my daily-diminishing attention span, my soaring propensity for procrastination and my tendency to second guess myself all the time.
Plus I am someone who's always been unable to delay gratification - it's why I smoke, it's why I'm overweight, it's why I stay up late watching back-to-back episodes of Mother instead of writing my stories for work. So there's a very good chance that I could be mistaking what I really want to happen in a situation (want to feel the comfort of being in a relationship, want to eat fries, want to be liked) as my gut instinct. A very obvious and a very real trap.

I've swung by the seat of my pants for so long, but for the first time I'm feeling the weight of my malformed opinions and underdeveloped decisions weighing down on me. I'm tired of 'definitely, maybe' and I'm ready for 'definitely'.

To this end I've decided I need to first shut out the physical noise before I'm able to shut out the noise in my head. I'm withdrawing my cards, I'm leaving the building, I'm putting out the 'closed for business' sign. For a while anyway.

5.08 am.

Project Get Shit Together (TM) not going so good.

Today I make my stage debut.

Wish me luck. This could go either way.

Project Get Shit Together (TM) begins today

It's been a long time coming. And I think it's finally here. I've left much too much upto whimsy so far - today onwards my life gets a shot of purpose in the arm. I'm told this won't hurt at all by the mater but then she also told me castor oil 'doesn't taste so bad', so I'm not dwelling too much on her opinion here.

That said, I think I know myself well enough to know I embrace change best when I don't know it's happened. So baby steps. I thought I'd set a few ballpark rules to give the project some form, though.

They are:

- Don't say 'yes' if you mean 'let's see'. Most of my unfinished business started that way.
- Go one way or the other. Make a choice. Stick with it.
- Get 8 hours of sleep, no compromise.
- Do it right then. Not after one (or ten) episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
- MTV Roadies is where useful minutes of life go to be buggered and die.

Yerp. That about does it. I will add to the list along the way.

This blog is where I'll be charting my daily progress.

"All the best, Gyurkovics"? "Sure you'll smash it, Gyurkovics"?

No?

Okay.