Three random thoughts for today
- I used to think I was indecisive, but now I’m not so sure.
- If you knew what you were doing you’d probably be bored.
- If you don’t care where you are, then you ain’t lost.
Zooming out
Cut-n-paste from my fav LeCool mag. Why? Because it’s excellent:
“So, how do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Smile all the time, even when things aren’t going too well for you.”
“Sometimes I use a home-made technique: When something is worrying me a bit too much, and taking over my mind, I do a kind of mental zoom out of my bedroom (or wherever I am) until I have the whole planet Earth in view. Nice, no? Then I think that I am a miniscule speck on this Earth and my problem is even smaller than that. And everything seems clear again.”
“Like an astronaut?”
“Like an astronaut.”
An ace advice. It’s just I have to zoom out much much further.
Elevation and stress management
I’ll begin by saying I am finally happy! I still don’t quite know what it is I want or if I ever get it. But. I absolutely definitely positively know what I don’t want in my life. And not doing what I don’t want to makes me happy. So simple. Really.
Of course that doesn’t mean that I don’t get stressed anymore. Juste le contraire, mes amis; juste le contraire ;). From time to time I feel totally out of my depth. Drowning. Current events in my life hit groups 1, 2, and 3 on the stress radar. You name it, I am being exposed to it. Even right now. So to handle things, clever me, I’ve been hitting some books. And socializing like mad, of course. Am only human.
So, what I’ve figured out is, apparently when we say ‘go with the flow’ we offer a solid piece of advice grounded in positive psychology. Impressive, ha? Or you don’t believe me? Fine. Fine. So a guy called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who just happens to be a professor ;), kind of encourages us to go out there and be ‘completely involved in the activity for its own sake.’ Why? Because then ‘every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like ‘playing jazz’.’ I already like him! Can I relate to that? Yep. I think so. Not in the way he visualised it perhaps. For I can relate to it on three different accounts: dancing, playing wow, and listening to music with some nice incense burning in the background. All of the above works for me.
By the way, hope you have enjoyed this song. It’s forever linked in my head with Angelina Jolie’s acrobatics in the first Tomb Raider film. It actually made my whole body ache so much I wanted to do the same. There’s nothing better than to be in tune with your body and not just your mind…
A will to do what?
So OK, I have been thinking about will a little bit recently. Not free will. Just will. As a driver for human behaviour. Yeah. I know. It’s grim. It’s heavy. Don’t worry. If things go well, I’d be dancing tomorrow (love salsa). KK, back to the grim stuff. (And btw, it’s all shamelessly ripped off from Wikipedia)
So, Schopenhauer
“…had regarded the entire universe and everything in it as driven by a primordial will to live, thus resulting in all creatures’ desire to avoid death and to procreate.”
While Nietzsche
“…suggests that people and animals really want power; living in itself appears only as a subsidiary aim — something necessary to promote one’s power. In defense of his view, Nietzsche appeals to many instances in which people and animals willingly risk their lives in order to promote their power, most notably in instances like competitive fighting and warfare.”
In my culture, people certainly not only died for ideas, but also doomed their families to die for those ideas. So I think I’m more inclined to agree with Nietzsche on this one. Today. Who knows what my views are going to be tomorrow, right?!
More DVD choices
So, once again I went to the library, and bravely picked a few DVDs to watch. (Not that I’ve got that much free time to watch ’em, mind you 😉 )
The number one was Blood and Chocolate. My feelings about the film are mixed. I liked it OK. It’s just whether OK is good enough? The plot was reasonably dynamic. The acting was passable. The motivation was there. And yet, emotionally, the story did nothing for me. No resonance at all. It did remind me of another film – Cat People. Now that one, is hard to forget. It’s deeply disturbing precisely because of the way it resonates with you. Both stories are about coming of age and keeping dark secrets. But where the first one insists that good and evil are easy to separate, the second one recognizes that for a lie it is. Life is never so simple…
The number two that I picked was The Banquet. Beautifully made. As one would expect. But even less emotionally involving than the previous one. Alas. I managed to pick a Chinese take on Hamlet. Now, please, don’t laugh. Honestly. I DID manage to pick a Chinese take on Hamlet. So let’s face it, their version made a bit more sense. Why? Well, the Queen Mother was not a mother, but a step mother. In love with her step son. Which didn’t stop her from getting married to her brother-in-law. Shortly after her husband died under highly suspicious circumstances. Ophelia’s equivalent ended up being raped by the said step son (frustrated in the absence of the said step mother), but didn’t go mad. Instead, she got poisoned in the last scene. And died in his arms. At which point, he promptly realized, it’s her he actually loved. Pffffff. Suffice it to say, everybody dies in the end. Shakespeare would have been proud. Me, I felt absolutely nothing. Not a single emotion stirred. (Quite amazing, to think about it. For I could never watch Hamlet without crying. In fact, I avoid watching Hamlet at all costs. Even now.) Again, I was reminded of another film – House of Flying Daggers. Also a love story. But told in such a way, that it was impossible NOT to get involved. I leave you with the music from it.
Choreography
This is what draws me to tango. That, and the attention to detail. The man leads, and the woman tempts. Just how it should be…
10 Top Ways to Scare Men Away for Good
- Tell him all about yourself. No really. Tell him absolutely everything about the person that you are, what you do, and where you have been. In all the gory details. Make sure to bring up the people that he doesn’t know or care about into your stories. A lot. If he looks sleepy, it means you are getting through to him. Everybody knows we learn better in our sleep!
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Be dependent on him. Cling on to his identity. Don’t have your own hobbies and friends. So, if he wants to go out with his friends, start crying. The more you cry, the more guilty he will feel. That takes us to number 3.
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Make him feel guilty. A lot. Use whichever means necessary.
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Make him deal with all of your emotional problems. This is much better than seeking a therapy. Psycho ex-boyfriends/husbands? Problems at work? Low self-esteem? Bring it on, girl.
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Inform him of all the things he’s bad at. After all, nagging is a time-honoured tradition. Don’t worry if it feels like a complete and utter waste of time. His patience is not endless.
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Never compliment him on anything. You are there to help him overcome his shortcomings, and not to boost his ego.
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Be demanding. Especially in public. For best results, speak in your whinning voice.
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Keep asking for his opinion on all things which bore him to death. When he does give you an opinion, critisize it. In public. Preferably, in front of his friends.
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Be as pushy and overbearing as you can master. Order food for him, pour the wine yourself, argue with the waiters and shop assistants. Nobody likes weaklings, do they?
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If everything else fails, do a little damsel in distress routine. Followed by a major whinning session. If the man is still around, I’m afraid I can’t help you anymore…
On second thoughts, you can just go and ask men yourself, for more tips I guess ;).
Demi-monde (or technical communication in the UK)
June. A lovely summer month. Time when everything is green, flowery, and optimistic. Even I find it very hard to get depressed in summer. Not impossible, mind you. But that’s again, my Russian blood’s speaking.
Anyway, I’m sort of a member of a professional tech communicators’ community. Sort of, because although I am a part of the group, I do not actually contribute anything. Sometimes, I even feel guilty about it. And sometimes I don’t. And sometimes, I’m happy that not many people do know I’m a member of this group.
Today is one of these days. We receive four magazines a year. Which should give plenty of time to publish something decent. Something that can be shown to other people with pride. Like, this is what technical communicators DO. And get a big WOW, as a response. Well, I got my summer issue of the magazine. You already know it’s for technical communicators. Take a wild guess at what’s on its cover. No, it’s NOT Angelina Jolie using her laptop (not a bad idea, actually). No, it’s not a boring drawing of an engine in 3D (that was our autumn issue). Brace yourself. This is a massive picture of an American cemetery. With an emphasis on the grave with the following writing: “Their name liveth for ever more”. And the top article is called, no, just you wait for it: “Writing for eternity: Structural maintenance procedures for cemeteries”.
OH MY GOD. I mean, the magazine has always been dull. But I think this time they’ve really outdone themselves. The publication’s suffering from boring fonts, washed-out colours, no white space… Notice, I’m not touching the content. And you know why? Because I can’t motivate myself reading it. Come on, we are supposed to be professional communicators, and these are the design basics. No wonder that technical communication is not actually considered to be a ‘proper’ qualification. A good laugh though. Together with a dissertation getting an award for ‘discovering’ that people high up the ladder are less formal in their emails than people who are at the bottom of the pecking order (spring issue), heated debates on whether to use apostrophes with acronyms, more debates on the best way to spell-check a document, and a miriad of other exciting topics awaiting for me. If only I could drink that much coffee.
What the Fug?!?
I have missed the last Apprentice because of my salsa. So watched a repeat of it last night. The task was to design men’s perfume. Apparently for a modern man. Forgive me, if on hearing the task my thoughts went to Del Boy. Lee’s vision of a modern man was the fugliest. It was the sort of a cheesy, tacky guy no decent girl will touch with a barge pole. Well, not unless it’s a call girl, and she is being paid for it. Or, it’s a sort of a girl to get turned on by Del’s green pyjamas. And they’ve made a commercial to match the vision. Daniel Craig performance it was not. And the smell? It was non-descriptive, if we are to trust the experts.
Anyhow, the other team had a very clever, stylish design for a bottle. And a reasonably good vision of a man who would buy it. And a very interesting smell. Of course, they have lost. Viva la mediocrity yet again…
Think happy be happy
I love Spanish people. Such a happy, sunny disposition towards life. Yes, I know I’m generalizing. I kind of promised myself not to recite things already written elsewhere, but come on, this one is just asking for it:
I choose what I think.
My feelings are reflections of what I am thinking.
I can not change others and they can also not change me.
Other people see me as they see me, not the way I see me.
What I see is the only reality, for me.
There is no point in being afraid, since I have the control of my world no one can ever hurt me.
Seeing other people’s reality makes me think better.
There, absolutely fantastic. Right. Are you wondering why did I mention the Spaniards? No more suspense. This lovely white poem comes from this week’s issue of a fab online mag, called le cool magazine (Barcelona issue, in my case).
About
I’ve finally come to conclusion that writing a blog is not such a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great idea for people who do not like sharing personal stuff with those nearest and dearest. After all, the need to talk and get it off the chest is still there. I guess, I see blogging in the same way as talking to a stranger on the train. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. Things can never get awkward between us. I can be as stupid or as clever, as interesting or as boring as I choose to. And you can choose to ignore my ramblings. Free will at its best…
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