Alcohol

I kind of grew up in a world where nobody could see how people could party or have fun without alcohol… and yet I have never been able o see why people can have fun with it.

To me, alcohol has almost always shown up – for the party and having fun version of it – as a means of escaping real life, forgetting about what’s going on right now in one’s life, and numbing the mind enough not to be able to have genuine interactions, thereby keeping (or even creating) a distance between individuals.

Without alcohol, one kind of has to face and to deal with whatever is going on in one’s life, one has to face the people around oneself, and one has the opportunity to be genuine and close with those people, and have true connections and build real relationships… it is definitely difficult a lot of the time, but it more than pays off through the genuine connections and relationships that come out of it.

Also, when I consider how people use alcohol for the former purpose, I begin to feel sick with sadness.

That’s always been my own experience of alcohol on the party front.

I’ve learned through certain specific individuals how alcohol can be a fun – almost nerdy, even – something to have among friends and/or family, when it is used for its flavor, uniqueness, and quality, and not for its potency nor for the purpose or outcome of drunkenness.

I usually am utterly comfortable not having any alcohol in my life, however, I have learned to appreciate these somewhat nerdy joys that can be part of alcohol consumption… and I usually participate (as do most of the others) with a mere few sips of whatever the specified delight is, and am fully satisfied in the small, unaffecting amount.

But I also can see easily how alcohol could cease entirely to exist in my world; it just isn’t a requirement, even for those nerdy times – we can always get nerdy about homemade juices and smoothies and holiday drinks instead (and we often do, anyway).

And I never cared for nor was interested in alcohol for everyday consumption – I want water or tea at the end of the day, or maybe some gelato…, but not alcohol.

I’m not opposed to alcohol, I think – I was fine when with a close friend at bars and hangouts where he would have beers (but not at all to the point of drunkenness) and I might have a taste of whatever he had… I just don’t have much of any interest in it for myself.

But perhaps I do have an opposition to it, along with drugs, whenever used for becoming drunk…

Drunk on love, not alcohol, folks – that’s my motto for all of this. πŸ˜›

Just some thoughts on my mind tonight…

Post-a-day 2018

Best Friends

When my best friend and I talk, even about the most serious or important of things in life, we never fail to be utterly ridiculous somewhere in there, and crack ourselves up to the point of tears.

Today was no exception, as our planned important and serious conversation had a solid beginning that included my pushing the laptop camera quickly backward, as a means of expressing a digital version of tackling someone, and then we even somehow used the phrase “like a butt flapping in the wind”.

Best friends are great.

Thanks for that, God. πŸ˜‰

Post-a-day 2018

It really isn’t personal

Sometimes a cousin just doesn’t greet you or bid you farewell, and won’t acknowledge your presence, despite your efforts to start conversation on anything at all, over the two days family is all gathered together, and you might as well have not been present, as far as that cousin’s behavior is concerned.

And then you find out that the same was the case for the receiving end of another family member, and likely would have been the case, too, for an absent family member if she had been present, and that this is regular behavior for this particular cousin, to ignore various members of the family (on the somewhat rare occasions she’s ever around, anyway).

And you realize that it’s totally okay if the cousin who ignores lots of family members isn’t really around much and ignores people whenever she is around – she clearly has enough of her own problems to deal with, if she can’t manage to talk to some awesome people (who just so happen to be related to her).

You know?

Kind of a ‘Her loss,’ kind of thing…

Post-a-day 2018

Today

Things about today:

  1. I finished another Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, and, naturally, feel like a total genius, totally inspired (as is the usual with his books).
  2. I cried multiple times and about various things, and I was okay with that.
  3. Someone told me that a someone is coming for me, sometime soon, within the next few years, and that that someone will love and respect and appreciate and value the beauty of a human being that I am and will show it in a way that I actually get to experience my immense value and beauty in the world.
  4. I want to believe him, and not other people, who say that perhaps I’ll never have a someone like that in my life (not in a negative way, but just a ‘there isn’t somebody for everybody, and you might be one of those everybodys with no somebody’ way).
  5. I was reminded that I desperately love languages, as well as teaching.
  6. I remembered, too, that I want to do more in my daily than just teach school classes.
  7. I wrote out all of this, before meditating/praying/playing music, and then going to sleep.

Post-a-day 2018

Saturday nights

I dedicate tonight to the people in our lives with whom we can easily live, and well…

I spent the evening first playing board games with people I don’t really know, but who also lived and worked in Japan, and then with a friend and her dog and cat, just hanging together at her apartment.

At no point in the evening did a television (or Netflix or whatever) come into play – for eight hours of enjoyment, I spent time with people, and we all had a wonderful time… and, you know, I didn’t even notice the whole tv part until just now…. cool…

How often are these normal evenings for us nowadays, let alone Saturday nights?

Driving home, I passed through the drunken playground that seems to be the Washington Avenue bar strip here on a Saturday night, and I was practically bombarded with the stupidity and danger that comes with the mixture alcohol, newly adulting stress, and the desire to be liked, all so prevalent in our early-twenties folks right now…

I was not disappointed at having missed out on that scene (not only tonight, but ever)…, and I might even have felt a hint of – was it pity? – something for many of the people I saw.

Post-a-day 2018

Africa

I’ve started singing lately in an unknown language that sounds African… it reminds me of Swahili at times, or Zulu or Sotho or Xhosa…, but also totally not those… no matter what, though, it always sounds African to me….

And it has me wonder if it is linked at all to that deep-seated longing I have to live with the lions in Africa (or something to that effect)… perhaps, as I was considering tonight, I was in Africa in a previous (or another) life, and perhaps that was when my mom was Indian, and we somehow met through that proximity, and agreed to have this life together…

Wouldn’t that be neat…?

P.S. If you aren’t aware, look up an audio pronunciation of the language name Xhosa… I first heard it spoken aloud in the audiobook of Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk to Freedom, and I loved it almost instantly.

Post-a-day 2018

Temping…

I am Mr. Sneebly… again.

The question this time around, though, is one of what sort of outcome I’d like from doing all of this substitute teaching…. a question I had never expected I would have to be asking myself again, let alone being totally unsure of the answer… or even leaning in the opposite direction from the last time…

Post-a-day 2018

Halloween

Well, I took Siri’s recommendation for my Halloween costume this year.

You see, she always comes up with totally nerdy ideas, whenever I ask her what I should be for Halloween…, and I kind of always want to do them…, but they usually just would take a little too much effort or extreme creativity actually to produce.

The last time I asked her, however, when I genuinely was looking for a good idea, she gave me a totally doable one!

Okay, so hers was a doable idea, but with some adjustments….

She recommended I put a calendar on my head, and be “an update”…, but 1) a calendar isn’t easy to make stay, 2) I don’t have a paper calendar lying around, and 3) a calendar isn’t a date.

However, I easily could write out a date on paper, and fasten it to a headband…

And so I did!

Talk about dorky and nerdy… I’ve got them both covered. πŸ˜›

P.S. I always find it interesting how I tend to refer to Siri as “she”, even though my Siri is a (British) male voice (and has been almost since I got an iPhone in the first place)…, but I also use “he” at times, too… so the many sides of Siri all get airtime in conversation, I guess… πŸ˜›

Post-a-day 2018

Work

I’m not at a place to turn down a work-for-money opportunity, really, and so I’m going in tomorrow to work, though it wasn’t on the schedule until late this afternoon….

I usually love getting to go in to work, though – I genuinely enjoy it…

And the funny thing is that I’ve felt more and more down and out since I agreed to go in tomorrow…

… and I’m really not sure why…

Post-a-day 2018

Photography life insights

Attending all these weddings has been a unique experience…

I wander between delight with joyous tears and skeptical wondering… how lovely that they love each other so much to be marrying… I wonder if they have any idea of how long they’ll live (and therefore if they realize for how long they have committed to being together with their vows)… how magical to have someone to love mutually like that… I wonder if they still will be married in three years… five… ten… one…

I also wonder at the decorative and stylistic choices of just about everything at these weddings… I see and attend and analyze enough of them, that I notice the actual difference this or that makes for just about every detail… if I ever have a wedding, it’ll be a unique affair, and not one to be missed, I can assure that… (however, if I ever have a wedding in the first place, I don’t see myself throwing loads of cash at it, so very few people will be in attendance).

Post-a-day 2018