Birthweek - Day 6
craft fair banner, originally uploaded by artnoose.
Sometimes when I go to bed with difficult thoughts in my head, they swirl around in my brain all night while I sleep and wake up with a clearer picture of things. This morning all the criticisms I had heard last night were shuffled into a reasonable order; that is to say, I began to look at the motivations. The truth is, I know what my life has been like. I know what my accomplishments are.
Often, I have errands to run in downtown Oakland on Saturdays, so I make a morning of it and check my PO Box on the way down and stop at a hipster cafe on the way back. Often I run into S there, who has been in town for a couple of months. Neither one of us seems like the type of person to frequent a hipster cafe, so it's kind of mutually embarrassing to keep running into each other there. Still, our conversations have been good, and I have enjoyed getting to know someone whose somewhat negative reputation preceded him.
That was one of the things he and I talked about today. I was feeling like I have been unfairly typecast by my circle of friends--- like I have done some things several years ago, and I've grown a lot since then, but sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the past in other people's minds. They see me as having a pattern of behavior and don't recognize that I have purposefully changed a lot of my past behavior.
S has a similar experience because he feels pretty judged based on when people met him three years ago. I heard a lot about him before actually hanging out with him, much of it negative. However, I think he's really different than what I have heard about him, and it sucks that people still tease him about stuff he said three years ago. That's the double-edged sword of having long-lasting friendships. On the one hand, people get to see you grow and change. On the other hand, sometimes they treat you as if you're static.
I came home fully caffeinated and popped in on the Lord of the Rings marathon happening next door all day today. Despite the fact that I love the stories and the movies, I only stayed a few minutes. Today BK and I were doing a work trade, where he helped my fix my bikes (both of which had problems) and I made him a banner for an upcoming craft fair. I'm still in the process of making it because I don't like how it is turning out, so I might unstitch a bunch of letters and re-do them.
