Yet More Brain Droppings
I read Prozac Nation cover to cover for the first time. rislyn handed it to me along with An Unquiet Mind a month or so ago. I had just finished reading House of Leaves at the recommendation of anythingleft, and took a bit of a break from reading. But with the publication of Dzur, I seem to have gotten back into the reading mood. And despite the fact that I was more curious about An Unquiet Mind due to it being one of the *real* books mentioned in House of Leaves, I decided to leave it for second.
I will grant, up front, that Wurtzel has some good lines. I can understand why many Gen-Xers have dog-earred copies of Prozac Nation with page after page highlighted, underlined, or otherwise shown to have personal import. But, upon finishing the book, the lasting impression that I was left with was one of distaste.
Wurtzel comes across to me as a fairly amoral person, so wrapped up in her own pain that she views the world as a tool to try and rid herself of her depression. She admits to it time and again without ever giving me a sense of remorse or regret. She sets her parents against each other. She describes conversation after conversation that she dominates with her unhappiness as the central theme. She tries most every recreational drug of choice, and often does so knowing that the resulting fallout will be left for the people around her to clean up. And even when she does apologize, it feels more rote than contrite.
So, I will be content to accept the message and reject the messenger.
I sometimes forget that when I am content (which is more often than not), one of the characteristics I take for granted is a lack of wanting. Yet I find myself in a state these days where there are several things that I want, but I still feel content? Can one want more than they have and still claim to be content? If it were not wanting, or a very passive want ("sure, a million dollars would be nice..."), I would say yes, but my definition of want and content seem as though they ought to be mutually exclusive. If so, what do I call the state that I am in? Do I say I am content, but then hedge it with the things that I want? Do I revert to terms like "okay" that are so blandly neutral that they're practically decontructive in nature? (C'mon, how many people *really* use "okay" and "fine" literally when describing their own condition?)
Friday was markush's last day. With that, the office has, in a lot of ways, started a new iteration. I know first generation VirPack was Tripp and ashoemaker, and then there are a few years with vond and jlfranklin and people I don't know that I clump in as second generation, and then there was Jason and Tony as what I think of as third generation, which I suppose makes the trinity of athelred, narquelion, and myself fourth generation. Since I've been there a little over five years now, that makes for a relatively long period in the overall history of the company. And then Tony left, leaving, for a brief time, that Trinity in incomplete control over the codebase (incomplete, of course, since there is still a manager, and plenty of code we'd've thrown away if we could).
But with the departure of markush, I become the fouth longest tenured person in the company, second longest tenured person in the dev office, and longest tenured programmer. Looking at a different way, I'm now the longest tenured person who doesn't have "President" as part of their title. We've now got one manager, one tester/documenter, one IT guy, and two programmers. If the codebase weren't so massive, that would be a great number; after all, when I first came to the company, that's what we had.
Overall, I'm looking forward to seeing what the fifth generation will look like. Due to the incestuous nature of Blacksburg, I'm guarenteed to know the next employee VirPack hires; at the least, they'll hopefully get handed some of the Tony (and sometimes pre-Tony) VB code that lingers like a bad habit. (It actually more reminds me of my chronic infection as a child, with the doctors never willing to give me a strong enough antibiotic to actually get rid of it, so it just remained with me for years, until we finally literally cut it out).
Normally, the fact that I don't say much about a personal life here can be safely taken as a sign that I do not have a personal life. Lately, it's more just that I do not know what my personal life *is*.
So, dedicated readers will remember my mentioning anythingleft in my quite lengthy Origins report. Since Origins, she and I have been talking, in one media or another, what can probably be described as "incessantly". Since I am well known for new-person-infatuation, that is not, in itself, odd. But even rislyn, who I consider Supreme External Arbiter of all thing ndkid, agrees that this is different. (For one, note the exceedingly fast mental and emotional intimacy ramp-up I mentioned.)
Also, rislyn and anythingleft have been talking at a constant (though probably not incessant) level. A few weeks after Origins, we collectively decided that we would get together here. (It was basically that decision that prompted me to decide that all of my aforementioned home improvement needed to happen sooner rather than later, and really began with the need for a bed for anythingleft.)
And, so, last weekend (it would have been this weekend, for my birthday, but, as usualy, my birthday falls on move-in weekend, and I did not want rislyn to have to drive through that mess), we did.
We had a good weekend. I had a plan of about a half-dozen things, and we got around to one of them. Mostly, we slept in cuddled together, then sat on my bed and watched anime and Coupling and cuddled. Overall, I think I avoided doing anything massively wrong, and that really was my major goal. It went well enough that the three of us will be getting together again in DC in September and October, and somewhere on the Cape of Mass. (because I can't spell the state to save my life, and am not in the mood to cheat by looking it up) for Thanksgiving. Plus all three possible pairings getting together outside of that. (Why have I got to be the only one without a hub airport nearby? Curse you and your lack of discount airlines, ROA. No Allegiant doesn't count unless we book an Orlando vacation.)
I'm still mortified on all sorts of levels. I know I can manage open relationships based on a primary/secondary model, as both the primary (as I did with deinna) and as the secondary (as I did with several people over the years). I've never tried to maintain two distinct-but-equal-undefined-but-resembling-capital-r-Relationships at once. I have certainly never tried to make a triangle work. That inexperience, and a knawing fear that I will fail, and that I won't be able to avoid making someone feel left out or less important *eventually*. But, much like walking a tightrope (I suspect, having heard the analogy but never actually done the walking), I think that if I keep thinking about doing it, rather than dwelling on how it could utterly and miserably fail, I'll do okay.
There are also complications based in what anythingleft wants from me, but I'll leave that for a seperate post at some point, because it touches on different issues.
Yesterday, I mostly sat around the house, slightly bored, but managing to entertain myself. Today, I did what I do after a boring Saturday, and walked to Christiansburg to eat at Quizno's and see a movie. Step Up was worse than most dance movies I've seen. I think the male lead's dance ability, although solid, was a bit too centered on krumping for my taste. It felt like he was capable of grace, but chose not to enact it.
We'll see whether, unlike last time, I can manage to sleep after my 12-mile jaunt. Maybe the whole bed thing will help.