Elementary: "If the light is off, then it isn't on!"
I am hemorrhaging Christmas cash fast. So much to do, so many people to see, so many movies to... not watch. But fatsneakup, Angela, Jes and I went to see I Love You, Goodbye anyway (instead of Mano Po 6). There are worse movies but I am not watching this again with johnmarkyap29 and the girls. (John, if you're reading this, I'll meet you after you watch the movie, k? : D) Thank goodness Derek and Angelica are beautiful to look at. Otherwise, my face would've been in my palm the whole time. The Gabby/Angelica relationship is so, so wrong. She's young enough to be his daughter! (Gabby's real daughter is, in fact, only a year older than Angelica. Euw.) It wouldn't have mattered if they had chemistry but bleah. Nothing. So you're left to wonder what the frak is up with Lizelle's Electra complex. I thought the confession scene at the end was kinda cool, though, but seriously lacked buildup.
Ah, well. We went to the arcade afterwards so it was all good. Met the family at around 7:30 for Dad's birthday dinner, then went to Goldilocks for dessert. NBS was nearby so I went in to check if they had a copy of Everything is Illuminated but no luck. (I cannot find that book anywhere, gah.) But I haven't read a proper book in forever so I was itching to buy something. Went with The Lovely Bones; I'm excited to read it. I wanted to buy Julia Child's My Life in France but guilt and frugality took over. Currently reading reviews of the book on Amazon and regretting my decision. No matter. I'll go back for it soon. Then lend it to caspercolumbine (if she still hasn't read it), because that is what good friends/pretend-wives do!
Spending the first few hours of the last day of the decade downloading Community. I wonder what I did ten years ago. Hm, probably nothing, because I was too scared the world was going to end. Not kidding, those stupid apocalyptic predictions for 2000 had me quietly panicking the entire year. It is sad how that foreshadowed the next ten years of constant fear in my life. Sigh. I want to be brave again. I think this list would be a good place to start:
1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part-usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.
(Source.)
Every single number SPEAKS to me. Maybe I could/should make these my resolutions for the year. (Thanks for the tip, johnmarkyap29.)
Entry title: Hilary Duff on repeat. Basically, a 14/15-year-old trying to sound profound. DISASTER. I sympathize, Hilary.
Ah, well. We went to the arcade afterwards so it was all good. Met the family at around 7:30 for Dad's birthday dinner, then went to Goldilocks for dessert. NBS was nearby so I went in to check if they had a copy of Everything is Illuminated but no luck. (I cannot find that book anywhere, gah.) But I haven't read a proper book in forever so I was itching to buy something. Went with The Lovely Bones; I'm excited to read it. I wanted to buy Julia Child's My Life in France but guilt and frugality took over. Currently reading reviews of the book on Amazon and regretting my decision. No matter. I'll go back for it soon. Then lend it to caspercolumbine (if she still hasn't read it), because that is what good friends/pretend-wives do!
Spending the first few hours of the last day of the decade downloading Community. I wonder what I did ten years ago. Hm, probably nothing, because I was too scared the world was going to end. Not kidding, those stupid apocalyptic predictions for 2000 had me quietly panicking the entire year. It is sad how that foreshadowed the next ten years of constant fear in my life. Sigh. I want to be brave again. I think this list would be a good place to start:
1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part-usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.
(Source.)
Every single number SPEAKS to me. Maybe I could/should make these my resolutions for the year. (Thanks for the tip, johnmarkyap29.)
Entry title: Hilary Duff on repeat. Basically, a 14/15-year-old trying to sound profound. DISASTER. I sympathize, Hilary.