Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 @ 7:40 pm | Filed in Lists, Psychology, Relationships
One of the most interesting things I have come across in my experience as Sanya, Relationships Expert Extraordinaire – okay, I’m no expert, but more on that later – is that people across seemingly all age groups tend to get into relationships without knowing what they are getting.
I ask you this: would you make a big purchase, like a yacht or a house, without knowing all the details? Would you walk into what looks like your dream house and then sign the papers immediately without asking whether or not the walk-in closet is large enough to hold your shoe collection?
No. You wouldn’t.
People don’t apply this logic to relationships. I’m not saying that judging a book by the cover is wrong – it certainly isn’t, and it’s normal and automatic, at that. We live in an imperfect world, and books with tattered covers often get left on the shelf. But judging a book by the cover and using just that to declare that book your favourite of all time is ridiculous! Open the book! It might be boring!
After watching heart after heart get broken and having to attempt to mend them with ice cream, sad movies, and cocaine, I am starting to wonder: how much should we know?
Is it enough to know the person’s A/S/L? Meeting a guy for the first time, do you take note of his hair colour, eye colour, teeth straightness and whiteness, height, weight, muscle tone, brand of jeans, shoelaces colour – and then decide to sleep with him?
Maybe. But one night stands were invented for quick sexual satiety with no particular guarantee or even expectation of a continued relationship. And, let’s face it: if it’s just sex, what more do you need to know besides the physical? (Maybe question virginity and STD statuses if you are really practical, but no matter.)
But let’s say you move past the one night stand. Let’s say you are getting into a long-term committed relationship with someone you already (think you) know. Perhaps the long-term committed relationship is even the Big One: marriage. How much should you know?
Ted from How I Met Your Mother almost killed his fiancée by feeding her peanuts. (Yes, I know it’s “just” a television show, but don’t tell me that the writers behind these shows are not real human beings with real experiences.) She ended up fine and also ended up hating Star Wars, which would have been a dealbreaker for Ted.
This illustrates the precise reason why people are afraid to know too much. Being in love is fun. It’s all rainbows and butterflies until you find out that the man you want to marry was on Dateline’s To Catch a Predator.
The following are a list of questions that I, Sanya, Relationships Expert Extraordinaire – okay, maybe not, but more on that later – think you should ask your significant other before making any significant long-term commitment, including marriage and summer flings:
- Have you ever been on Dateline’s To Catch a Predator?
- Do you want to have children?
- Do you have any family history of significant physical and mental health problems?
- What is your family’s educational history?
- Are you religious? What do you believe in? If you are not, does that mean you don’t believe in anything?
- What do you think of my friends?
- Where would you want to live?
- Do you care that I am currently sitting on $___thousand worth of student loans?
- Have you ever cheated?
- How long was your longest relationship?
- Have you had any plastic surgery done? Would you be willing to in the future?
- Are you a robot?
- What is your biggest regret?
- Should we have separate or joint bank accounts?
- Can I get a copy of your credit report?
- Do you like [your favourite movie]?
- Are you willing to change certain things about yourself, including the way you never do laundry and your pants? [Feel free to replace.]
- Are you a good driver? Have you ever been in any accidents?
- Do you like math?
- Do you listen to gangster rap?
The discussions these questions arise are all predictive of a happy long-term committed relationship. Sure, go ahead and leave them out if you are planning on spending one night with him/her, and nothing more. The minute you realize you see a future, you’re going to want to know. Trust me. You can never know too much. (Just kidding. You can know too much. That’ll be covered in a future post.)
Monday, June 29th, 2009 @ 10:30 am | Filed in Lists
My most favouritest things (see: non-animated objects) in the world fall under the major category of “design” (see: I love beautifully-designed things), and divide into four subcategories: computers (and other computer-related paraphernalia), coffee mugs (and other coffee-related paraphernalia), stationary (and other writing-related paraphernalia), and blankets. I shall not list any computer stuff in this list today because I assume that I will never be able to afford it ever so why give myself false hope? And no blankets either because buying blankets online is the WORST. IDEA. EVER. I will not explain further until the opportunity presents itself in a more natural manner.
Coffee mugs
I have a strange love for coffee mugs.
Stationary
I think my love for stationary stems from my love of writing. One of the best things I own was a birthday present from Cryssi. It was a journal called “I Hope You Dance”. It was beautiful and had the nicest things written in it – with enough space for my own writing, of course. If it was here with me I would take a picture of it, but it’s a good 78 km away. Also, yes, I do have an obsession with Anthropologie.
I need money. I mean, besides the aforementioned stuff, I also need to pay rent, phone bills, credit card bills, car bills, guitar fixin’ bills, haircut bills, clothing bills, shoes bills, unnecessary driving wastes gas bills, etc. ARGH.
Saturday, June 27th, 2009 @ 5:35 pm | Filed in Life, Random
Yesterday morning, I walked into my aunt’s office. She works at a big financial institution, so I had to go through many security checks before I walked into the plush room. The walls were purple.
I entered the room and walked around, my socked feet soundlessly hitting the plush purple carpet with every step. The back wall of the office was simply a large window overlooking the New York skyline, and I looked out at the stars, mesmerized by its beauty.
“What are you doing here?”
I spun around, my heart pounding in my chest. I walked towards the woman standing at the door, my stilletos echoing loudly in the large ballroom. “I thought I would find my aunt here,” I said, my voice suddenly becoming quite nasal.
The woman looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “She’s not in today.”
The sun shone in through the windows and I sniffed. Something was tickling my nasal passages.
“Look,” said the woman, suddenly looking taller. “Look, you should leave, now. You should know that I have set off the silent alarm.”
Pause. “What?” I responded. I inhaled sharply – “Wait.”
“What are you doing? Do you have a gun?”
I knelt down on the carpet and cupped my nose in my hands. “No, just, just wait!”
“I’m calling the po-po!”
“Wait-” and I inhaled sharply again. Finally, I let out a big, body-shaking sneeze. Satisfied, I stood up. The woman was staring at me, horrified. “What?” I asked.
Then, I saw it.
The entire ballroom was covered in snot. My eyes widened as I stared at all the paintings on the walls, covered in snot. The carpet was covered in snot. The giant Athenian pillars were covered in snot.
“Oh my god,” said the woman. “It’s… it’s starting to flood!”
A flood of snot.
I panicked. “Holy crap,” I exclaimed, quickly pulling on my spare astronaut suit. “This is the worst way to die ever!”
I watched in silence as the woman disinegrated in the acidity of my snot. I watched a woman die.
Then, I woke up and sneezed 37 times.
Thursday, June 25th, 2009 @ 12:00 pm | Filed in Reading, School, The "On..." Series
Stephen King published a book in 2000 entitled, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”. I was never a huge fan of Stephen King, but it was the “textbook” of sorts for the one and only creative writing class I ever took.
I took this class in 12th grade, thinking it would be a free course in which I would sail through and finish at the top of my class. Great expectations always lead to great disappointment.
Just kidding. I’m not that cynical. I didn’t finish at the top of my class, but that class changed me as a writer for the first time since I learnt how to write.
In high school, I had four teachers (out of approximately 35) that had a profound impression on me. Three of them knew that they taught me things that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. One, my creative writing teacher, has no idea. I admired him so much that I couldn’t really look him in the eye.
He was the first teacher I had ever had that accurately criticized my work. He told me that my sentences were awkward, sometimes, and that my word choice could be better. He scribbled messy notes on pages and pages of my writing, telling me that my plots were thin and my characters were cardboard and that I really needed to spend more time showing, not telling, etc.
He wasn’t harsh. I did some of my weakest writing in that class. It was new and I was unfocused, and I was forced to write things that I wasn’t interested in writing. I did better in the non-fiction unit than in the fiction unit because my personality doesn’t change. The fiction I wrote in that class was difficult. I tried too hard instead of just letting things happen.
I have had a passion for writing since I learnt how to write. I think that, along with music, written work is one of the most beautiful forms of expression and communication. Because of my intense love of writing, I was initially crushed by his comments and distinctive lack of praise. Well, okay. I was crushed by it over and over until the course ended. But that criticism was something that I needed.
I learnt to write when I was 3 or 4, and I started writing for fun when I was 4 or 5. For approximately 12 years, people encouraged me and told me that I was a wonderful writer and that someday, my writing ability would make me famous. And I was to make sure to thank these people in the very first book I publish. And then, my head grew so big that my body was no longer able to support it, and I had to get an extra seat for it on the bus.
First, my creative writing teacher did something that other people failed to do: he set my ego on fire and watched it burn, baby, burn. Then, my creative writing teacher did something that many other creative writing teachers fail to do: he taught me about creativity. I have written so much fiction over the years, but I had never finished anything. He taught me how to finish. (Dirty.) He taught me how to put characters into impossible situations and let them work themselves out, which ended up being one of the most useful tools in fiction writing. He taught me to edit out everything but the most important thing, and to keep it simple, stupid.
So, I felt like a bad writer all year. I look back now, and I think I am willing to trade one year of feeling like a bad writer for the rest of my life of knowing that if I ever feel like a bad writer again, it is simply because I have high standards.
This experience made me a better writer because I became a better editor. Editing is one of those things that I feel I could do forever and ever for other people, but about a year and a half ago, I decided to stop editing entirely. I mean, I remained editor for the psychology department’s newspaper, but I decided to no longer spend time going over other people’s academic papers in order to fix comma splices. Come on! Why do people even have comma splices in their writing?
Yet, somehow, I still feel that if I were to write for a living, I would want to make it to the top and be editor of a newspaper or magazine. Maybe it is that part of me that wants a “white-collar” profession, or a managerial position, or maybe it is just that I like to be bossy. Writing is what I love to do, but in a career, I want to be editor and write on the side.
So maybe it’s a good thing that writing isn’t my main career choice, because it is hella difficult to become editor of a newspaper or magazine, unless you are born into it like Ugly Betty’s boss.
Stephen King’s autobiography/memoir/textbook inspired me to write down all my feelings on all the subjects I think about on a daily basis. These are far from editorials, because they may not have solid evidence and solid arguments. They are certainly not informational articles, etc. They are just my thoughts and my beliefs on certain areas. I begun this series with my thoughts on writing, because writing is what I do, foo’.
Oh, one last thing: I don’t believe that in order to become a better writer, you have to read all the time. I used to read all the time, but I don’t have time to read anymore, and that doesn’t mean that I am not improving my writing or that I am slowly becoming a worse writer. I believe that in order to be a better writer, you have to write all the time. As Preston Burke once said (sort of), I was not at the top of my creative writing class. I was not the most talented student. I did not get straight A’s, even when it came to my writing. What I lacked in talent, I made up for in dedication.
That’s why this blog exists. It’s not here for me to give my expert opinion on all the subjects that I have expertise in. It is just practice. This blog is practice. Rough text. Get it? Speaking of which, roughtext.com turned 2 years old this past Monday. Happy birthday!
Saturday, June 13th, 2009 @ 9:47 am | Filed in Life, Listening, Lists, Random
The other day, I was driving my brother to Quizno’s or some other quasi-healthy fast food joint, and my car automatically started playing the CD that I had so cleverly titled, “June”, because apparently I burn once CD a month. What will I do if I start burning more.
Anyway, my brother is 13 years old and nasty. 13-year-old boys tend to be nasty, I know, but I really don’t need to know what’s going on in my brother’s head all the time. I really don’t want to know. I know, but I don’t want to know. He listens to Eminem and acts like he is the King of Dirty. Because Eminem swears in his songs. Yeah, okay. I listened to Eminem when I was 13 and I am most definitely the Queen of Innocence.
So, me and the King of Dirty were driving toward a random food place, and my music turns on. I start tapping the wheel and singing along, as I am wont to do. And then I hear the words that are coming out of my mouth. Dirty! And in front of my baby brother, too! I quickly change the track. Again, I start singing, and – dirty! Dirty! My baby brother cannot hear me say the s-e-x word!
I skip the track again. This time, I am cautious, listening carefully before singing along. Phew, it’s okay, so I start singing, and then I realize that I am talking about sex in a very subtle way. I skip the track again.
This happened for every song on the CD. I kid you not.
My brother made faces and whined and said he didn’t care if I was listening to things I considered inappropriate for him, but I was focusing on the much bigger picture: has all our music gone the way of pimps and hoebags, or am I just dirty?
I present to you the evidence. This is the track listing of my June CD, as well as quotes of dirtiness. Forgive all the 90’s music. I am open-minded unlike all of yous elitists!
- “Take Me On The Floor” by The Veronicas
- Take me on the floor/I can’t take it anymore/I want you I want you I want you/To show me love/etc.
- “Holler” by Spice Girls
- Start from the bottom and/Work your way up slowly/Don’t be afraid to/Play my game/We can go all night long/Doing things you thought/You would never do/I won’t tell anyone/I wanna make you holler/And hear you scream my name/etc.
- “Butterfly” by Jason Mraz
- I need to see you/Pull your knee socks up/Let me feel you/Upside down slide in/Slide out slide/Over here/Climb into my/Mouth now/etc.
- “You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson
- Maybe I think/You’re cute and funny/Maybe I wanna do/What bunnies do/With you/If you know/What I mean
- “Scotty Doesn’t Know” by Lustra
- I can’t believe/He’s so trusting/While I’m right/Behind you thrusting/etc.
- “Insatiable” by Darren Hayes
- The moonlight plays/Upon your skin/A kiss that lingers/Takes me in/I fall asleep/Inside of you/There are no words/There’s only truth/etc.
- “Like a Virgin” by Madonna
- Like a virgin/Whoo!/Touched for the/Very first time!/etc.
- “Boy Like Me” by Jessica Harp
- What’s a girl/To do with/A big ol’/Boy like you/When we sit around/And talk about/Those things we just/Can’t talk about/Like makin’ love/And drankin’/'Til the sun/Comes up/Well Hallelujah/etc.
- “Bump Bump Bump” by B2k
- Baby turn around/And let me see/That sexy body/Go bump bump bump/etc.
- “Secret” by Maroon 5
- Cool these engines/Calm these jets/I ask you how/Hot can it get/And as you/Wipe off beads/Of sweat/Slowly you say/I’m not there/Yet/etc.
- “Shut Up and Sleep With Me” by Belle and Sebastian
- Shut up/And sleep with me/Come on/Why don’t you/Sleep with me/Shut up/etc.
- “Love Game” by Lady GaGa
- Let’s have/Some fun/This beat is/Sick/I wanna/Take a ride/On your disco/Stick/etc.
- “Why Can’t I” by Liz Phair
- Here we go/We’re at/The Beginning/We haven’t/Fucked yet/But my head’s/Spinning/etc.
- “Please” by Tristan Prettyman
- Didn’t know what to think/In the beginning/But you got me so wet/And then you left me/Swimming/Keep it comin’/With the love I can’t resist/So tired/But don’t you/Dare quit/etc.
- “Not Fair” by Lily Allen
- I lie here on the wet patch/In the middle of the bed/I’m feeling pretty damn/Hard done by/I spent ages/Giving head/etc.
- “Slave 4 U” by Britney Spears
- “Up Against the Wall” by NSync
- You know we/Don’t care at all/Let me see/You up against/The wall/etc.
- “Shadow Dancing” by Andy Gibbs and the Bee Gees
- Not really dirty, but… Do it light/Take me through/The night/Shadow dancing/Baby/You do it right/Give me more/Drag me across/The floor
Of course, this CD was not planned to be dirtified right down to the second-last song, so I truly am wondering, at this point, if all music has sexual innuendo in it. Because these songs were added to the CD burn playlist at random. RANDOM! It was random selection! Which means the population must be all dirty, right? If this is a representative sample? Right? Wow.
Or all the music I, me, I have is dirty. Whatever.
Friday, June 12th, 2009 @ 5:43 pm | Filed in Crazy people, Reading
These past few days, I have been feeling so ragged thanks to allergies or whatever the heck is making me sneeze 20 thousand times a day, that I have spent all day, every day, not studying or working out or “relaxing” or doing anything productive in the least, but sitting here, at my computer, dully refreshing Sage and hoping my favourite bloggers have updated their blogs.
They haven’t.
Bloggers earn the right to be called my favourite when they meet two out of the following three criteria: 1) They write wonderfully; 2) The blog design is impeccable; 3) The topic of their blog is a major interest of mine.
Two out of three must be met. That is, if the blog looks pretty but the writing is crap and the topic sucks, I won’t read it. If they don’t write too wonderfully and the blog is not designed well, but the topic is something I want to read about, I won’t read it.
This is not say that I haven’t tried. Sometimes, I am truly very interested in what the blog is talking about, but I simply cannot focus on the words when the writer is mixing up they’re, there, and their, and the background simply won’t flashing.
Anyway. None of my favourite bloggers had updated their blogs, so in a desperate move, I headed over to BlogCatalog.com. I have never found any of my favourite blogs through this source. But I figured, whatever, let’s give it a shot! I browsed for about 15 minutes and opened up 30 tabs (!!!) containing 30 (!!!) different blogs from various categories of interest.
I surprised myself.
One blog seemed really interesting. Written by a guy who had a good sense of writing (somewhat) and enjoyed writing random stories about his life. The tab was closed because I couldn’t stand the design of his blog.
While I closed four other blogs due to the writing being horrible or the content being boring, the rest were closed mainly because I could not stand to look at the actual page. People use ridiculous colours and ridiculous lines and shapes and just have ridiculous ideas overall about what “design” truly means to them. They mess up their CSS and they make silly mistakes in their code, but most of all, the most common underlying theme of their terrible designs was that people seem to not understand that you cannot put neon green text on a brown background and draw blue hearts everywhere. You cannot use neon green text, period, but especially not with a brown background and blue hearts!
It’s a common fact that you need to dress for success. We dress up for job interviews, dress down for the gym, dress up for a night out, dress down for a night in. Appearance matters. Why do people feel that their web presence need not adhere by the same rules?
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 @ 7:33 pm | Filed in Random
Sometimes, I wonder if my love for minimalism design, online or otherwise, springs from the same part of me that tells me to wash my hands any time I touch anything at all, including my own face.
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 @ 10:03 pm | Filed in Annoying, Random
FYI, I have a lot to I want to talk about on this here blog but I hate this layout and I will not write a single word until I put up an awesome clean minimalist layout. Whatever, we all make mistakes.
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 @ 3:07 pm | Filed in Life, Psychology, Relationships, School
I have had so many revelations over the past few days, it’s kind of ridiculous.
As I sit around in one of my two homes, school-less and job-less, I wonder what the heck I should be doing with my time. I have many things I could be doing. I could study for the GRE, for instance. Anytime before Test Day would be good. Or I could work on my several writing projects in an attempt to progress one of my lifelong dreams/goals. Or I could, you know, relax. It is summer vacation, after all, and the first break I’ve had since the summer of 10th grade.
While I am trying to do all of the above (sparingly), what I do most often is sit around and obsess about how idiotic my life is. I literally sit on my butt and think about what a gigantic failure I am, or what I gigantic failure I’m going to be, and why don’t I just give up, and why is everyone so annoying, etc.
The first revelation I had a few days ago consisted of this: I am not a failure. Go figure. I’m really not. I am an obsessive-compulsive hypochondriac with full-blown panic disorder which causes me to think ridiculous things about myself, but I am not a failure. My obsessions revolve around my life going exactly as planned, and every little deviation from this plan is interpreted as a failure, which, quite frankly, it really isn’t. (Let me be honest. I am only barely believing what I’m writing in this paragraph. But it is true. It is true, and someday I will accept that I am not a failure.)
The second revelation I had was that despite not being a failure, I am kind of a weakling. Seriously. What is my deal. So life has thrown me a few curveballs – so what? I talk about these curveballs to close friends and family members and they provide sympathy in small doses, but really, what more can they do? My problems all have solutions. I might be insane and being insane really makes me obsess over my problems, but can we all take a minute to reflect on how lucky it is to have problems that have solutions? It’s not like my big problem is that I am decapitated inside my skin. Or that I really want to be a hand model for the Home Shopping Network but I have no hands. Or that the guy I am madly in love with is of the Nazi persuasion. My problems consist of things such as I want to raise my average by 4%. Like, wow. Give me a break.
The third revelation I had was when I was thinking about the phenomenon where if you fake confidence, you become confident. I did this in sixth grade. I was painfully shy, etc., etc., then I wasn’t, etc. Everyone knows this story. Then I began thinking even harder. There was another study done about shy people. The researchers said that shy people don’t have many friends because when they don’t approach people and sit around really quietly (because they are shy), other people perceive them as being cold and unfriendly, and don’t approach them, which makes shy people even shyer. It’s a vicious circle.
Some of the problems I have relate to stigmatized issues, and I have realized that these problems, while in the process of being solved, probably won’t be solved for a while, and I cannot simply live under the microscope of society labelling me as damaged or messed up or “not worth the time”. And I’ve realized that it would be worth my own time to pretend that these problems don’t exist. As a personal experiment, I want to see if, like confidence, I simply pretend I’m okay, I’ll actually become okay.
Revelation number four. People I feel are closest to me – close friends, close family members – don’t always act like they care, but I let it go because I love them and I know that they usually don’t mean anything bad, and it’s something to do with them personally. So I let it go. I let go something that bothers me so that someone I care about can deal with their own thangs. So why is it that I have such a hard time letting go of things and actions done by people that have hurt me and are no longer in my life? I choose to obsess over the wrongs committed in my direction, but don’t obsess if the wrongs are committed by people I care about and that care about me. Shouldn’t the latter hurt more? But they don’t, somehow.
So, what is my fourth revelation? My fourth revelation is that I am not only kind of an idiot, but that perhaps when I am obsessing over committed wrongs, even if I think I don’t care about the person, I probably do. And probably for no good reason.
But all of these revelations led to one main conclusion: I will accomplish everything that I want to accomplish. Whether the goals lie in my career sector, my personal relationships sector, or my doesn’t-fit-into-any sector, they will get done for one simple reason: I am awesome.
(Probably the only goal I won’t be able to accomplish is my goal of someday turning into a southern belle.)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009 @ 7:18 pm | Filed in Life, Psychology, Random
The other day, I was driving home from the mall (when I went solely to people-watch), and I drove into the apartment building’s garage and looked for an awesome parking spot. I really like awesome parking spots but they can be difficult to find sometimes.
Anyway, so I find this awesome parking spot, and I start to park, when, suddenly, I had an Out-of-Body Experience. It wasn’t like I really came out of my body, although let’s not deny the extreme wickedness of that potential situation. I had the type of OBE that people with extreme social anxiety tend to have, where they perceive themselves as they imagine other people are perceiving them. So, anyway, in my OBE, I was floating above my car, watching myself park. I had parked almost perfectly the first time I drove into the spot.
Then, I pulled out, straightened the car, and drove in again. Pulled out, straightened some more, drove in again. I did this 17 times.
I parked the car, finally, when I realized what I was doing, and when I got out, the car was parked crooked-er than the first time. I was irritated, but I left it, far too afraid of how much of a mental patient I must have looked like to the other parkers.
Today, I was driving around aimlessly after my doctor’s appointment, finding the juxtaposition of the beautiful rain and the hyper music in my car kind of awesome. I realized I needed some extremely expensive herbs to feed my rabbit, so I stopped at the nearest grocery store and parked. I did not obsess this time. Not about my parking, at least.
I parked, then sat, watching my windshield wipers swish, swash, swish, swash, for a few minutes before turning off the car. I looked around. It was beautiful, but there was no way in heck I would walk the ten feet to the entrance of the grocery store in the pouring rain. I refuse. My hair would frizz. I just could not do it. So I stared, for a few seconds. Then I saw a high school gangster walking near my car and got out quickly.
AND THE RAIN STOPPED!
I’m not kidding. Just moments before I got out of the car, it was POURING. When I got out, the rain stopped! At first I thought I would stop to ponder the Creator-implications of all of this, but I went into the store, feeling somewhat disappointed that the rest of my ride home won’t be in the rain.
So. I get back in my car and as soon as I turn it on, it thunders and the clouds open up and buckets of water fall to the earth! Cheesy, but true. It was ridiculous. I was, obviously, in awe, and almost cried, but instead decided I would say some sort of prayer just in case there was a God up there, controlling all of this. Then I realized I didn’t know any prayers, per se, and I really didn’t know what to say, anyway. I may be open-minded to the idea of religion, but I really do not have enough knowledge. So I just drove away and decided I was just lucky.
Or I was so awesome that the planet itself decided to both stop and start raining for me.
Anyway. These stories seem unrelated, but they’re not. Can you figure it out?