Facebook Fridays: Look But Don't Touch

Whenever I buy something from a vending machine, I always go through a moment of slight panic, where I am convinced that my snack is going to get stuck and I'm going to starve to death.  I've been using the vending machine a lot at work lately, and thus I've been panicking at least once a day.  It's worth it when I get my Cheeto's.  I wish I could grow a Cheeto tree.

Humility vs. Hatred

My sister was recently in a theatrical production of the musical, "Titanic." Among the other cast members was a particular young man whom I've spent the past few years strongly disliking.  For stupid reasons.  Reasons so stupid that I would've felt ridiculous explaining them to people.  Of course, I was able to make my loathing more dramatic and mysterious by stoically saying "I don't talk about him" when people asked me about it.  Well, I recently realized that I can't move forward in life until I let go of what's behind me.

So I went up to the guy after the show and made an effort to sincerely congratulate him and tell him he did a great job.  Because he really did. The feeling of letting go and putting myself in a vulnerable position was truly infuriating.  But the feeling of freedom after the act was well worth it.  So worth it, in fact, that I went back to Mamma Raine's house that night and had a heart-to-heart with another guy I didn't particularly care for.  The conversation wound up being very deep and meaningful, and at the end I asked forgiveness for writing him off before getting to know him.

I don't ask forgiveness.  There's a reason that humility is my biggest struggle.

But, learning humility is the task at hand - I've known that for a long time.  Only this week I acted on it...and it is truly a liberating feeling, being able to be in the presence of these people and not dwell on the reasons I hate them.  Because really, I don't hate them anymore.

Looking vs. Living

A friend of mine recently posted approximately four billion photos from her/our childhood.  I say 'our' because I've known her since she was like 4.  Nostalgia and sentimentality are a dangerous combination for me, because I don't just look at the photos - I relive the experiences captured therein.  When I hear certain songs, they send my thoughts to certain places.  Good Riddance by Green Day will always remind me of Richard Raine.  Regina Spektor's On the Radio will always make me think of my awesome desk from the place I worked when I discovered that song.  Ahh, mail clip robots and staple stacks...those were the days.

Well, when Champagne Supernova by Oasis comes on the radio, expect me to get lost in a daze, reminiscing about my childhood days when doing nothing was the order of the day.  It's never good to live in the past because you miss out on the present and the future hits you like a ton of bricks.  But at the same time, life is like climbing a mountain: most of your attention is in the present, on the current task in front of you; you look upwards every so often to continue planning the route you'll take to get to the top; but you'll never be able to gauge how far you've come until you look back down at where you started.

And that's when you say "whoa, we're really high."

I didn't realize it until just now, but it looks like I've spent the past week subconsciously pondering the idea of moving forward in life.  And it also looks like I've stumbled upon the idea that I have to let go of everything in my past that I've been holding onto, but at the same time I need to remember enough to learn from it.  It's kind of like a "look but don't touch" kinda thing.  I think that will be my new motto for when my actions are motivated by sentiments and values that I once held dear.  From now on, I'm allowed to look at the past but not live in it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot...

I finally got rid of my massive and extravagant bottle collection.

I know, right??

This is all for now.
-R.

5 More Minutes

Sometime in the fall of last year, I had a day at work that was abnormally stressful.

I'll start with that.

I woke up with a headache, I was behind in my work, and it seemed that every customer in the building was hellbent on keeping me from catching up.  I took a 5-minute break to meditate outside and find my "happy place."  It was London in the 1800's.  Sitting atop that roof inhaling the cool, clear breeze as I looked down upon flame-lit street lamps and horse-drawn carriages really put my mind at ease.  It put my spirit at ease.  I was able to finish my day with grace and efficiency.

Well, yesterday I needed another 5-minute meditation break.  It was a very similar situation.  Only, due to the change in my job title, it was the likes of event coordinators and booking managers and our billing and accounting departments that kept me from my to-do list, rather than whiny customers.  Either way, I needed to escape for five minutes to exist somewhere not work-related.  This time it was an empty classroom.

I sat in the dark, legs crossed, with my hands strategically placed in front of my sacral chakra, palms facing inward.  I practiced deep breathing and calmed my mind.  In no time at all, I found myself sitting on Big Ben, looking down on the same scene as before.  Only this time, as soon as I began to relax and enjoy the breeze, the scene was ripped apart as if it were an image printed on a sheet of paper that was being pulled in 12 directions at once.

I heard the rip - I felt it.  Other scenes of tranquility that I've used in the past began to flash in and out of my mind's eye - a glass dome in a rain forest, a tree house in the heart of the jungle, a solitary island in the middle of the pacific.  Each scene appeared for a fraction of a second, only to be replaced by another.  Finally, I landed in the desert.

The earth beneath me burned my feet.  I saw a stone about 2½ feet in length, sliding across the rocky desert surface as if being magnetically pulled across the expanse of sand - or perhaps it was moving by its own will alone.

I thought to myself "how is this supposed to be a happy place?"  As soon as the thought left my mind, the sky turned to night as if a deep blue blanket were suddenly thrown over the sky.  The moon glowed with the intensity of the sun, and the stars screamed out for attention as they painted the earth with a soft blue glow.

I laid back and began to take it in, when all of a sudden, more rocks like the first one came out of nowhere, glowing with a bright white light.  There were seven of them.  They circled above me, then exploded into different directions.  I stood, bewildered.  They had gathered behind me.  One stone swept my feet out from under me as the other six cradled me...catching me.  They lifted me up toward the sky and the stars shone brighter and clearer than ever.

It was amazing.

Once I realized that I had been ascending for quite a while, I looked down to see how far I'd gone.  The instant I began to ponder my height, the stones lost their glow and dumped me out.  They didn't disappear, they didn't just move out from under me - they dumped me out.  As I fell, the lights in the sky faded and darkness swept the surface of the sand.  Just before I landed, my eyes opened and I awoke with a gasp.

I was sitting in the classroom...in the dark.  My hands were gripping the floor next to me; my fingers had dug themselves into the carpet.  I was out of breath and I had tears streaming from both my eyes.

I took a few moments to gather myself up.

It was supposed to be relaxing.  I rationalized that I probably fell asleep and was dreaming.  If so, then it was the most vivid dream I've ever had in my life.  Dream or not, I cannot help but think that this radical meditative experience has to mean something.

And here's the strangest part: I understood.

Just like before, I felt a peace.  But it wasn't a relaxing peace.  It was just a...peace.  When people said things, I understood what they meant.  But it wasn't just that - I understood them.  I could see what they were trying to communicate.  I could hear their intentions.  I continued to return e-mails and handle my responsibilities, but everything seemed to fit into some grand scheme that for some reason I had never noticed before.

It's like if someone painted an immaculate painting across the entire Wall of China, and I was walking along looking at it up close, one detail at a time - never thinking that if I were to take a step back, I could actually see what it's a painting of.

Even today things have been making a lot more sense.  It's to the extent that I feel stupid for going all this time without seeing how some things in my life are connected - how they influence each other.

I've always been a "big picture" thinker, but what do you do when you find that your entire big picture can fit between the pixels on the HDTV of the universe?

I am such a geek.

Well, it's 11pm and this geek has a lot to process.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for my Facebook Fridays post.  It should be good.  If not, I'm just gonna make stuff up.

This is all for now.

-R.

Facebook Fridays: Painting. Kittens. Green.

So it's not quite Friday, but I'm sure it will be by the time I'm done writing this post. It's been a pretty crazy week. I think this method of microblogging is really working because I don't feel like I have to store up all these things in my head until the next time I get around to putting them down. I can pretty much update my status from my phone and forget all about it until that coming Friday.

The Perplexing Practice of Portraiture

I said last week that I'm choosing not to display my recent art to people unless they contact me with serious inquiries.  I'm still standing firm on that, but I had to go out with a bang.  So I put together a YouTube video of the creation of my most recent piece: Marley & Me.  The video got 25 hits in the first few days, and I've already had a serious inquiry about it.  The thing about this painting is, though, that the face actually looks nothing like Bob Marley.  You know it's supposed to be him because of the reggae-esque music playing in the background as I paint using only the colors red, yellow and green, leaving the black background in the shape of dread locks.  Yet without the context of the piece as a whole, the face is just a face - it's not his face.

That's the weird thing about doing portraits.  It's ridiculously easy to make it look like a face.  Picasso painted a veritable Mr. Potato Head atop the body of each of his subjects, yet they still pass as human faces.  However, recreating a specific person's face is much more difficult.  They say that to make a face recognizable, accentuate the prominent features.  I've found that it's the exact opposite when it comes to painting realism.  The familiarities are in the subtleties.  I decided to do this painting upon finishing another portrait of someone with whose face I am extremely familiar.  It turned out fantastically.  I guess I got prideful and thought that if I could do one face, I could do them all.  Every time I make noticeable progress in my skill as a painter, I'm inevitably reminded of the long way I still have to travel.

A Tale of Two Kitties

When we got the twin kittens, we had just seen my little sister's performance in the musical Cats.  The whole premise of the musical is that every cat has not only the name by which humans choose to call it, but also another name with which it is innately born, and no two cats have the same name.  So although we named the kittens Max (short for Maximus) and Appa, they showed us through time that their true names are Leopoleon and Alistasia.

And Leopoleon peed on me in my sleep.

I can't really blame him though, seeing as how I'm dead-set on toilet training them.  We are currently in phase 3 of the process, which involves a bowl of litter set inside the toilet seat.  I think it's brilliant because I love the thought of never having to buy (or clean up) litter for the rest of their lives.  However, one of their lives is en route to a screeching halt unless he finds a better way to show his disapproval of my toilet training methods.  Appa's a good girl.  I feed her bacon.

Accidental Activism?

I'm not sure if being eco-friendly is considered activism...I think the term these days is "environmental awareness."  I didn't mean to go green, honestly.  It was a completely selfish transition, fueled by frugality and the desire for more money.  It all started when I woke up at 4:30 one morning with the burning urge to check my Facebook on my phone.  The screen was blinding in the midst of my otherwise pitch-dark room, so I turned the brightness on the screen all the way down.  I've left it that way ever since.  It's done wonders for my battery life (and surprisingly, my eyes).  In the spirit of battery saving (and thus less time spent sucking power out of my wall to charge the dang thing), I also turned off my 3G network.

Then, our best friends just re-did all the lighting fixtures in their house, so naturally we did what any good best friends would do: we took their old fixtures from their attic when they weren't home.  Mostly because they have fans, and we live in Tejas, where it's stupid hot.  So now that we have fans in our ceilings, we don't use the A/C as much.  And speaking of A/C, we also went out and bought a digital programmable thermostat with an Energy Star option which essentially programs the thermostat to use the least amount of energy and save us the most money possible.

So there you have it.  I managed to pull off painting a portrait of Bob Marley without actually having to paint his face, our kittens are blog-worthy because they pee on people, and we have effectively reduced the amount of energy we use on a regular basis.  I hope it shows in our energy bill.  But if not, at least I can take comfort in knowing that we are one step closer to being "that couple."

This is all for now.  See you next week, and remember to avoid the Noid.
-R.

P.S. Hey look at that, it's Friday.  I win.

Facebook Fridays: Changing Gears...Again.

Let's get down to business.

I passed up my first opportunity to do a Facebook Friday post because last week I was too busy taking my wife to see Wicked.  Then the following Saturday, I did my first performance painting as part of a dance recital.  So it was a pretty busy weekend.  This weekend will be just as eventful (we've got Glennda's mom for the weekend), but there are some teenagers having a pool party right outside our bedroom, so I can't sleep anyway.  It's 1 in the morning, by the way.

What's in a name?

I find myself occasionally checking the App Store for new apps I can download for free and then hardly ever use.  I found an app called "Robot Unicorn Attack."  While not free, I was still tempted to buy it purely on the basis of its ridiculous title.  This made me start noticing...okay, looking for...crazy titles everywhere - especially Netflix.  With titles like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies (which is actually the one and only film to officially fall into the horror-musical genre), who actually needs to watch these movies?  Scrolling through the titles is entertainment enough.

The painter behind the curtain.

So, that show I did really jump-started my painting.  I've done a lot of new work, but am hesitant to post them up online.  I want to sell them, and the hush-hush nature of the whole thing adds an element of value - like each piece is a well-kept secret that only a select few are allowed in on.  Plus, I don't want to be one of those approval-hungry artists who constantly needs people to tell them how remarkable their work is.  I know how good I am, and how good I'm not.  The ultimate compliment would be to tell me how much you'd pay for one of my paintings, and then to buy it.  So if you're interested in buying, let me know and I'll show you what I've been up to.  Some of them are actually pretty freaking cool.

As a man's wife thinketh...

My wife believes in me.  She read one of my recent posts and said I should be a 'real' writer.  I joined a group of freelance writers who submit articles and then get paid based on how many people actually read them.  We'll see how that goes.  I've also taken every single post since the beginning of this blog and put 'em in a Word document.  I've gotten myself an official ISBN that I will use to publish it as a book and put up on websites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble for people to purchase.  I shall call it A Fool's Gold: One Man's Ignorance is Another Man's Bliss.  So that's that.  But then tonight, once I'd finished painting my first portrait (which turned out alright - the first painting I've been happy with since the cherry blossoms), she suggested that I become a tattoo artist.

Wait a sec, hold up.  What the heck of it?

You have to be an apprentice for at least a year before you get your first paying customer.  Plus, tattoo parlors are rarely in the best part of town, and your income is based on the frequency of your business, which means it's fluid and never steady.  This is not something into which most wives-of-two-years will generally suggest that their husbands invest their time and energy.  Usually it's more along the lines of moving up some sort of corporate ladder and creating a stable financial situation upon which to build a home and a family.  I mean, don't get me wrong - being that there are about 15 more tattoos I plan on getting over the next couple decades, I just about freaked when she actually suggested that I look into it.  But I guess I just never pictured her being supportive of that kind of job choice.

Although, there are a lot of people I could spread the gospel to in that field.  And, if I were to work in a tattoo parlor, I'd be able to get my dreads and labret piercing (and of course, tattoos) without my employer complaining about lack of the appearance of professionalism.

It really is crazy, the things I'll consider doing when my wife says she believes in me.  Her opinion outweighs the rest of the world to me - if she says she thinks I can do it, that's all it takes to me to believe in myself as well.  She just said it in passing, and probably had no idea that it completely rearranged my view of our future.  I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

Well, I think this Facebook Fridays deal might work.  Let's see what this coming week has to offer.

-R.

I Could Write This In My Sleep...In Fact, I Probably Am.

In Avatar, Ripley tells Marcus Wright that he has to journal about stuff when it's fresh on his mind.  So that's what I'm doing.  Because it's always a good idea to do what Ripley says, even if she is just putting on the facade of a nerdy humanitarian botanist geek woman.  She'll always be a half alien queen hardcore action chick in my book.

What's going on right now is I'm watching Comedy Central Presents on my wife's Windows 7 Media Center laptop while waiting for midnight to see what's going to be on woot.com tomorrow.

Oh man, look at that.  It's tomorrow.

What!?  Another laptop!?  Are you freaking kidding me!!?!?  Alas, another day shall pass in which I have no temptation whatsoever to purchase a semi-useless and un-budgeted-for item.  Whatever shall I do?  I guess I'll just have to save that money and invest it in my future or something.

Oh well.

The last thing I bought on woot was a TV antenna that you plug into your USB drive to watch and record live TV on your computer.  Turns out the drivers are only compatible with Windows XP.  Being that the two laptops we have are this one with Win7 and my old Dell which is currently running Ubuntu 9 from a flash drive, I don't think internet TV in bed is going to be an option at the moment.  Although, I could always use it on one of the 3 desktop PC's we've got in our office (The one I built from scratch, the one she built from scratch, and the one we bought online because the ones we built broke - don't worry, I fixed them.  Mostly.), but why would I sit at my desk watching TV on a 17-inch monitor when I have a wall-sized HDTV sitting in my living room?

And here's the more pressing question: why in the name of all that is holy (i.e. cow, mackerel, guacamole, crap, and just about anything Robin says to Batman) am I rambling about my computer situation at 12:20 in the morning?  I should be sleeping.

hmmm....

But instead, I am in the mood for hilarity.  I shall call upon one of my previous writings to serve this purpose.  Below is a copy of a letter I sent out to all of my co-workers in Dallas earlier this year, to let them know that I was planning on moving to the Fort Worth branch this summer.  It is rare that I write a piece of literature that caters to my own sense of humor so much so that I actually laugh out loud every single time I go back to read it.  Enjoy.

Greetings, fellow Kaplanians.

As you all (hopefully) know by now, my time here at the Dallas Center is quickly drawing to an end. A wise man once told me, "If you don't get a bachelor's degree, you'll never make it anywhere in life and I'll disown you as a son." Oh wait - by 'a wise man,' I actually mean 'my father,' and now that I think about it, I actually don't remember him ever saying that. Or anything remotely close to that, really. Regardless, I'm still going to go for it anyway, because I like the thought of being able to say "I have a bachelor's degree."

Beginning this summer, I will be pursuing a BFA in drawing and painting, with a minor in business at the University of Texas at Arlington. My wife and I are moving to the Arlington/Fort Worth area during the first week in may, so my last official day as a KSA at the Dallas Center will be Thursday, April 29.

My decision to strive for a BFA was originally because I thought it stood for "Bachelor's of Freaking Awesomeness." Eventually I realized that it actually stands for Bachelor's in Fine Art, which explains why there's so much drawing and painting involved. According to statistics which I made up just now, modern painting is the most lucrative form of fine art, as it's the only industry in which one can slap a handful of paint onto a blank canvas and still get away with charging exorbitant amounts of money for it.

I know that you all love me to death and would give an arm and a leg to keep me here, but honestly, that's really disgusting, you guys. And besides, you will probably need all four of your limbs at some point in the future, so you'll probably want to keep them attached. But I did know a girl in college who learned how to play Minesweeper using only her toes, so if any of you do happen to lose both of your arms in some kind of freak accident while I'm gone, I can give you her number - she can show you the way.

All this to say, this is not a 'goodbye' note, so much as a 'see most of you later' note. Although I won't be working here anymore, I will be KSA'ing over at the Fort Worth center. The center director over there and I have been in cahoots over the past few months, arranging the terms of my transfer. Sadly, she declined my repeated requests for permission to coat myself in blue makeup and grow dread locks to become the first ever Na'vi KSA, but in spite of this minor setback, I will continue to serve on Team Kaplan for at least the next two years (provided I don't get fired for skipping work to run around in the jungle hissing at wild animals and hitting them with sticks).

It's been said that, "If you catch a man a fish, you can sell it to him; but if you teach a man to fish, you lose a wonderful business opportunity." I'm not sure how that ties in to what I'm talking about, but I'm sure it is somehow connected. Because it has the words 'business' and 'opportunity' in it. And 'fish.'

In closing, I've had the time of my life working with all of you (more specifically, the February 2009 to March 2010 time). I'm not really the type to get super mushy when saying my goodbye's, but I am the type to get super hungry when I smell bacon. In fact, if any of you feel the urge to visit me in Fort Worth during the next two years, it would totally make my day if you brought bacon. Bacon's pretty much the best food on the planet. It's even fun to say. Bacon, bacon, bacon...

Now, you are all in the loop. This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the letter R, and the number 29. Thank you for reading, and have a sensational week.

-G'PO

Project Robo-Dog, Imaginary Journalists, and Facebook Fridays. You know you're curious.

I recently took up the alter-ego name Mustafo Monkovit out of sheer wacky inside-jokeness resulting from a crazy night of aimless driving around Fort Worth with my wife this past week.  It's my Russian name.  And hers is Bruschetta Monkovit.

I kind of went on a spree with alternate identities from varying ethnic backgrounds, such as Juan Quatro the Magnificent, the last remaining descendant of the legendary Don Quixote, and a terrible street magician.  And then there's the Japanese KazanInu-Mekka, which translates (very) roughly to "Volcano Robo-Dog."

All this to say, I tend to dance aimlessly around random, off-the-wall topics, following them up with the inevitable closing statement that is bound to contain some kind of arbitrary observation and begin with the phrase "all this to say."

That's because whenever I think of something of actual substance about which I might blog, the option of actually blogging about it is conveniently unavailable to me.  So I usually condense it into a micro-blog and stick it on my facebook as a status update, like "I blame Mario Kart for my habit of throwing banana peels out the window while I'm driving" or "I don't procrastinate at work. I delegate tasks to my future self."

No one would've guessed that these statements are but mere morsels of the feast of blog-able content that flew through my mind too quickly for me to even grasp it, much less tame it and tie it down to this webpage.  The status about Mario Kart is but the echo of a fleeting monologue that digs into the effects of racing games on my lead-footed predisposition, as well as the incredible restraint I demonstrate by not throwing all my trash out the window as I drive up and down I-20 five days a week.

And while the procrastination idea may be something that you'd expect to see on one of those graphic tees by which teenagers find themselves all too amused these days, it was actually the tail end of a conversation I had with my inner monologue about what I would actually do if I were able to communicate with the past and future iterations of myself.

The truth is that there is a journalist inside my head, sitting on a wooden crate in a dimly-lit room; an old-fashioned typewriter sitting atop his lap as he endlessly punches away at the old creaky keys - a 30-page discourse on every thought that passes through his tiny, imaginary world.  Seldom does he ever publish an article, though; and when he does, his vision is too blurry and his memory too faint to dictate properly the essay to my antsy fingertips.

The posts in this blog serve two purposes: firstly, a method of record-keeping so as to provide a means by which I may look back and accurately assess my progress toward my goals, and secondly, my own entertainment.  When ideas never make it to this blog, but are instead thrown off-course into the sea of collective information that is proprietarily owned by Mark Zuckerberg and his evil empire of soul-stealers, they never live up to their true potential, and usually wind up serving the exact opposite purpose than that for which they were intended: they provide records of times in which I was either too busy or too distracted to actually write something substantial, and they provide entertainment for others.  I'm not too worried about the second part, but it's the first one that gets me.

All this to say,* I need some way to put ideas down on paper on the fly, in such a way that I can remember the ideas as they were when they first hit me, while not taking more than a few moments to write them down.  Then once every couple weeks, I just need to vomit them all down in this blog and then edit the post to make it something that's interesting enough for me to want to actually go back and read one day.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm already using facebook as that always-accessible idea-jotter-downer.

Huh.

Looks like now all I need is some kind of routine to get myself in the habit of going through all of my old facebook posts and saying "What was I thinking when I wrote that?"  (...which is actually something I already think to myself pretty frequently.  Like when I read my status from last night: "Dude. Big fights make for great make-up sss...shopping.")

So it's settled.  I hereby commence Project RoboDog.  Phase 1: make a point to update my facebook status whenever I am struck with a thought or idea about which I would most likely blog if a computer was in front of me at that moment.  Then, every Friday, review my RoboDog posts and draft an actual blog post about the ideas they represent.

I didn't blog at all in May, and there were so many times I wanted to.  We'll see how June goes.  Facebook Fridays, here I come!

-R.









*You had to see that coming.