flights

This evening on my way home from work, one of my neighbors boarded my bus. Immediately I started to imagine the walk from our stop to our respective homes – trying to come up with ways to avoid a two-block conversation with her and contingency planning for the possibility of being trapped into one.

It occurred to me that this was a defining scenario for the introvert vs. extrovert question. My response was the natural one for an introvert. I imagine an extrovert would have been delighted to see a familiar face on the bus, would have relished the chance to chat as a welcome bit of serendipity. Maybe it’s a matter of degrees – of familiarity. If it was my friend who boarded the bus, rather than a neighbor whose name escapes me, I would have happily closed my book in favor of conversation.

This is something I envy about extroverted people. To me they seem fearless, fluid and… well… friendlier. My career has often required me to push through or around my introvert tendencies, to play the role of an extrovert. It takes a lot of effort and always makes me uncomfortable, but I play the role convincingly enough that my colleagues laugh when I tell them I’m naturally introverted.

So, as the bus climbed the long hill to my street, I resolved to embrace the challenge of my situation. I would be fearless, fluid, friendly. I would engage my neighbor in conversation. I couldn’t remember her name, but no matter. That would be my first question: “I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name. I’m Shawn.”

When the bus stopped, she was the first to the door. It opened, and she walked straight out the door and to the left around a parked car. I, however, shot diagonally to the right and slipped through a narrow gap between two other parked cars. My way was shorter, and I was instantly six or seven paces ahead of her.

Conversation was out of the question.

• Exactitudes
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Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that the places in this country most likely to be attacked by terrorists – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles – are also the least supportive of the war, and least likely to send sons and daughters into battle? Meanwhile, places with virtually no chance of being attacked, are the ones who zealously support the war and send their loved ones off to the meat grinder.

Of course, the war’s supporters say this simply goes to prove that the liberal elite are weak-kneed cowards who don’t deserve the sacrifices of so many young men and women.

The anti-war crowd, on the other hand, bemoan the fact that so many well-meaning people have been duped by the Bush administration into believing that the war was justified and is making us safer, when in fact it has done (and continues to do) a lot more harm than good.

I don’t see this gridlock resolving itself anytime soon.

Of all the shit jobs I had through high school, somehow I avoided food service… almost. I did a two-week stint as a bus boy at a local country club. It was a second job (as in, I had another job during the day), and I quit after twice falling asleep at the wheel on the way there.

One night, they asked me to help out with an event in one of their big ballrooms. Dinner was done, and they asked me to man the ice cream station. Guests quickly formed a line, and as I scooped their choice of chocolate or vanilla, I mechanically asked each guest, “how was your meal?” Most of them mechanically answered, “it was fine” or “great” or whatever. One older woman considered my question and launched into a rant about how her steak was undercooked, how she sent it back to the kitchen, how it came back overcooked… blah blah blah.

She finished and glared at me. I stood there with my scoop poised above the ice cream, not knowing how to respond. After a tense silence, I said as brightly as I could, “do you want some ice cream?”

She turned her frown upside down. “Sure!”

This story is a long way of wondering whether the world would benefit from a whole lot of these.

Well, the spammer-bots officially messed it up for everyone. I was getting so much comment spam, I had to turn off open commenting. Now, to comment on this blog, you have to register for a username and password.

That’s the tragedy of the commons folks.

I saw an orthopedic specialist yesterday. He basically confirmed that I have a fractured talus – “a classic snowboarding injury.” In fact, I just read that this injury is sometimes called “snowboarder’s ankle.”

Mine is a small fracture though, and the doctor basically said it’s an injury that takes a relatively long time to heal. He didn’t have my MRI scans – only the report – so he couldn’t make a definitive recommendation, but he suggested a course of… nothing.

He said my best option is just to do the things I want to do and bear the pain as best I can. Surgery is an option, but he recommended I wait 6-8 more weeks. If I don’t feel significant progress in that time, he said, then I should go under the knife.

This is a little discouraging, especially now that spring is coming, and the hiking trails are calling.

So, I meant to take pictures of it when it happened, but I’m not nearly as flickr.lic.ious as some of my friends.

I hurt my ankle during a rookie snowboarding outing a few days after (or maybe it was before) Christmas. I hurt it badly enough that after the adrenaline surge wore off, I knew I needed to go to the ER. X-Rays were negative, and the doc said I had a bad sprain. They sent me home with an ice pack, a pair of cruches and some high-potency Motrin tablets.

Eight weeks later, I can walk without my crutches, but not more than a couple of blocks. And I can’t run at all, not even to hurry across an intersection when the light is changing.

Last week, I went for an MRI, and now it turns out I have a couple of small fractures. I have to see an orthopedic surgeon next week, and there’s a good chance I’ll have to have a couple of screws put into my ankle – or at least a boot or cast for a while.

:(

Have I really not written anything here in over 40 days?

Work has been busy, but that didn’t hamper my blogging productivity much before. And anyway, work hasn’t been anything like it was in Singapore.

Lack of material? Not really. My life in San Francisco provides ample inspiration and plenty of material. I have a number of posts in “draft” state – notes, half-formed thoughts.

Lack of motivation? Perhaps. Lately, I don’t feel much like sitting in front of a computer when I don’t have to.

New distractions? Probably. At home I have satellite television and a DVR. When my brain is tired, the box does have a tendency to suck me in.

Lack of solitude? Definitely. Writing is a solo pursuit, and I haven’t spent much time alone over the last few months. I’m enjoying the process of reconnecting with my SF friends, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with one person in particular.

:-)

Happiness? Hmmm. Happiness is the writer’s enemy in some ways, but again, it hasn’t hampered my own productivity much in the past. I am happy these days. Really happy. Life feels good. Sorry I haven’t been sharing much.

Years ago, a few months after I moved west for the first time – and traveled west for the first time actually – to be with the girl I thought at the time was my true love, I happened to spend my first Christmas alone.

She dumped me for her ex-boyfriend weeks after I moved. It was a painful but essential lesson, but it’s an old story now, and I’m over it.

The story I’m trying to tell right now is about Christmas.

I had just moved from New York City to Tempe, Arizona. I was broke, but even if I had had the money for a plane ticket, I was not in a festive state of mind.

So I borrowed a little camping gear and planned a trek into the Chiricahua mountains. I spent a very cold Christmas alone there. It was so cold, my bottles of drinking water froze inside my backpack, inside my tent. The sun set at 5:30, and I lay sleepless in the dark for hours. It snowed while I slept, and I woke to find a silent and magically transformed world.

Last Christmas, I found myself alone in sweltering Bangkok.

My first and last Christmases alone. One cold, one hot. Despite the unforgettable settings, I felt bereft and alone.

Last night I went to see Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, a film about – among other things – being alone. It follows a collection of sad characters, all sadly in love with people they can’t have.

Apparently even the Chinese director understands that nothing deepens one’s loneliness like Christmas. The holidays come and go in the movie, year after year, and characters who can’t be with the ones they love, or manage to love the ones they’re with, settle for whatever companionship they can find, because – as one explains it – people need a little more warmth than usual at Christmas.

Today some folks in the LA office – plus me and KK from SF – held a live fantasy football draft in the conference room here. Let’s run the numbers: twelve consultants, billable at $200 an hour, for an hour and a half… that’s… click clickety click… ding… $3,600.00

Well, it was lunch time. But it did make me think of something I read around this time last year:

“Earlier this month, executive search firm Challenger Gray & Christmas estimated that nationwide workplace fantasy football consumption costs $36.7 million for every 10 minutes of worktime spent on fantasy football activities in lost productivity.” More at News.com…

Let the games begin…