Last night I came in on the 28th page of google results for "wedding vows". I don't know which is stranger - my site coming up in a google search for wedding vows or someone looking through 28 pages of results for wedding vows. My guess is that it's some guy who promised his fiance he would write wedding vows and he just looked at his calendar and noticed that the wedding is tomorrow and he hasn't written jack. Oh well, he's free to use mine, but then again, my marriage is going through some difficulties so maybe that wouldn't be a good idea. (NB: at the time of this writing I am no longer on the 28th page of results... sigh...)

The weather was so nice here yesterday that I walked to and from work. On the way home I listened to Julie Doiron on my iPod. I have no idea how to pronounce her name, but I do hope it's pronounced like "do iron". Her music is pretty mellow - I guess you would call it indie-folk or neo-folk. I don't know for sure. All the musical genre names confuse me. Yesterday during a meeting the network admin referred to the band Opeth and I said they were cool and someone asked what kind of music they played and the network admin replied "baroque, jazzy death metal" or "bjdm" for short. Now there is a musical genre of which we would could use more. I'm hoping Billboard will create a new chart just for bjdm.

Anyway, I like listening to really stripped down music sometimes. It makes me feel a certain poverty of spirit, I guess. This is a term whose meaning eluded me for a long time. My thinking at the moment is that poverty of spirit means a sense of spiritual helplessness. Well, that sure describes me. Most of the time I feel spiritually "spent" like it takes all I can give just to get through the day. Oddly enough, I think this is a pretty good place to be. I guess it's a paradox.

Walking home reminded me of the days when I worked with Jen. We had crappy jobs working for a crappy company and would have cheap Chinese food on our way home. We walked together because we lived about 3 or 4 blocks from each other. We hung out a lot together back then, drinking at this Irish pub down the street or taking the commuter rail to Salem to hang out by the water. It seemed like before I had goals I was much happier. Now I always have things I need to do. I wonder if I just romanticize those years or if I was happier.

That's not to say I'm not happy now. I'm just so busy and tired.

Smitey is the last cat I will ever own. He has made it his goal to drive me insane. Every time I stop paying attention to him for even a few seconds he starts chewing electrical cords. Idiot.... He hates me. Why does he hate me?

Last night I was reading about the concept of "the looking glass self". The idea is that a person conforms to the image of them held by the person most important to them. So, if your dad is the most important person in the world to you and he thinks you are the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, you'll probably feel good about yourself. However, if the most important person in the world to you is your mom and she thinks you are an incompetent trollop, you probably end up as an incompetent trollop. (PS - add the word "trollop" to my list of favorite words. I used to have a dear friend who I always referred to as a trollop. I miss her.) I found this interesting because it points to how at the core of our being we are relational animals.

A lot of people probably get fed up with stuff like this because they want to be "their own person". I have only lived a limited life, but most of the people I have seen who set out to do this fail miserably. They either become exactly what they set out to avoid or they work themselves into exhaustion doing the exact opposite of what everyone else would expect of them. Either way they are being defined by other people - either by becoming like them or by focusing all their attention on becoming unlike them. A sad and futile effort it is to be different for the sake of being different.

Anyway, who is the person most important to you?

Reading
Wishing
Plotting