I hate happiness

Negativity is inevitable. People who never have a negative thing to say about their wives, or jobs, or cars, or tiny, walk-up apartments are (frankly) liars. I stand behind this to the end. Dissension and expression of negative thought is a healthy part of the day to day is honest.

I hate business jargon. I don' t want anyone "taking my temperature" during a meeting, I don't want every conversation I have to end with an "action item", and as useful as they are "next steps" make me a little nauseated.

What business jargon is good for is eliminating negativity. It forces you to turn a negative thought into a positive one. For example "I forgot I had a meeting and missed it because I'm a fuck up" turns into "There was a miscommunication and/or scheduling conflict on my end. My next steps will be to review my current action plan for dealing with meetings so that I can stay on top of things in the future."

My problem with this is NOT that I don't think that people should be polite, or that we shouldn't make an effort to be professional, cordial human beings. My problem is that it is FAKE. People don't talk like that of their own volition. They do it because they are trained to, and don't want to step on anyone's toes.

They want this:

That's probably not such a bad thing. It's just unrealistic. We're adults with colorful vocabularies, with character and personality. Take away the negativity and we're all the same, just sitting around in our happy safe space where there are no arguments and we all have the same ideals. That place sounds really boring.
I'll share something else: I don't have the same ideals as you do. I believe in certain things, I don't believe in others. I don't believe in absolute openness, and at the same time I don't believe in secrets*. I believe in democracy but not in the democratic party**.

There is obviously a happy medium here, but how far will we go to find it? How many meetings and brainstorming sessions does it take to figure out that sitting around with people you did not choose to sit around with is hard?

*This is a complicated belief. If you really don't want anyone to know something, you shouldn't tell anyone. The minute you open your mouth, something stops being a secret. True secrets are the ones you don't tell.
**I don't believe in the Republican Party either. Again, this is because I DON'T HAVE THE SAME IDEALS AS YOU. Finding an institution that aligns with your ideals 100% is rare.

So many strange things just sort of happen. You can’t plan them, or predict them. Sometimes you don’t even know they’ve happened until three days later.

 

I haven’t had a real place to live in a few months, because I’m lazy, because I’m busy, because I changed jobs (twice, I guess).

 

Those aren’t the only reasons. I also change my mind a lot.

 

My mother said to me the other day that in certain ways, I was so much like her mother. What? My mother rarely speaks kindly about Grandma, and I remember three main things about her:

 

1)       Veiny hands

2)       Hated our dog Lady

3)       Had a very “eat your vegetables” attitude.

 

I’d find out later that she had a particular affinity for me. She must have enjoyed crippling shyness.

 

My mother continued “My mother had a few absolutes in her life. There were certain things that she just believed in, and didn’t budge on. You’re just like that.”

 

That’s pretty much true. I’m full of dealbreakers. It’s one of the reasons that relationships don’t work out for me. I find it difficult to deal with people who don’t meet certain standards, however arbitrary they might be. I think them through, but they only seem to make sense to me. Like the fact that I find hard affiliations to political parties meaningless.

 

The thing is, I know that I would never live up to my own standards, because I change my mind all the time. I could go to bed dreaming of the perfect apartment that absolutely had to be in Inwood, where I would speak Spanish to my super and take the A train and have pretty red walls and a t-shirt pillow. I would work tirelessly for weeks trying to find the perfect apartment. And then suddenly, hey! I want to live in Riverdale! Closer to my sister, L-shaped studio with bedroom alcove, bring a guy home from the bar in three or four short steps. Or maybe Pittsburgh…

 

Can you be absolute, and also live in a constant state of flux? I honestly don’t know. But I’m starting to wonder why I’m so often compared to old people.