My ten least favorite online interactions

1. When someone comments something that I find offensive, but don’t want to have a public (or worse- via e-mail) confrontation with them about it.
2. Accidentally replying ‘to all’ in an e-mail
3. Replying to the sender about something that concerns the group, then having someone reply to all immediately afterward: making you feel like a secretive fuck.
4. When someone you don’t know– but probably should– adds you as a friend on a social media Web site.  Also, when someone you don’t care for adds you as an online friend.
5. Accidentally automatically updating your status in a way you didn’t intend.
6. People who obviously pay way more attention to whatever you do online than you them.
7. E-mailing people in their official capacity.  (Do I sign ‘cheers’?  Do I address him by his first name?)
8. Instant messages from people when you just barely logged on and can’t talk.
9. Instant messages from people you don’t want to talk to.
10. Finding messages or e-mails long after you were intended to act on them.

Last Year: Remember where you hid the bodies.
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Stupid things you can do after a break up

I.  Go back to her

1. Beg
2. Plead
3. Negotiate
4. Claim to just want to “talk”
5. Pretend that you just really want to go back to being her friend
   

II.  Confrontation

1. With her
   
   a.  In public
   b.  In private
   c.  Out of nowhere (avoid for stalkerish reasons)
2. With some guy (violence optional)
   
   a.  In public
   b.  In private
   c.  Out of nowhere (he doesn’t see it coming)
3. Social Revenge
   
   a.  Steal friends or turn her friends against her
   b.  Tell everyone everything so that even if they don’t turn away, relationships will never be the same

III.  Rebound

1. Confess your love for an ex-girlfriend
2. Date/Hook up with a friend
3. Hook up with a stranger

IV.  Self-Destructive Behavior

1. Drugs
2. Alcohol
3. Self-mutilation/Suicide attempts
4. Throw yourself unhealthily into work/hobbies

V.  Stupid Lifestyle Changes

1. Quit your job
2. Send angry e-mails/letters
3. Move away
4. Sell things/give things away

What defines a “Stupid” thing? A Stupid thing is one such that you do it in order to alleviate temporary emotional pain, but that causes negative, long-term effects.

After a breakup, all five categories seem desireable, and you’ll at least choose to follow one of them, but you should not.  At least that’s what I think.  And if you think I’m dwelling on this stuff too much, wait until I upload the next podcast.  This and previous posts will make much more sense then.

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Internal Dialogues I

The song is “Cheat on You” by Mike Allan, featuring Rachel Duff.

Last Year: I become people's favourite friend sometimes
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Emotional Faithfulness

I’m not saying I buy ‘emotional cheating,’ but let’s say I did. Even if it truly existed, absence of emotional cheating would not equal emotional faithfulness. There’s a gulf between emotional cheating and emotional faithfulness.

Emotional cheating is when you no longer love the person you are with exclusively.  Let us define it as such and worry about ‘love’ later.  It is often contrasted with physical cheating.  But there is another, orthogonal contrast.  And this is between emotional cheating and emotional faithfulness.

Let’s ignore bivalent logical systems and consider the senses of ‘emotional cheating’ and ‘emotional faithfulness’ rather than the exact denotation.  Because in standard logic, of course not emotionally cheating will equal emotional faithfulness.  QED.

Consider the case in which someone is unfaithful physically but claims to have been faithful emotionally.

I would argue that such a case is impossible.

Assuming the sex was consentual, it was not an open relationship, and the person did not forget they were with you, then they consciously decided to sleep with someone they did not love that was not the person they loved.  But what can this sense of emotional love be if one is so callous with their physical body?  The idea is that if one is willing to do something like that, then it could not have been the sort of love that would put the other person above themselves.  And if it’s not that sort of love, then what is the sense in even talking about them being emotionally faithful?  Their emotions are obviously impoverished.

But suppose, on the other hand, that it is that sort of love and their emotions are not impoverished.  Then by being willing to physically cheat, they demonstrated that they did not truly love the person they were with.  At least not at that moment.  And if this is the case, then the consequences are even worse: because now it is a sporatic love.

I have sympathy for such people, but it is not sympathy worthy of a relationship.  I build my relationships with a solid foundation of trust.  When that gets knocked down, I don’t try to repair it, I scrap it and start anew somewhere else.. no matter how much it sucks.

Because if you don’t have trust, what do you really have left?

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What’s a little secret life between friends?

Today is my best friend’s birthday.  I spent the past few weeks working on this– in secret– for her.  I did it because she always complains that I never draw her and I countercomplain that she’s hard to draw.  She is!  I had to give her eyelids and an extra finger just to capture the essence de bre.  As it is, I’m still not convinced that I didn’t just draw a 13-year-old girl walking her dog instead of my (now) 28-year-old BFF out in the woods.

Happy birthday, Bre

So this was my third idea.  I like the way it came out.  Next time I draw something I want to work on clothing folds.  Also: my shading and coloring needs work.  At those holes in her pants just look odd.

But I printed this out as an 8×10 glossy picture and I’m going to give it to her in a photo frame.  Either that or turn it into a puzzle and give it to her that way.

Either way, my fourth idea was just to get her something from her Amazon.com wishlist.  It’s on its way, just in case this idea fails. 

p.s.  Bre is the awesome.

p.p.s.  This is my last attempt at drawing something good.  I think I’ve improved.  This is my attempt before that.

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