Author: Teel

I remember beck in High School, when I first started becoming interested in flirting with and dating people, it was esy for me. So natural, it was like breathing. I could have had anyone I wanted. Even if they were older or younger, even if they were in a relationship, or engaged, or even married, I could attract them. At first I didn’t pay attention to pre-existing relationships; I only cared about my relationship with the person, not the relationships they use to be having with other people. (Here ‘used to be’ refers to the time period right up until I decide I want them.)

Here’s an interesting thought: based on the best information I have, 100% of the people I asked to marry me were dating someone else without my knowledge at the time that I asked them. Oh, and all three said yes immediately. Of course I’m not married yet, but I mostly blame myself for that.

So, somewhere along the line I began doing my best to pay attention to whether or not people I was interested in were single, and if I found out they were in a relationship or I saw a wedding ring, I just didn’t show any interest at all. This is out of increased respect for relationships, not just my own, but other people’s as well. I recognize how rare and precious a good relationship is, and how much harder and harder they are to come by, and I do what I can to encourage healthy relationships to continue. The only problems this has caused is when I thought someone was in a relationship who was not, or when I didn’t find out when they were single again, and they assumed I wasn’t interested because I never showed interest.

Except that in light of my experiences in the last several months (years, Teel, it’s been years!), I believe that flirting with and expressing interest in people in relationships is probably the safest thing I can do. These days I can’t get the most desperate of people to even make eye contact with me. I can’t pick people up any more than I can fly without happy thoughts. I have given out dozens of cards with my email address and phone number in recent weeks/months to people I thought might be interested in at least speaking to me again, and have received a sum total of zero phone calls and emails as a result. I recently updated my match.com profile, added a photo, and started getting ten times as many people reading my full profile, and even got a couple of preliminary emails. Of course, when I responded, giving them links to my websites and a friendly response, I got nothing back. It goes on and on, and let me see if I can get to my point:

As long as I absolutley can’t attract another human being to want to spend time with me, I am better off only flirting with people already in committed relationships or marriages. This way at least I don’t expect anything to come of it. There’s no let down when they go home with the person they arrived with; that outcome is expected. At best I can expect a lively and interesting conversation with someone I don’t have to worry about calling me.

A married friend of mine told me recently that when he and his wife and I go out together, it’s like a double-date. That somehow I’m as good as or and fun as or … well, that I compare to any two normal people together. It’s a good thing. I guess. I sort of would rather actually go on a double date than our own little variation of one. Still, it’s just more of the same idea I’m talking about. I should just stick to pre-existing couples.

…

Something about being a well-rounded enough person that I’m entirely half of a double date doesn’t sit right with me. I suppose that’s just my biological imperitive telling me I can’t pass on my genes on my own.

Continue reading Something about flirting without purpose

And then some days, I just don’t write at all. I spent all my time at work today reading, it didn’t occur to me until I was leaving that the site had gone just about all day without any action at all. Sometimes I worry that days like this means less people will come back tomorrow. Sometimes I worry that posting too much, too fast will keep people from bothering to read everything I write. Sometimes I worry that i shouldn’t even consider whether or not or who or how many people are reading what I write, or how much of it, or any of it. Other times … It’s all I can do to stop thinking about it.

The blog is so … self aware. So post-modern. In some ways it is like a journal, but by its very nature of being online and totally public to whomever finds it, it is not. I suppose that in some ways, that really frees one up to write, knowing that their lives are on public display; maybe for most people it’s the other way around. For me, it just helps keep me more honest all the time. Honest and open. I don’t want to find myself lying to people, hiding parts of my life or my feelings, or only sharing them with certain people. I don’t really believe that privacy exists; anything I say, ever, can certainly get to the ears of anyone I don’t want to hear it. So only say things you don’t have qualms about being heard, and don’t even bother trying to hide any part of your life because it will be found out.

I remember when this occurred to me, it was as though a great weight had been lifted, and I had been shown the way to freedom from some of the weight that the world wanted to put on me. We are all trained that certain subjects, certain aspects of life, certain ideas, are simply not done, and if done not spoken of if we ever care to “get ahead.” Like the idealist I am, I say I don’t want to get ahead if that is the price.

I used to have such wonderful stories to tell. So many layers of brilliant imagery that covered up or confused the sparse details of my actual life and feelings. I was a great storyteller. Getting the facts straight about what I had or hadn’t done was a fool’s game, since what was said was too vague and suggestive to come to a definite position. Most people simply assumed whatever they assumed the best to be true, and then they were on my side since they made my side theirs. it worked out pretty well.

Except I lost track of what was true and what was fairy tale in there somewhere, lost track and started believing my own lies, half-truths, and fanciful exaggerations. Have you ever been lost in your own mind?

Nowadays I don’t have so many good stories to tell. Small remnants of the old histories still floating in my mind, permanently fused to the bits of truth I can remember. Once in a while, you’ll get lost in the tale of something that passed before, and if the story seems a little short, missing a few details, you’ll know its because you’re hearing a version of a much better story that has had the outrageousness cut out. You’re hearing the boring truth of my life, told as though something interesting had happened. The enthusiasm comes from the once great story, but some part of me doesn’t know the story isn’t great any more.

Some part of me still believes my story is a great one. The rest of me is trying to believe that my story is simply looking forward to becoming a great one.

I think my right wrist is going. I blame Xerox, for inventing the first mouse. I believe that the bulk of the repetitive stress on my wrist is from mousing and using the scroll-wheel on the mouse. I definitely also get some repetetive stress from typing, and a whole other kind of repetitive stress on my wrists from bicycling, but I believe it is mousing that causes the most strain on my wrist. I should probably contact my doctor and see about getting those wrist-braces that isolate the wrists and keep them from moving. My left wrist seems fine, but my right one is just going berserk. I’m thinking I need to swithc to left-handed mousing for a while and see how that suits my wrists.

Anyone else out there have experience with this sort of thing have any advice to offer? I probably won’t actually go to the doctor. I’m pretty lazy, and it’s a lot of trouble trying to set up an appointment, then take time off work, then actually getting to the doctor, then getting back… Quite a bit of hassle for a minor pain in my wrist. Did I mention it’s the same wrist I injured in a bicycle accident a few years ago? Maybe the pain I’m experiencing is due to that accident, and there’s nothing to be done for it. Well, I’m going to go reverse my mouse buttons now. I’ll let you know if my wrist pain tries to switch sides after that.

The last nine things posted anywhere on Modern Evil (10 with this post) were by me, here. Only a couple of days ago, I updated the “Most Recent” list to show a maximum of ten posts from FYTH instead of the normal limit of 5 posts from any one section of the site. What this does normally is prevents one person from overwhelming the site, and allows visitors to the site to see what other people are posting in other areas of Modern Evil. Except that what it was doing with FYTH at 5 posts was showing three+ weeks of everything else and cutting off 10 FYTH posts that occurred in a shorter time, making it appear as though I wasn’t posting much on FYTH. So, I upped it to 10, and that was good for a bit, making FYTH allowed to have a full half of the 20 “most recent” posts in the list, but now I’ve used them all up without anyone posting anything else on the site. So there’s the last 10 things I posted on FYTH, and then the last 10 things that weren’t on FYTH, regardless of how many FYTH posts were made in the time that those other 10 posts were made.

So, the question is, do I further increase the limit on FYTH, so that people can see all the different things I’ve been posting, since I make something like 75%+ of the posts anyway, or do I leave it the way it is and hope other people start posting more? I tried to get Angela to post a review of XXX this week, but she didn’t do it. I know Marie has plenty of spare time and web-access at work now, but I guess she just doesn’t have anything to say. Do you want to be able to add posts in Modern Evil’s Reviews, Ramblings, Poetry, and/or Fiction sections? Do you want to start your own Modern Evil-hosted blog? Do you know someone who might be interested in either of the following? Let me know! You can email me at teel@modernevil.com. I’d be glad to set you up, if it means we get more quality posts from people other than me.

I mean, I like writing, and I’m glad people are reading it, and I’m glad I have so much to say lately, but … I’d love to see other people contributing, too.

Oh, and seriously folks, send emails to edison@modernevil.com with questions for a sort of “Dear Edison,” column. He says he’s only got one question sent to him so far, and he needs to start with a few more to really get the feature going. Ask him relationship questions, medical questions, gardening questions, questions about TV or movies or books or whatever else you have a question about. He’d like to help.

On Tuesday afternoon, I got home at around 3:45 because I stayed a few minutes after work, I checked my email, I looked at the TV for a bit, and when I didn’t find anything on I hadn’t already seen, I watched the special features on the new Dinotopia DVD I bought Monday night. Not a lot there, so I was done by 4:45 or so. I decided to lay down for about an hour, and I set an alarm to go off around 6, after which time I expected to get up and get something done. Maybe dishes, maybe writing some of that novel I haven’t finished yet. Something. I remember waking up and it being dark outside. I remember thinking I must have slept through to morning, then looking at the clock and seeing that it was only 9PM. I remember thinking that 4 hours of sleep wasn’t enough for one night, and that if I got up then, I’d just have to go back to bed for an hour or two later on, so I might as well stay in bed another hour or two. Then my other alarms went off and it was time to get up to go to work Wednesday. I got twelve hours of sleep.

As I posted last night, I received my Bowflex yesterday afternoon. I spent a while trying to get it together. Definitely more than an hour, but since I took a break or two, wasn’t really paying attention to the time, and then stopped before I was done for lack of a 3/8″-diameter, 3/4″-long bolt with a 9/16″ hexagonal head, I’m not really sure how long it was. Or how long it will have been when I am done. Still, after doing that and then calling Bowflex to request a replacement bolt & AT&T Warranty Exchange, and spending about an hour making posts about those experiences, it was time to watch South Park. I watched that and Contest Searchlight (“No, it isn’t just like Project Greenlight!” -Dennis Leary), a show that is basically like Project Greenlight, except with Dennis Leary instead of Damon & Affleck, and with a Comedy TV Series instead of a movie. Oh, and then The Daily Show. I have to get my news in somewhere. Then I went to bed and couldn’t get to sleep (possibly because my mind was in overdrive, possibly because I imbibed caffeine earlier in the day, possibly because I slept 12 hrs Tuesday night) until no earlier than 1AM. And woke up around 5AM this morning. Getting 4 hours of sleep.

Remember when I said four hours of sleep isn’t enough? Really, it isn’t. That’s what my body is telling me right now. Didn’t mention it Yesterday. Today it’s all my body can talk about. That, and it keeps reminding me I didn’t eat enough breakfast. Well, I’m going to eat some fruit in a moment, and hopefully I can cut down the whining to complaints about lack of sleep. Who knows how much sleep I’ll get tonight? I’m hoping to go down to a local hardware store right after work to see about getting that replacement bolt, then trying to complete assembly of my Bowflex, then going to Beer Club, then stopping by the grocery store to pick up some things I forgot (Kosher Salt, for instance) the other day. I feel like there was something else I meant to do tonight as well… what was it?