Can't live with 'em...

Strange women frighten me. That's right. I said it. They don't frighten me in a Godzilla is coming, run as fast as you can sort of way, but they frighten me enough that I spent 4 hours at a packed club last night and only managed to approach 1 woman... who, as a friend of a friend, was minimally strange and who, technically speaking, I probably can't take credit for approaching.

I spent the other 3 hours and 55 minutes at the club last night thinking about why I have such hard time approaching women. Ironically, I consider myself a pretty outgoing guy and I know I'm a great conversationalist. I've worked more than just a few years in retail sales and don't usually have a hard time approaching strangers. Away from the club or bar scene, in fact, you'll frequently find me smiling at strangers, stopping to say hi, or starting a conversation with a witty comment. I would guess that it was the sexually charged atmosphere of the bar/club scene that makes me nervous, but I used to attend house parties damn near every week and never had a hard time approaching, talking to or freakin with the pseudo-strangers I'd meet at those. Admittedly, random club girl #227 is definitely more foreign than random party girl #5, but my mental block is nowhere near proportionate to the degrees of separation I have from the women that I'm (theoretically) talking to. Or maybe it is.

I can't quite figure this one out. I thought writing my thoughts down would help... it hasn't. My friends last night told me that I was putting too much thought into the situation. I responded by telling them that I was a thinker, that's what I do, and as soon as I wrapped my skull around this, I'd be set... 12 hours later, it doesn't make any more sense than it did when I ordered that first drink and I've only got 12 hours until my next obligatory face-saving attempt of a club trip. So, completely on my own, with no encouragement from others, I've decided that I've been over thinking the situation. I still haven't figured it out, but hopefully at some point in the next 12 hours I'll convince myself not to care, not to worry so much about understanding and to just follow my instincts. Hopefully this approach will stop me from blogging about this again tomorrow, only time (and perhaps tomorrow's blog) will tell...

This Week In Sports

This has been a pretty devastating week for me in the world of fitness. On Sunday, I made two errors on routine fly balls in the 10th inning of a baseball game that, when put politely, "directly contributed" to my team's loss. I followed that up on Monday by freeing what experts tell me is some form of ancient exercise equipment called a "weight bench" from beneath the vines, cobwebs and wildlife in my backyard. Archaeologists estimate that the equipment was last used at some point during the Kennedy administration. Then on Tuesday, when running up the stairs to catch a BART train, I tripped and found myself laying face down in the bricks as I heard my train pull away. I managed to not embarrass myself much yesterday, but made up for it today by bowling a combined 300 in 6 games and then losing to a 12-year-old in 1-on-1 basketball.

On a "completely unrelated" note, I've decided to recommit myself to a standard of general physical fitness. I am going to start lifting weights regularly again, ride my bike more, find more time for exercise and just keeping myself in the kind of shape that I can be happy with.

If it's only kinda broke...

So about a month ago I noticed that I was falling roughly 33% short of my goal of blogging in the neighborhood of three times a week. To correct this problem I decided to tweak my blogging schedule just a bit; find a time when I'd be a little bit more likely to sit down and write for a while, and see how that worked.

Those of you who have been paying attention may have noticed that that plan, in execution, didn't pan out quite the way that I had drawn it up. I'm actually kinda okay with that though. I think of myself as a bit of an explorer these days and I'm learning to be okay with trying out new ideas that, as is the nature of new ideas, don't always work out. It can be a little disappointing sometimes, it can and certainly has lead me into trouble , but it always gives me something to learn from. Every new experiment shows me what I can, can't, should, shouldn't, will or won't do and in a lot of ways, learning those things are worth the lumps that they come with.

For a long time in my life I was very content, which is exactly why I don't want to be that anymore. Contentment is lazy. Contentment is apathy. Contentment is the polar opposite of growth. If you're happy with what you have, you're not going to put work into improving it. Not to say that I'm not happy right now, I am- but it'd be ridiculous to assume that I couldn't be happier, so why not try?

A lot of people say that if something's not broke, you shouldn't try to fix it. I actually disagree. I think that if something's not perfect, then I should be doing everything I can to perfect it. I mean... why wouldn't I? Worst case scenario, it comes out worse than it was, and I go back to what I had before. My friends from baseball get a good chuckle out of the fact that I'm constantly tweaking my approach at the plate, my approach in the field, my approach on the basepaths, whatever. I'm always trying something new. My ideas come out a little goofy sometimes, but as it stands now, I'm one of best players in the group and my game is constantly improving. That's well worth the occasional strike out, a few missed blogs, and generally looking goofy every now and then.

Out of Sight

I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people who I don't see on a regular basis. What makes it worse is that I'm also really bad at returning phone calls, e-mails and the like, so I frequently go months and years without speaking with relatively close friends for... well... no reason at all. This morning I received an e-mail from an old friend informing me that I had "fallen off the edge of the world... again". When I read that I felt somewhat embarrassed and ashamed that I had gone a few months without talking to him, but it really made me think about the several friends who I've gone several months or even years without as much as a phone call.

My elementary school best friend and I went two years without speaking to each other when he went to one of Berkeley's middle schools and I went to the other. History would've repeated itself when my high school best friend went to a JC a massive 20 miles away. Looking back now, I feel like the only thing that kept our friendship going was the fact that he was persistent in calling me. I can't say for sure that I called him once. Not because I didn't want to talk to him... I definitely did... but... really... I don't know. It's something I'm going to have to put some serious thought into.

Right now, I have a handful of friends who I used to hang out with on literally a daily basis who, for no reason at all, I haven't spoken to in months or years. Whenever I stumble upon situations like this, I just chuckle and think of a line from the movie Bad Boys II. The Cuban crime boss is standing in the attic of his mansion watching a rat infestation eat his money. He turns to his henchman and says, "this is a stupid fucking problem to have." The problem of not speaking with my friends has a pretty straight forward one-step solution: speak to my friends. Make more phone calls, send more e-mails, call just to say hey. Set time aside for speaking with people who I don't get to see everyday. Just do it. Just do it.

school spirit

It's spirit week at the school where I work and I'm proud to be one of the few staff members who indulged themselves with the possibilties of pajama day. I don't usually wear pajamas, generally passing out in whatever I was wearing that day, or alternatively, stripping down to my undies and crashing in those. Luckily my mom gives me pajamas every year for christmas, my birthday, or both, so I didn't have to show up to work in my boxers. I complimented my black and white checkered pj bottoms with a white snowman blankey safety pinned to a wife beater. I was going to grab a stuffed animal too, but at the last minute I decided against it, in favor of not having one hand occupied all day long.

I got lots of praise for my creative use of props and either a big laugh or a hanging jaw from most of the middle school students, which is pretty much what I was going for. I'm really loving my job so far and am really enjoying joking around/entertaining these kids. Every day I become more and more convinced that I'm going to want to work with middle schoolers when it comes time to choose a career. The elementary students are great too, but I enjoy my time with the middle schoolers much more.

There's still a part of me that wants to work in high school (or higher) athletics, and I'd definitely love to get paid to think about football (or baseball) all day, but I don't think it would send me home with a smile on my face the way working with younger kids does.

Spirit week photos coming up soon.