Today's Decisions and Resolutions

While yesterday's post was all bright lights and sunshine, today finds me a bit more ambivalent. None of the facts have changed certainly but the balance of my optimism has shifted more in favor of the non-work aspects of life. I find more and more that the bits of myself that bother me, are in fact utterly irrelevant or totally unnoticed by others. I suspect the most annoying bit of me is probably the bit that worries and frets endlessly about absolutely nothing.

As always, it's hard to pin down the cause of any feeling but I think my personal paranoia may have something to do with simply having too much time on my hands for introspection. Every action and every word is analyzed and re-analyzed for how it could have been improved or how it might have caused offense. Situations are mentally played back in slow motion to distinguish friendship from disdain and mirth from mockery. At some point one has to stop gazing into the limpid pool of one's own soul, put aside the tapes and just go outside and play ball with the other kids. I need to push myself and my interests outside my own skin more often and in more obvious ways; the current plan to do this has a few key points:

• Ask more questions about people and when you get the answers write them down. I've heard this a million times from a million sources but never really taken it to heart. People love to know that you're listening to them. This is going to be one of the harder things to repair as I have a horrible memory and it's going to be a hell of a challenge trying to collect the vitals of everyone I know without making it obvious that I failed to remember the first time but as painful as this exercise will be it may help me to be more attentive in the future.
  
• Remember and celebrate important moments in people's lives. I have a friend from three workplaces ago who still remembers my birthday. Every year I get an email wishing me a happy day despite the fact that we see each other only two or three times a year. It's a small thing but it really makes me take notice. Women seem to do this sort of thing automatically but it's relatively rare among those of the male gender. I think it's a quality worth mimicking.
• Give gifts often and widely but only if they're truly meaningful. Case in point: my wife's friend had her second child in February so we got them this book. Then my wife had the idea to take sea creatures from the book, cut them out of plywood, paint them match and make a wooden growth chart. I hate to toot our own horns here but if I got a gift with that much thought and effort put into it I'd be pretty impressed. And thinking back on it making it was one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever done simply because it was a gift. That is not to say that I don't wonder from time to time what it's doing at 'right this minute'.
  
• Get the hell back to work. I have at least verbal approval from the wife to actually go into work a couple of days a week but I wonder how this will really turn out. She's managed to rule out every work day for the next 2 weeks on one technicality or another but hopefully that will improve after the holidays. Truth be told, I am starting to go just a smidge insane in this box all the time.
  

Well, there sits the plan. We shall see what twists fate throws in my way to aid or thwart its completion. The silly thing, of course, is that this all comes across as so fake and artificial. Why would you have to 'try' to appear to care about people? If you really care about them won't that be obvious? Sadly, apparently not. The stupid thing is that I find people utterly fascinating and would like to get to know everyone on the planet. But, because of some silly quirk of personality (and a decent dose of my own stupidity) I come across as someone "who clearly just has other things to do besides talk to me" as I've been told. Ironically, this is exactly the same incorrect perception I have of other people.

But anyway, if you should find yourself on the business end of one of these points, please do take it personally.