Homeward Bound

I love the sad Simon and Garfunkel song in the title. I love sad or borderline sad works of art about the concept of home in general. Or is it just me thinking they're sad? A wood print in my home's entryway features one of my favorite lines: "home is wherever I'm with you," from the song by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. That quote embodies how I have always felt about the people I love. This morning reminds me, then, that home can never be just one place. Today I watched my twin sister, brother-in-law, and newest baby nephew drive away to start an eighteen hour journey to their new home, and already that place feels a bit like home to me even though I've never been there. I am so happy to watch them embark on an adventure to a place I think they will really enjoy, but of course a little piece of what made Vegas home is making its way out of state along with them.

Laura and I both attempted to avoid tears, but those rebellious little jerks forced their way out (there's a pun in there somewhere). Avoiding displays of emotion is a family custom, but goodbyes are a special exception to the rule. This begs the question, what's wrong with day-to-day emotion? What would happen if we were to cry in front of someone who wasn't about to drive away or board a plane? What would be the next step to exposing our humanity? Since I was small, I had a vision of sitting on an intergalactic orange couch eating cheetos and simply existing with everyone in my family, suspended there in space. I feel fairly certain that the orange couch existed in this fantasy before it became a symbol for SNICK, but I could be wrong. We may have simply been suspended in space, eating Cheetos before the couch entered. Or perhaps the Great Orange Couch is a seldom-referenced archetype--part of the collective conscience. Only Joseph Campbell knows for sure. That simple vision is my idea of heaven, in a way: just to be content with all of humanity instead of always feeling the tug of separation. Of course, I was convinced that a cartoon duck-bill platypus was God around the same age when I came up with this idea, so I may be just a little spiritually whacked out.

I suppose it is good to have a reminder now and again that we feel more deeply than we let on. When Laura left for college, and I stayed in town with over-blown plans to go to school out of state a few weeks later, I remember brushing my teeth without her banging on the bathroom door or doing crazy calisthenics in her bedroom nearby, and crying for the first time over her absence. That experience led to the writing of a bad poem involving the above referenced, "Homeward Bound," that confused a creative writing professor who didn't see how the song related to my sisterly relationship. Looking at the lyrics now, it doesn't, but the ambiance is still there. Since then, each time one of us has relocated, I have felt the same tug of wishing we were bound for the same orange couch. Maybe someday.

The wisdom of the Enneagram and web design for dummies

Here's what my e mail had to say today:

Try this Affirmation today: "I now affirm that I open myself up to people and the world." (Enneagram Transformations, 64)

That's an EnneaThought for the day from the Enneagram Institute. I receive these reminders daily, and I've been meaning to journal privately about them and failing. This one is especially well-suited to public blogging, and my reason for writing, so here goes.

The Enneagram Institute probably sounds a bit strange if you're unfamiliar with it, but it's focused on personality types and personal growth rather than anything creepy or culty. I read The Wisdom of the Enneagram a few months ago, and found it very compelling. The Enneagram is a personality typing system similar to the Meyers-Briggs system: you take a test that provides you with a label and description for your type. The description is eerily accurate, and you feel simultaneously less alone in the world and somewhat surprised that you may not be the unique snowflake your first-grade teacher said you were. That latter part is especially true for my type, which is number four, or the individualist. The long and short of a four is the need to express oneself to the world with an attendant fear of doing so--the drive to be unique and creative with a lack of motivation and a sense of isolation. We convince ourselves that we're too different from the world to be understood, so we hide ourselves away, but we want people to come in and drag us out and be our friends. It sounds a little selfish and exhausting, and it is. 

This blog is one of my attempts to "open myself up to people and the world." The challenges are actually showing it to people and convincing them to read it, as well as avoiding over-sharing because of the false sense of security provided by a blanket of text on a screen. I'm integrating my blog into a personal website built for a class that I fondly refer to as web design for dummies, and I hope to keep working on it and using it after the class ends. To make things a bit more odd, I am amalgamating this fairly personal blog with my resume and portfolio. A recent Forbes article pointed out that having a professional personal website is increasingly important to the quest to build a career. Such sites may well be the resume of the future. Conglomerating personal ramblings and innermost thoughts with one's resume may not be the best route to professionalism, so I will have to consider this moving forward. For now, though, I think it's sort of an interesting endeavor to combine these private and public personas. If you ask Mark Zuckerberg, people of integrity don't need separate public and private personalities. While I am with most of the general public on feeling reluctant to share all of my life's data with the entire web, I also find that idea intriguing, perhaps as a result of my fourness. How would relationships at work change if everyone really knew each other's innermost hopes, fears, and neuroses along with their work ethics and the names of their children and pets?

 

 

At least I tried. . .

Introversion and shyness piled on top of one another are not conducive to fitting in anywhere--especially not my place of work, which happens to have a national reputation for being super wacky and extroverted. I've got the wacky bit down, but it rarely reveals itself in the endearing ways it is supposed to. My team's goal, and my own personal goal is to be more social. Recently, at a workday beer-tasting--yes, that happens--a coworker from another department said, "[Insert my department name] never F*&%^ comes to anything!" Then he backed his way out of the room with an ice chest, all the while sticking out his ass and saying something hysterical that has since slipped my mind. It seemed at the time a revelation--perhaps because I had been sipping beer brewed by trapist monks with a penchant for high alcohol by volume.

Given the revelation, I decided to attend a happy hour after work one day thrown by said fellow's team and another in the same department. I arrived knowing almost no one, and hid out front for a few minutes in 114 degree heat, wondering if anyone I knew was in some secret room after seeing no one I recognized. While I stood sweating awkwardly, an elderly man approached with his cart saying, "Ooooooweee, you picked the right day to be standing here!" His cart was covered in cheap cotton underwear, which was probably newer and nicer than any I own, but was also probably hot off a shelf at Walmart, so I giggled at him and said, "No thank you," and he headed on his merry way. With sweat beginning to pool and drip rather than bead, I decided to suck it up and head inside. When I approached a table of ladies who looked like they could be members of the opposing team, they confirmed that they do work for the same company, but noted they are not members of the team for whom I was searching, and instructed me to head out back and not to forget my sunglasses. I laughed awkwardly, introduced myself more awkwardly, and headed for the door with my sunglasses.

Upon exiting, I found a patio graced with a painting of two horses humping in an otherwise pedestrian equestrian scene and a long table surrounded by coworkers whom I barely know or haven't met. Feeling gutsy, I proceeded to the far end of the table where a bunch of strangers and one person I met once were seated, and pulled up the heaviest metal chair I have ever attempted to lift. With a mild welt forming on one pinched finger, and vaguely out of breath, I sat down and said hello while shyly reintroducing myself to the semi-acquaintance, who, when he met me the first time, was shocked to learn I had been with the company for over a year. He laughed and didn't remember me while others smiled politely, but avoided introducing themselves, as I did. I took my seat beneath an umbrella that was dripping water from the kindly mist system. It felt glorious, but it was also soaking my shirt through.  I embraced it for a while and ate a hamburger in between strained smiles and attempts to become involved in the conversation.

When a few people with whom I felt comfortable making small talk showed up fashionably late, I promptly restationed myself in the direct sunlight atop a searing concrete bench. My butt threatened to blister, but at least I felt mildly less self conscious for a moment or two. We carried on for about a half hour before I decided it was time to surrender and head home. I said my farewells and headed out through a metal gate with sharp points protruding at my forehead level. My face bounced off of them, and I walked on, head held high.

Hi again

This blog has become totally scattered and nonsensical, much like my brain. That's fine. I'm just going to keep up the randomness because it's fun for now. I keep trying to devise witty names and taglines, but everything cool seems to be taken, so a sad hamburger I shall remain.

Life keeps plugging along. While I drove home from work this afternoon in a line of scorching-hot Vegas rush hour traffic, I remembered how delightful it is that I am able to do this--go with the flow and be pulled along by the waves of routine and day-to-day living.  I keep thinking of Syria and the people there who have lost all semblance of the mundane. Of course, that leads to thinking of people everywhere who would kill for a bit of ho-hum afternoon driving. My mind fills up with sheer terror when I think about what it would feel like to leave home behind and venture into the desert with little food or water, fewer belongings, and hopefully my family, but maybe not. That is what is happening to thousands of civilians, though while their government and their rebels fight it out. I am not nearly well enough informed to make many valid arguments about this, and I don't feel okay about taking a firm stance that the armed forces should be there because I am not exactly jumping at the opportunity to enlist and fight. I don't think fighting ever solves anything, but I am small and simplistic in the grand scheme of humanity, beliefs, and limited resources. I do feel, though, that I have an ethical responsibility to these people, and that the world does. I also feel that we are on the brink of a third world war. I suppose the world wouldn't be the world without them. We've gotta have something to teach in history class, right? And fodder for another generation of movies.This being human is messy and scary. It's easy to stick my head under a cushy pillow and pretend that everyone is having the same good fortune I am, afternoon traffic and all. I am open to suggestions on how to surface in a meaningful way.