I feel really, really sorry for the man. It must be hard to have a life that has nothing more important in it than obsessing about who is or is not using a bathroom.
Anyhoo, after work I got Carrie for lunch. We ate the leftover soup and then I made macaroni & cheese for the second course. I worked on BF stuff while Carrie took a nap, and then around 3:00 or 3:15 I went and filled the car up with gas and headed up to hang out with Sandy y Mathias in Seattle.
We went to Maneki for dinner, which is excellent, excellent, excellent. I had:
- Tako Yaki
- Salmon steamed in foil pouch with onion, mushroom, and miso sauce
- Ika nigiri
- Spicy tuna roll
Yes, I'm actually starting to be able to incorporate spicy foods back into my diet! Very exciting! Of course, my tongue has totally gotten out of the habit, so spicy things seem much more spicy to me. I've become re-sensitized over these past many years of not being able to indulge. Don't worry, I'll take it slowly.
After dinner Mathias was very tired, so he basically went to bed. Sandy & I walked a couple of blocks over and a couple of blocks up to this really cool underground place called Remedy Teas. I call it underground because you have to walk down some steps from the sidewalk to get into it, not because it's all edgy and undiscovered.
We each got a small pot of tea (I got jasmine/blueberry green tea) and sat around talking for the next couple of hours. On Monday Sandy has a phone interview for some kind of office assistant position at Cobalt. She's kinda nervous, even though she has basically had every kind of job in existence (I believe she said 65 jobs in 14 years), so there's not really anything they can ask her about that she can't draw on some experience of hers to deal with.
We also talked a lot about what I called "What is your Kung-Fu?" I've mentioned a couple of other times on this website that my philosophy is basically this:
Happiness is an organism efficiently doing its intended function
I believe that everybody has... a "Raison d'Etre" or "Purpose in Life" or "Kung-Fu." Basically, something that makes them happier—actually happier, not desperately trying to be happy by running away from yourself—than doing anything else. I call it a Kung-Fu because it's something that you always want to work at.
Me? I actually have a main Kung-Fu and a secondary Kung-Fu. My main Kung-Fu is "Creator." I make stuff. All the time. I paint, draw, etch, design websites, write, etc. The specifics are not important, just the category. One of the happiest days of my life was when I was in college and I had a cold and decided not to go to class. So I stayed home and in one day wrote 65 pages of a screenplay without really stopping except for a couple of bathroom and food breaks. The screenplay was pretty crappy, but that didn't matter. The result wasn't nearly as important as the fact that I was doing my intended function efficiently. I was just creating and creating and creating.
I'm fortunate now that I create for a living—all of my sources of income come from me creating things: websites, art prints, and etched glassware. It makes me feel a good amount of fulfillment, because I can feel it as certain as I can feel my heart beat that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
My secondary function? I call it "Comfortidor" (it's a Buffy reference). I love to make my friends and loved ones feel better. I actually like it when my friends and loved ones to come to me with their problems. Hopefully I'll be able to help in some way, any way. And if not, at least they know that I'm there to listen to them, and maybe that alone will make them feel a little bit better. That's why I'm such a good listener. My Comfortidor Kung-Fu is also why I do Fools Play, because I get to help a crowd of people forget all their troubles and have a good time for a couple of hours (Fools Play also fulfills my Creator function, but to a lesser extent sometimes). Being a Comfortidor is more troubling than being a Creator, because it's very upsetting to me when there is nothing I can do to make someone feel better, whereas I can always create something, even if I just think up story/plot ideas in my head.
Anyway, I'm saying all of this stuff about my Kung-Fu because Sandy is kinda looking for hers right now. Which I think is really cool. There are all sorts of Kung-Fu's out there. There's Creator, Comfortidor, Server, Leader, Organizer, Learner, Explorer, Do-er (as in Physical Activity), Performer, Socializer, Teacher, etc. And there are as many ways to approach doing your Kung-Fu as there are types of Kung-Fu. But that's a topic for another post (I'm an "Assimilator"). And I think it's tremendously important that people try and figure out what their intended function is. It makes it a whole lot easier to be a whole lot happier if you know what it is that makes you (actually) happy.
Whew! Didn't mean to get so philosophical on y'all.
Labels: Life, Philosophy
