If a Picture is Worth 1000 Words...

A friend recently confided in me about loneliness. I could completely relate because I recently dealt with a similar issue. This friend dislikes small talk and at the same time feels that a literal and fully-fleshed out response to “How are you?” isn’t always the right way to go. It occurred to me that in this era of plenty, moderation is a scarcity. Why limit yourself when there are so many unlimited things?

Like food, we need to moderate our lives. As much as I love steak (and I do love me some steak), I can’t live off of steak. Even I start to crave a balanced diet after awhile. Maybe sometimes we have to put up with the irritating small talk and all the frustrations of shallow social interactions.

That doesn’t mean you should give up on finding serious friends. I think you need plenty of steak to go with your sprinkling of salads and mashed potatoes. Just be more aware of how to moderate yourself. The same advice I gave to my friend, which I hope helps. You can’t appreciate something precious without something to give it value. Like that wilted salad giving your steak an extra boost of flavor…

I always get annoyed by people who hit me up MONTHS after I unfriended them. I feel like if you didn’t notice me gone from your life, your life is fine without me. What is the point of being a friend to someone if you can’t even tell they’re a part of your life? At what point are we friends and at what point do we become just “people who know each other”?

I feel that I have a right to friend or unfriend people. They have an equal right to friend or unfriend me. If someone unfriends you…isn’t that indicative that they DON’T want to talk to you? So why in the hell would you go and message them “DID YOU UNFRIEND ME????”

The sad reality is that instead of sticking to my guns and having the argument of “well let’s see, we never talk, it took you months to realize I was gone…so why should we still be friends on facebook?” I chickened out and said I unfriended the wrong person. Le sigh. I guess because in order to have that argument, I have to be really angry at the person or unwilling to friend them. I unfriended this person because to be quite honest, I just didn’t feel like we were even friends any more. It’s like, do you even bother to check your old email accounts that you never use? Or do you shut them down and never bother looking back? 

I can’t understand why people get so damn offended by unfriending. It is a remarkably civil way to end a friendship. In fact, it’s far more civil than any of the other ways friendships end (fights, betrayal, etc). And yet, some people would prefer those ugly, in-your-face confrontations. If someone didn’t want to be my friend, I wouldn’t want there to be a big production about it. They could simply say that. On the other hand, if someone wanted to be my friend, they could go ahead and say that too. Why does it have to be so damn complicated?

In the future, perhaps I’ll stick to my guns and actually say “well, by every definition of friendship, you and I are not friends. I didn’t see a point to being friends on facebook.”

Perhaps.

I actually liked that flick and I’m not a big fan of Zooey Deschanel or Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I don’t hate either one, I just don’t have a strong desire to see a movie with them in it.

Today marks the 800th day of my relationship. That’s a pretty big deal. Over two years of memories, funny little moments that are quick and fleeting, and a whole lot of shared laughter. Despite the fact that I feel like it’s always winter outside, being with her has felt much more like spring. I won’t get into a long digression about spring and winter, but I actually really like the indoor part of winter. Cozy, melt-your-bones warmth in a bed that has a stronger gravitational pull depending on how cold it is outside. Couple that with a fun conversation or just the steady breathing of someone you love next to you and suddenly winter is a very happy season.

But spring has a much better connotation so spring it is.

It’s funny, here in Korea the anniversaries and whatnot are marked in 100 day increments. I think it might stem from the fact that back in the old days, if your baby lived to be 100 days old, there was a good chance it would keep on living, barring any accidents. So they celebrate the 100th day of a baby’s life here. Which I guess then got translated over into relationships. I know roughly in terms of months and years (we started dating in October, it’s December, so two years two months), but she always keeps track by 100 day increments. Maybe it’s because the Lunar calendar is so screwy (certainly not the solar calendar at fault, ahem ahem) that it’s just easier to count the days instead of the months/years. In which case, 100 is a nice round number that people are comfortable using.

Anyway…800 days. Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about the future of this relationship. Precisely because both she and I have spent much of the relationship NOT thinking about the future. I know I’m criticized by people who hear that I’m not going to marry her and that we have no plans to do so. I never thought I’d be that guy, to be honest. I’m not even a commit-a-phobe. But if she was absolutely the right woman for me, I’d know and I’d be the one thinking about marriage and our future. 

To be honest, most of the thought I’ve put into a possible future where she and I marry has been…weird. I feel like if I could split myself into two parallel lives, I totally would marry her. I’d have to live in Korea and start my own academy and not be the person I still have hopes of becoming. It sounds terrible, but actually I don’t think I would mind. If I really didn’t care about what my parents thought and living up to my education and upbringing…hell, I’d do it.

But the English industry in Korea is not a career. It’s a well-paying temporary job. Even if I started my own academy, eventually this English bubble will burst. I won’t have any transferrable skills and I’ll have to start some other business.

She’d never move to the US. She would if I asked her to, but she’d never thrive. Just like she couldn’t ask me to give up my dreams for the future, I couldn’t ask her. She’d be in a country where she doesn’t really speak the language, away from all of her friends and family. If that was something she truly wanted, then I could ask it of her.

So these past 800 days of stasis, where neither one of us is willing to grow up and admit this relationship has no future, they’ve actually been wonderful. I have no regrets. On the other hand, it’s the end of this relationship that worries me. We’ll both be ok, but I think we’ll both be missing a little part of ourselves for the rest of our lives.

I half-heartedly believe in reincarnation. I hope in a past life we were lovers. I’d like to believe that in a future life, we could make it work. Maybe fate will give us another chance. I’d sincerely like to believe that.

I couldn’t think of a nice pun. My coworker was talking about one his previous relationships and how he got caught up in this “rent-to-own” situation. I think too many people get caught up in it and I’m no different.

I know I’ve gone round and round with this relationship situation, but I keep coming back to it because she’s always so good to me. When you have something that good, you don’t want to give it up. But on the other hand, it’s like renting an apartment. I love apartments. They’re convenient, they’re clean (at least until I move in haha), and they fit your requirements pretty well. But I always imagined myself in a home when I think of raising a family. It sounds horrible (and to be honest I think that’s because it IS horrible) but my current girlfriend is more like an apartment than a home. Yes, I could live there and live comfortably. And in a world where there only existed apartments, I am most certain that I would live there. 

But this world has homes and I just feel like I’m not quite ready to buy yet. My coworker warned me about renting to own (I know, it’s confusing with all this renting and real estate lingo but bear with me). He said he was in a relationship with this girl and he didn’t even like her. But the similarity is that he was just in it for so long that the longer he was in it, the worse it got. He didn’t want to buy the apartment but before he knew it, he was already halfway there to owning it.

It’s just after Christmas and the New Year is fast approaching. The same with Valentine’s Day. But I think those excuses are just about as hollow as they sound so I’ll be making a decision soon. Nobody likes change, but when the time comes, I think we all have to have the strength to be decisive.

My company gave all of the non-owners Christmas gifts (so four people out of all seven who work here) and I got this Nike Fuelband which I’ve been eyeballing for awhile. There has been some criticism that it’s useless and I’d like to address that here. Bear in mind, this is my second day using it, but I’m already starting to see results.

Basically, you have to know WHAT you want to use it for. People who are already very active and motivated are going to get little use out of this device. On top of that, you have to know what you’re doing: establish baselines, understand that “Fuel” is not necessarily calories/steps taken, etc, and how to read your Fuelband.

I have heard it summed up best this way: it doesn’t track what you do, it tracks the amount of time you spend NOT doing things. And for me, this is what I needed.

I don’t like being nagged. That’s the quickest way to get me to stop doing something. Nag me to do it. But lately, even I’ve noticed that my weight gain is getting, well, noticeable. I used to be around 130 pounds (I was super scrawny) and now I’m 160. Which is average for my height and age, but on my scrawny man-child frame, it looks bad.

So I wanted to get to be more active. This band helps you do that. I check it every so often throughout the day to see where I am. It has numbers for “Fuel,” which is some sort of measure of how active you’ve been. It also has numbers for calories (virtually useless since they don’t tell you how they measure the number of calories burned) and steps (also useless because the Nike+ GPS doohickey is far more accurate and gives more detailed information, such as GPS location, pace, etc). 

It also tells the time, which is awesome because I needed a watch.

Even though I’m not hitting the gym, I can see when I’m active and when I’m being a total bump on a log. It’s important to note that this band will NOT make you more athletic. But it’s a gentle reminder that if you can be active, you should be.

Being stuck at the office for so long these days, I don’t have time to hit the gym. But I set my goal at 1500 points (that was below the average “normal” day value they have preset in the band) and right now I’m definitely going to break it. I say this because I want to emphasize how important it is to establish baselines. Yesterday I barely broke 1000 but I got the band about halfway through the day. Today, I had it counting my activity since midnight and I was surprised to see 100 points when I woke up this morning.

It’s important to look at your band before and after activities while you’re trying to establish your baselines. That way you can adjust your daily goal accordingly. I think tomorrow I’ll shoot for 1750 since I can easily get 1500 just by doing zero exercise.

That means I’ll have to go out of my way to find something physical to do.

One great feature is the red/orange/yellow/green status bar. When you hit the button to see how many points you have, there’s a bar that shows your progress towards your goal. I also read that there have been problems syncing but as long as you have bluetooth on, you shouldn’t have any problems syncing to your phone.

All in all, I think this band will really shift my life, not in a HUGE way, but a gentle transformation that will point me to being more active when I can, rather than trying to get me to be active forcefully. It’s the carrot to a screaming drill sergeant’s beatings.

So far, so good.

It really bugs me when someone posts something useless and negative on my wall. A sarcastic barb is ok, but lately a few people I know have gone out of their way to be downright rude. For instance, I post something complaining about my parents and their computer illiteracy and how the future is looking bleak. Someone posts something saying “Well future generations won’t be computer illiterate.” I had to reply with “Well I’m assuming my parents will live to see the future and that it looks bleak.”

If you’re trying to argue an opposite side or make a point, fine. But if you’re just being a Debbie Downer Douchebag, I don’t see the point. Just now, I posted up a few pics of my new Nike Fuelband and how I really like it. So some asshole posts about how, while he is a big fan of Nike, the entire fuel campaign has very little practical benefit. Not even a “congratulations, buuuuuut”

Answering a question nobody asked, debating a point nobody even contested…this is why people say the world sucks. If you said “hey it’s my birthday” and I said “hey there’s a completely random chance you could die today in a horrible and mangled death,” that’s hardly appropriate. Yes the example is extreme, but if you’re going to shit on someone’s parade, shit on it quietly in the comfort of your own home.

And if I reply with a snarky comeback, I’m the asshole.

Looks like Captain Asshole dons his cape again… 

My closet friend Jon asked me to spend Christmas with his family like I have been for the past two years here in Korea. Point of fact, his family is much more pleasant than trying to deal with my extended family. So if I couldn’t spend Christmas with my immediate family (my #1 option), this was a helluva #2 option.

After the madness of opening presents and watching his cute three year old daughter open everyone’s presents and declare them “Mine,” I asked him if he got everything he wanted for Christmas.

To which he replied: “Two beautiful kids. What more could I want?”

One day I hope to be that happy.

An old man lives in my building. I have no idea how old, but he’s old enough he literally shuffles. Although he seems pretty frail, I see him twice a day going downstairs to get some air. Once in the morning, once in the evening. Even on a cold, freezing day like today, shuffle shuffle shuffle as he gets on the elevator and shuffle shuffle shuffle on the way outside.

I wondered what in god’s name could bring him outside on a day like today, when I noticed what he was holding in his hand. A cigarette. 

I’m fairly against smoking simply because you take away the rights of others around you. Secondhand smoke is far worse than firsthand smoke. People should have the right to choose what goes into their bodies and if you’re blowing smoke all over the place, that takes away their right to clean air. So what makes you special that you get to do that? If smoking could only affect you, I’d be all for it. Liberty and justice for all.

Back on topic, this old man lives for his smoking. I think at this point, making him quit smoking would probably kill him. It was a strange moment to observe, this shuffling old man and his cigarette. I hope when I am his age, I will know what I love and have the luxury to love it freely. He has his cigarettes as he shuffles along through what remains of his life, no regrets. And that’s more than most people can say.