I had to make an order today over the phone because the website wouldn't take my PL credit card, and when the woman asked what message I'd like to attach (it was a gift purchase) I said "YAY" and when I got the confirmation email it turned out she wrote "YEAH!! From, Jasia." Should have been more precise.

Today was the first day in a long time that I didn't wake up exhausted. I have since become exhausted, in the few hours I've been up, but it was a good feeling.

Bonus! Here's a little update on the dating scene:

Boy do I hate it when people text me 4 times before I respond to their first text. And when it's all in a row, don't even imagine I'll appreciate it. HOW and WHY would anyone decide it's a GOOD IDEA to send me SIX TEXTS IN A ROW containing information that a) could have fit into one text message b) was probably not that crucial to convey at all!!! JJJEEEEEEEZZZUUUSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!


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My 200th post! Welcome to it! It's not a treat:

I read a few things about facebook privacy today, and while I've been pretty vigilant about most settings, this was an opportunity to go in and explore what things that should be (un)checked weren't, so I did. And for some reason something happened that made my profile all differently structured than I wanted it to be. Maybe this just happened with everyone's profile when they did that change from "fan pages" to "liked pages" or whatever, but in any case I had to remove all my likes and interests because I had written "I don't watch TV, but when I do I'm a news junkie" and so fucking facebook linked my profile to 2 separate "pages" that were supposed to reflect this preference: the "I don't watch TV" page, which was populated I'm sure by people who are nothing like me at all, and the "when I do I'm a news junkie" page, which was populated by me and one other person. Same thing with "the kind with rhythm and melody" statement I had written under "musical preferences". Goddamn, I don't want to be linked to a page called "the kind with rhythm" for fuck's sake. And a "melody" page. Is facebook really that intent on uniformizing their users?

Here's something I took off my dating profile today, because Lalee said I should write less negative stuff. Ha ha. So out of my whole sardonic profile I chose to take out this. Funnnnnyyyyyyy. Anyway. Thought I'd keep it around somewhere. This was under "most private thing You're willing to share here" or something like that.


I have relocated Way. Too. Many. Times.

I think it's because I have trouble compromising the various characteristics that are important in a place to live. Does open sky outweigh rampant uniformity? Should proximity to family be prioritized over congruence of societal values to mine? Can a short distance to a reasonable running path compensate for a long distance to a modern art museum? Where is my promised land?! Why can't I have it all?! I WANT ROOM SERVICE!

I went to get a pedicure today. The colour on my toes is "Italian Love Affair" which is a colour I wore once before in about 2002 (for some reason my memory contains almost no autobiographical details but the name of every colour I've ever worn on my toes*) when I was ga-ga over an Italian economics grad student who, after completing his degree, got a job in Turkey, which I thought would suit his cigarette-smoking habit wonderfully. So, anyway, "Italian Love Affair" is a very point-blank pink colour. I like it very much, but I really was looking for something darker or more purple in tone. But the overwhelmingly many polish bottles were all set on backlit shelves that my hungover self could not possibly face for too long. Plus I started knocking bottles over as I browsed. Then I decided that my hungover self that should perhaps not follow my hungover self's instincts too much today.

* You remember, perhaps, "Need a Vacation"? I considered that colour too. "Feelin' Hot-hot-hot"? "Sweetie Pie"? Swoją drogą, nail polish colours are the most punny realm of "creative writing" I've ever seen. "Eiffel for this colour"? "Bastille my heart"? "Shootout at the OK Coral"? Some writer is really self-actualizing with these.

I feel like one of the things (THE main thing?) that determines whether a relationship will materialize after a few dates, or not, is the match between the level of maintenance one party gives and the level of maintenance the other party wishes to receive. For example, it is not atypical to hear that someone doesn't want to see a date again because he calls too seldom, or because he just keeps calling (this second variant is more typical for me). I don't like it when they call too much. It's great--really wonderful--when they communicate that they like me. That is super. The problem appears because they almost always follow that up (before I respond) with numerous other communications about what they think and feel about me. This is not OK* for 2 reasons: a) this often happens before I feel that they have any real idea of who I am, so I think they are egregiously premature in their judgements; b) in terms of general rules of engagement, it seems to me that convention dictates that one party says something, and then should wait for the other to respond before offering up more of itself. If the other party isn't responding, it doesn't always mean that the silence has to be filled. Or maybe, it would be nice, instead of externalizing some more, to ask the other person to externalize?**

So when I get all these calls/text messages/whatever, it feels like a) they are overconfident in their judgements of people b) they are not following basic rules of communication c) they are trying to maintain me in a way that I don't want to be maintained. In a way that doesn't work for me. This makes me think less of the guy. But all this might just be rationalization.

Really what it is, is that I think that this frequency of calling indicates the level of maintenance one is willing to put into a relationship, and probably will expect in return. I don't maintain too much. I can't be with someone, I think, who requires so much maintenance. So this is a sign for me that we are not a good match.***

I think for every person there is a sweet spot between aloofness and overeagerness that most other people don't hit -- and it's not because they are necessarily bad matched on other dimensions, but bad matches on this particular dimension, which could be taken as symptomatic for how a longer relationship would look, in terms of depth/frequency/kind of interactions. But could also be entirely inaccurate.

So, basically, I'm trying not to let that affect my opinions of men who otherwise seem alright.

* for me.

** This might be the most important part of this post. Truer than the other parts. Maybe it's that I want someone to help me externalize, and most people don't know how to do that.

*** Of course the flip side are the people who don't maintain at all, and that is a whole other disappointed blog post.