Take My Blood, Please!
I just gave blood. Second time; the first time was in a truck near my old job. At my old job, everything was done in trucks. I gave blood in a truck. You could buy your lunch from a truck. A truck came and fixed my car's windshield. Fire? Fire truck. One day I broke my leg, and the surgeon truck appeared.
Only 36 more hours before I start my new job, at Stanford. I'm excited about it, but at the same time it's probably not going to be as pleasant as not working at all. I guess that's why they're going to give me money. Seriously, it's a really great opportunity with a wonderful group of people, and I am excited. Time management will once again be a problem.
I'm going to go try to record myself now.
Post-Hawaii
A first entry's hard to write. Where do I start? Introduction of myself? But if you're bothering to read my blog, theoretically, you know who I am. Well, let's make that assumption, especially since for the time being, if you're reading my blog, you ARE me.
Kauai was fantastic. Nirmala and I spent six days there (including travel days) and it was the most relaxing trip I've ever been on, in spite of the crappy rental car, the long flight, the mosquitoes, the mud, and the noisy accommodations. To offset all this, there were the waterfalls, the beaches, the mountains, the food, and the helicopter tour! If you go to Kauai, ever, TAKE THE HELICOPTER TOUR -- and more importantly, take the one offered by Inter-Island. Their helicopters have no doors!! Talk about fun. There are pictures, but they don't do it justice.
So now I'm home. Nirmala has started working, which means I have to make the adjustment again to doing my own thing all day. Not so bad, really, but not as nice as spending time with her. The trip was really good, there was a little stress on the fifth day, but we got through it, and overall, the trip made us much closer, I feel like. I think it's imperative that we find a way to live closer to each other sometime soon.
It's funny, we tell people that it's hard being 40 miles apart, and they laugh. "Yeah, I was in a relationship for five years where we were 3000 miles apart! Suck it up!!" Well, I too have been in a real "long distance relationship." And, you know what? In some ways, it was easier than this setup. In a LD Relationship, you see each other for a few days in a row every couple of months (6-8 weeks, in my case). You block out everything else for the long weekend (or whatever), and you spend time exclusively with each other -- it's like a little vacation. Back at home, you build your own life, and in terms of scheduling, you're totally free. Yes, you miss your partner, but you know that in X amount of time, you'll get a little vacation with your partner.
In this setup, we're not "Long Distance." We see each other every weekend, and possibly once during the week, though with difficulty (driving 40 miles through Bay Area rush hour traffic is not anyone's idea of fun). You don't get a lot of quality time together, because this time is the same time you have to use to run errands, clean the house, work on projects, etc. You don't go on vacation together that often. You don't get to just ignore your friends for a weekend because your girlfriend's in town -- she's ALWAYS in town! So you never make that special consideration for each other! But you don't see each other that often either!! It's a pain. I do think that overall it's not as difficult (or expensive!) as a true LD relationship, but there are definitely challenges and frustrations.
I just think that so many people get caught up in thinking that what they go through is so much worse than what everyone else goes through. Maybe that's because most people have no capacity to step into someone else's shoes and see their point of view. Of course it's more difficult for YOU, if YOU are the one going through it. But is it more difficult overall? Or is it just different? How many times have you heard something like, "Oh, you think that's bad, wait till you hear this!" We live in a culture of self-pity, to the point where we COMPETE over it!! And if you say to your friends, in response to "How's it going?", "I'm doing really well!! Everything's going just great!!" it seems they want to talk to you less than if you say "You know, same ol' thing" even if that's not true.
Well, enough for today about the disgusting short-sightedness of humanity. There'll be plenty more of that later. After lunch.
