Hello, operator?
May 31, 2004
So last night I got to talk to Mr. Inkwell, which was really nice. I�d originally bought a phone card to call up Zenith and E. at their wedding so I could congratulate them, but when I called it went straight to voicemail, and I figured they were partying away. Hope everything went well. I want pictures!!
But back to Mr. Inkwell�it was really great talking to him. I haven�t spoken to him since I called way back in February to talk to a bunch of people at Jing�s going away party. As I keep mentioning, I�ve been really busy lately, which has been good because it�s taken my mind off of a lot of the things that were bothering me a month or two ago and it�s kept my mind off of missing Philly and my beloved friends there. But talking to Mr. Inkwell last night brought back a lot of that back. It was funny�he made it sound like little had changed. He was hanging with friends (I got to talk to his buddy C-lo for a minute), his brother had slept over the night before. They�d had beers and watched a movie. The same old good times. I�m not implying that nothing changes for you folks over there. I actually assume that life was changing for all y�all at twice the speed it was changing for me. So it�s nice to know that some things, the little pleasures like hanging out on a summer evening, watching movies and drinking, are still there. Still the same. It was also incredible (and I�m sure extremely gratifying to Mr. Inkwell) that he still cracked me up with the same awkward and cheesy sense of humor. The phone card ran out too quickly though. I hung up feeling really sad, reminded of how sweet and wonderful Mr. Inkwell is and has always been to me, and reminded also of how amazing my group of friends stateside are.
Mr. Inkwell also mentioned that a few people asked about me, occasionally wondering why I hadn�t written, or hadn�t been in touch, and I guess wondering if I hated them. Maybe I should explain something about my communication situation. For starters, I suck at writing emails. I get into this thing where I�ll send a friend an email. They�ll write back. I�ll write back. Then they�ll write back, and I�ll be having fun with this email game. And then? I�ll totally forget to write back � whether it�s because I want to give the email some more time and thought so I put it off till later or because I get distracted � and then I forget completely to write back at all. (And I have to give a real big sorry to Bizzle for doing this to him repeatedly). I think, in fact, that my best friend from high school and I are no longer friends as a result of this very problem I have. Of course, I can�t be sure since I haven�t gotten up the energy yet to write a her a nice long letter and try to make up.
This is why, in general, chat is a better way for me to stay in touch. Of course, there are still a couple problems with this. For starters, I have crappy crappy dial-up here, and I hate staying on line for too long as it keeps the phone line busy, and costs a crap load of money (free service, but you pay like you�re making any regular phone call, so it adds up). This is why I almost never log on to two different chat programs at a time. That way I don�t get bombarded by too many friends wanting to chat. The other problem with me and dial up and chat is that lately, my computer has been going nuts whenever I log on, and I find that after a while the computer just shuts down, and if this happens more than twice while I�m chatting with any friend it just gets to be too much of a pain in the ass (those of you who�ve had this happen to them, I�m sorry. It�s getting fixed). Soon though, I hear we�re getting DSL. How I pray for that day. So it is for the most part a problem of a really bad setup, between my lazy writing skills and less than ideal internet situation.
Now, it is true that when I left Philly I was having a few issues with some people. Issues that I decided not to address, for better of worse, because I figured it wasn�t very nice to dump all that bad feeling on people and then just leave (see, the feelings I was having � though built up over a very long period of time, only became a problem very near the end of my time in PHL). I�m hesitant to be writing all this down now, but it�s something that came up when I was talking to Mr. Inkwell, and it�s something that I haven�t really thought about in a while. If I�d known I�d be around a bit longer, maybe I would have tried to express those feelings I had about people more, and maybe work through them, but I figured it would be pretty cowardly of me to go around telling people I thought they sucked for x,y,z reasons and then have the convenience of leaving. Then again, you could say it was pretty shitty of me to have such a build-up of bad feeling towards someone (or a few someones in this case) and not say anything at all about it to them. Who knows? I know I�m far from perfect, especially when it comes to striking a balance between being honest and straight forward to make myself feel better, and being honest and straight forward as a genuine effort to be good to the people I supposedly care about. Also? I know I�m not very �good� at confrontation. Meaning, I won�t run away from a confrontation. I have no problem standing my ground or whatever. But I hate to be the one to start, I guess.
To a large extent the issues I had with most of these people were situational. Spending a lot of time with them in unusually intense situations caused certain issues to crop up. Issues that I didn�t address immediately because as usual I figured the problem was with me, not with them. And then over time I realized that maybe it wasn�t JUST me, but by the time I reached that point I was leaving, and I didn�t want to leave on a bad note. Having said all that? I�ve forgotten a lot of the issues, and those I haven�t forgotten I�ve gotten over. (Oh gawd, I can just here Ferakiko saying, �This whole thing is SO YOU!! You bitch about something and then you renege, and then no one has any idea what you�re talking about.�)
Haha. I guess it is so me, but let me try to sum up what I�m saying here. 1) I�m a lousy correspondent. Love it or leave it. 2) If you think you might be one of the above people and you want to talk about it, or you want to chew me out for being so lousy I couldn�t even tell you to your face, send me an email.
I just might write back.