Brian's World

Third Party

I will tell you about a strange night.  When I was walking back from the Union to BARH I passed someone, as I usually do.  There was some sort of large party happening near the Union and there were a higher than normal number of people dispersed outside on the sidewalk and surrounding areas..  This time, instead of acting startled or just ignoring me after a quick glance they said “Hi”.  I was unsure if they were talking to me, so I waited 2.5 seconds before responding with “Hi” and accelerating my walking pace.  They proceeded to keep talking to me or about me… but I decided responding wouldn’t be in my best interest.  For all I know, they could have wanted to know how I was doing so they could stall me and stab me or something.  Anything’s possible on campus these days.

But in all seriousness, it was strange for a few reasons.

1. People who I don’t know rarely communicate with me.  I’m not very outgoing and tend not to engage in communication with everyone I see.  The reverse is also true, where people don’t feel like I’m the most approachable person.  I’ve found people are more like to speak with the people around me than to me.
2. I don’t think anyone has randomly said Hi to me after 10:oopm.  While not common, its not unheard of for someone to enter the Web Tech Group office during class hours (Sun-Thur, 2pm-7pm) and say “Hi, can I borrow a stapler.”  When people do that I always wonder, are they talking specifically to me (when I’m alone in the office, as I often am) or if they are just proclaiming their desire for a stapler out-loud in hopes that I’ll respond.  Usually I do lend them the stapler.

On a side note, I enjoy using an <ol> any chance I can get.  That is probably one of my favorite html tags.

I think I can count the different parties I interact with on a weekly basis on 1 hand. so there are less than 5 of them.  Usually, I can rely on one of them to be in positive territory, and the rest to be in negative or neutral territory.  In recent weeks, it seems everything has fallen into a recession, no positive parties around.  This is making my life slightly less pleasant than normal since its harder to find an outlet where I won’t be scolded.  Traditionally, I think I’ve used some sort of tipsy-turvy spinning disc model to balance things, controlled, in part, by my advanced hula-hooping skills whereby at least one party would be up (positive) and some parties would be down (negative).  Clearly I have lost my hip rotating skill or the hula-hoop has gotten heavier, possibly a combination of both.

Unlike the financial recession, I doubt that anyone will hand me money to get better.  (Despite the fact that money probably wouldn’t solve my problems, it would be nice gesture.)  I think that one reason I was able to always keep something in the positive was the rotating action, where I could use the existing momentum to pull something else up into the positive.  Now that I’m starting with no momentum, or in some instances.. having to stop the negative momentum… things will prove to be a challenge over these coming weeks.

I avoid admitting defeat, but its hard to see the bright side when every thought/idea you have is tossed aside.

Maybe I should try poetry.