Category: ultrapersonal

Snaps

Passport 100415

Today’s passport photo, capturing 39 1/2 years or so of stress and strain. Of course, there’s always some kind of TREMENDOUS HASSLE lurking in the background every time I need to take another damned one of these, and today is no different. I don’t even have the consolation prize of good drama or anything, just another round of unexpected bureaucratic hassle. I love living over here, but all the passport and visa and tax and money issues give the whole experience a never-ending tinge of stress, and I’ll be happy one day when it all settles down.

But for now I have to go find someplace that takes the kind of passport photo which is valid for US passports, which naturally have totally different specs than any photo booth available in the UK, so that I can then go to the US Embassy — who are currently in possession of my passport, claiming it’s too damaged to have new pages added to it — and get an early renewal, which means I’ll also be saddled with the hideous new chip-enabled passport, for the low, low price of $100 — which I’ll have to scrape together somehow. After that, I’ll have to find out how to transfer my UK visa into the new passport, which will no doubt involve more photos and more outrageous charges. Another day, another emergency, another fee.

Tweetless

Screw it. I tried to work out a system for integrating my Twitter posts with the posts here, but it just wasn’t working. It was hard to set up just right, a pain to mess with all my RSS feeds, and the whole thing kept breaking anyway. It just wasn’t worth the hassle of getting it right, and I just don’t have the time to deal.

Even worse, the whole attempt did nothing but encourage a growing bad habit of ignoring this site and spreading my wisecracks around elsewhere. There are a number of things that bug me about places like Twitter of Facebook becoming de facto repositories for my online activity, which is why I was trying to integrate my postings a little better. For one thing, I like having all of my stuff on my site, where it can be managed and archived on — or deleted form — my server. It’s not just that I’m a bit of a nerdy control freak about my data, but after years of cultivating this space, I don’t want to surrender my online presence to the vagaries, presentation, and terms and conditions of another environment.

The thing is, though: all the action is over there now. The age of blogging as I once knew it is pretty much over, and online social interaction happen less and less across a ragtag network of personal sites, and more and more in sprawling social networks with a pretty tight control over how things work. This is hardly a recent development. Rather, it’s been deteriorating for quite some time. The barrier for entry is much lower on social networking sites, so of course people flock to them. And it’s easier to devote your energy to sites where content arises out of smaller, easier contributions from a larger group of people, rather than spending time writing, reflecting, or preparing visuals on your own site, and then trying to draw people to it to comment and interact. The ups and downs of my posting habits certainly prove that.

But I still believing in having my own place here, just as I’ve had for over a decade now. Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Thingbox and whatnot maybe the village squares where I lounge and chat with pals, but this is still my home, and still the longest-running single thing that I’ve accomplished. I don’t want to give up just yet and fully turn myself over to the wide open spaces of those other sites.

I want you to join me here, and I want to keep finding reasons to keep this going.

Woe = me

Doesn't anybody want me?

It’s not that bad, I swear, but a guy’s gotta let off some steam now and then, right? Of course, those long, mopey periods of repeated blows to my self-confidence are punctuated by enough lucidity to realize that even when I catch someone’s eye, I’m often on the other side of the equation feeling a lack of true zing!, so I can’t even complain about the total unfairness of it all. Nevertheless, it’s been a while since there has been any real promise of anything, any glimmer of substantial mutual interest of any kind, and the dwindling prospects have been wearing me down lately.

I try to remind myself, though, that those romance comics always ended on an up note, so we’ll see. As ever.

The little things

Extrapolating from current data, it looks like 2010 be the year I sell off all my worldly goods in a vain attempt to pay bills, but still manage to starve myself. Alone.

Still, there are a handful of things that buoy my spirits in these trying times (or at least this week): reading Jane Austen, the reappearance of Cadbury Mini Eggs, the impending climax of Dollhouse, the Stern family’s annual newsletter, grapes, and slow but steady progress on my Tamil typeface.

Post-Christmas

Well, it was nice enough for work to issue my January paycheck a week early so I could make it through Christmas. Still, looking at my budget projections for the next month, my only chance for solvency for the next five weeks is to eliminate entertainment, train tickets to work, and food. Time to see what else I can sell on eBay, it seems.

Happy New Year!

Fringe Cuisine

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On a lighter note, I’m strangely pleased to see the Times do a nice round-up of affordable, exotic dining options on Staten Island. Although I’m not likely to ever get a chance to explore any of these places, it’s nice to take a moment to reflect upon the positive aspects of the place where I grew up for a change.

Trivia: that article quotes a food editor at the Staten Island Advance on whom I had a brief, unrequited, adolescent crush. I note that she apparently never left the Island, at least not for good.

Additional trivia: the Staten Island Advance is Staten Island’s local newspaper, whose offices and plant were just up the street from where I lived until I left for college. Most kids in the neighborhood hung out at some point in the woods around there or in a little spot beneath an overpass in their parking lot, but it was lame.

Oh! And another thing: The Advance seems to have a Gay and Lesbian Life section now. Huh.

Code Red

I love my job — really, really love my job, to such a degree that I regularly worry that I can’t possibly do well enough to live up to the opportunity of it. But there’s a catch. (Well, there are two catches. The other one is that the pay kinda stinks for now.) You see, a good chunk of the position that I’m in is paid for by a UK government grant that encourages businesses and universities to collaborate on research-and-development projects. That part is great, but a chunk of the money spent on the scheme goes toward giving all of us who participate training in management in accordance with the UK’s Management and Leadership National Occupational Standards, leading toward a Level 5 Diploma in Management and Leadership, granted by the Chartered Management Institute. Does that sound like a clusterfuck of bureaucracy to you? It should. Still, I’ve been giving it a chance, and not just because I didn’t have much of a choice.

Continue reading “Code Red”

Awkward Chit-Chat

More than once lately, I have been making small talk with someone I’ve just met — usually a guy, usually one that’s interesting in some way — and he’ll ask if I have a boyfriend, which is easy enough to answer. (No, in case you think I’ve had a mystery man stashed away somewhere. It’s been a while.) But then there’s a follow-up: “Why not?”

Seriously? What the fuck kind of a question is that to ask someone? I suppose it would be simple enough to answer if I’d made a conscious decision, and I could say something to the effect of “I reject heteronormative coupling because I find it politically and socially oppressive.” Really, though, there’s not an answer. If there were a clear reason, then it would probably one that I could address in some fashion.

Continue reading “Awkward Chit-Chat”