I Love L.A. - A Video Tribute by Me

WE ARE NOT

I feel like I have to fix everything. In truth, I don't know what I could do to make the situation easier. I'm making my best attempts to invite and include you as often as possible, to make you feel welcomed and appreciated by me. I've complimented you, I invited you to meet my friends, I invite you to whatever and even on Sunday, when you couldn't be here I made an effort to visit you because your car broke down. I never reject or ignore you intentionally. You've jumped at me to suppose I'm meaning something more than I intended when I explain OVER AND OVER that I don't. If you feel as though I'm resisting you it might be because we are not in a committed relationship and I have no obligation to let you be close to me. If you felt resentment (although if so, I wouldn't think it's from anything I'd done recently) it's because you repeatedly ignore my requests for space. So then how am I stuck with tending to your emotions? I am having a very difficult time in my life and I am NOT at liberty to tell you all the reasons why. In fact, it's for your own good that you don't know. So how is it that I'm protecting you and I STILL get attacked?

Okay, I give up. I can't be both the emotional one and the smart one that guides you through the process of how to calm me down. Look, you're a lot smarter than me. You are going to have to tell me what I should do. Because I can't think of anything else.

True Management

I like Matt. He has a long perspective and isn’t the least bit worried. And he’s not faking it either. While I knew he had the capacity within him to give me the comfort I craved (I’m only SO smart and only have just SO much experience), it felt good to finally get it. And it’s just as I expected. He knows exactly what’s happening.

It started off by him telling me I’m too smart and talented to worry. And he said it sincerely, just the same way I say to people that they shouldn’t be sad or lonely when I can tell they were clearly meant to be married. I just know that in my gut for them. Just like I did with Eric Chen.

Matt explained to me the difference between the corporate mentality (where we look for the positive, and things are treated in a big-picture perspective like mood and introducing change at an appropriate pace), and what entrepreneurs do. Which is this mess. Huge changes without apology because, in Matt’s words, it’s a less sophisticated approach- they are not tuned in to the company mood. That’s why they’re always shocked when people are angry and confused by their decisions. It also explains to me why the seniors dislike it so much. Not what Jerry said about them being used to lazily feasting on a fat cow (my words, not his) but instead it’s because fear only works in short spurts and it doesn’t work in the corporate mentally. That’s why the seniors (even KJ) are very upset. Maybe this kind of bullying and pushing and negative attitude works for a start up, but these are NOT startup people.

Matt just made me smarter. And I feel better. Just a little.

Lucky.

It's 4am but I wanted to document this for posterity.

I just got home from watching LotR TT with Alex, Stephen, Jason, Mike, Jared, and David. I knew I didn't want to be tired the next day so I set to work falling asleep around the second disk. I managed to drift off but wasn't really asleep near the end. I was awake enough to notice he took his outer shirt off and draped it over me like a blanket (until someone offered a real one).


But here is how I know he loves me. I overheard Mike offer his newly purchased japanese candy to everyone. Alex said he'd take one. Mike encouraged, take more, take as many as you want, have 10! But he insisted, just one, just one, one is fine, I only want one.



 Half an hour later and we are dropping off the last person other than me at home. As soon as he is out of sight, Alex reaches into his pocket and pulls out the candy. It's the one he had asked for earlier. It's the same kind I dropped by accident earlier onto the street and had to throw away. He unwraps it and gives it to me. I was in the middle of my sentance and i stopped when I saw what it was.

Alex is a lot of good things, but I'd like to add to that list one of the most genuinely integral thoughtful men I've ever met. No exaggeration. I know it's a very small thing, but I was a twinge sad when I dropped it. I didn't say anything or even look sad, but all night he must have remembered it and made this plan for me. That small gift... was one of the best. And it's those kinds things that I really can't explain when people ask me about him. I really am lucky.

A Rat's Fart

My cousin is pissing me off.

She's 22 and couldn't give a rat's fart what the people who love and care about her think. She was a troubled girl born without an iota of empathy. She pretended to be suicidal and put her family through years of agony. In the end, she wasn't a danger to herself- she's a selfish brat.

I could go on outlining a number of examples of the stupid things she's said and done. Not to mention the numerous things she's posted on facebook that make me want to slam her faux pink haired head into a concrete wall. Tonight is no exception.

Lindsey (My cuz): Organized religion is modern day brainwash.

 

Ok, already I'm ticked off. What a...

John (I'm guessing he's her paternal uncle):  Thanks for basically saying a lot if your family and loved ones are idiots

 

Casey: Since when has organized religion been modern? And really rude, shortsighted, and alienating Lindsey.

 

Aiden (Her increasingly stupid little brother): I'd say 1830 is relatively modern.

 

I take a deep breath. Don't even try to mention Christianity because it bounces off black-hole brains.

Casey: To my understanding, there has been organized religion since the first literate societies such Egyptians (3150 BC) , Mesopotamians (3100 BC) who recorded their practices... Huh. Perhaps we have different understanding of the word 'organized'. You might want to explain that to Buddhists and Taoism whose first writings were produced on bamboo in the 3rd century... Pretty sure the Qur'an is dated back to 650AD... Oh, and Sumerians from 2900 BC.... Although I'm sure they're a little long gone to hear you. So hey, Facebook is probably the safest place to say it!

 

Aiden: Well, Lindsey is probably showing that it's goofy we still follow those religions seeing as how people believed in dragons and witches back then. 

 

Good grief, if you're going to insult humanity's faith. then at least know what they believed in. 

 

John: Organized religion has been around a long time. Regardless, and back to Aiden's comment, sure, people should question it, think about it and test it. I'm all about free speech and expressing yourself, but the broad generalization here may rub some people that love and care about you the wrong way. Just sayin...

 

I had faith in you John for a moment. But you backed off like a wuss. You must be unfamiliar with her antics and think this is just the fluke of a young person instead of a fully developed snot. Trust me, I'm far beyond the slap on the wrist technique. If she's willing to swing the door open for abuse, then I'm not going to let such a distasteful comment exist unchallenged. 

 

Casey: You're so right Aiden! It's just amazing how Lindsey in her 20 some odd years on Earth has unveiled the ridiculous hoax that has plagued billions of people since it's beginning some 500,000 years ago. Silly me.

 

An hour goes by and no one has said anything. Not even a like to my comments which is sad. But Damage done. I started to write this thinking it was over, but little brainless doesn't know when to quit. 

 

Aiden: In summation, nobody knows anything for sure, so we shouldn't make generalizations. Let's all just be nice! (<- agnostic="" my="" span="" view.="">

 

....Okay, I feel like I'm being trolled by stupidity. But I know from experience it's real. All too real... I prepare one last comment...

 

Casey: Personally, there are certainly things I know for sure and I can comfortably respect well-thought out opinions, studies, and personal experiences that differ from my own. But being willing to stand up for those things, I can't abide by lame blanket assertions that insult swaths of humanity living and dead. It's not just about being nice, it's about giving the smallest amount of respect for another human being and their core fundamental belief.

 

If you can believe it, I 'niced' that up by not using phrases like "give a rat's fart".  Ah, another reply comes in... 

 

Diane: I suppose it depends on your definition of brainwash...?

 

...I don't even.......

 

Service For Goodness Sake

Not that many people are, but I’m not a good person. I can go weeks without seeing any of my friends and be pretty content. I’m a poor weather friend so when someone is in need, I’m right there. A few weeks ago I saw Alli in the Valley. It was really random to run into each other half way across town. But as we caught up I could tell she was close to tears because of her recent break up. I promised I would take her out the dinner the following week. I told her joke to make her smile and I hugged her tightly before she left to let her know that she was special to me. And she is. But I can’t get myself to call her up casually to chat or join anyone at Café 50’s after FHE.

Velwyn has been living in Europe for the past few months. I still stalk her instagram and comment on her new business profile to give it a boost. But I didn’t feel comfortable when she was here to go out for tea alone just for kicks. I did offer to let her stay on my couch however for an interview she’s got next week. She’s the kind of wonderful girl who has friends everywhere but goes through life not thinking about it too much. I wish I was so brave.

But I’m not. I’ll do what service I can do but when it comes down to it- I can’t be myself. Except for Hawaii 2 years ago, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a vacation. Even during summer breaks any time there was anyone else in the room, there wasn’t a moment where I didn’t feel like I shouldn’t be doing something.

You know, when we were kids our mom came home once from shopping and started to yell at us because all the time she had been gone we didn’t think to do the dishes for her. From that point on, every time she left the house my brothers and I would clean it. I mean, clean it the best a 15, 11, and 9 year old knew how. The first time we tried to make it a surprise. The second time, we casually mentioned it to her. I remember thinking she looked a little uncomfortable with how dedicated we had become. The many times after that, we didn’t say anything at all and she didn’t either. We just did it. When she was in the house it was a little like the CEO had come for a visit and we always needed to look like we were busy. She got disappointed once when we went to the library and I picked “Murder, She Wrote” because it was too easy.

I don’t mean to tell that story to draw sympathy or excuse myself from being a self-serving person. Being afraid is really no excuse at all for selfishness- in fact it almost makes it worse. Then any kindness I do give can be interpreted as a desire to feel like I’m being a good person instead of really wanting to buoy the other person up (ironically, another characteristic of my mother). The fact that I am selfish in a different way than other people doesn’t change the fact at all.

Taking this too far, one could say that appearing happy too is then a façade instead of a harmless social obligation.

I might have taken a double dose of my medication today but I don’t remember. I feel my head warbling on my neck like all the fat from my body got stored in my skull and the top heavy crowding is keep blood from flowing to the cells that tell me I’m not a monster in a girl’s body.

Trash

You know what I am?
A weird girl.
too skinny
messy
unkempt
lazy
poor speller
failed entrepreneur
failed friend
failed financially
slow reader
with a job that works me too many hours
not in the position I want to be in
for very little money
on medication
too emotional even for an RP game
in love with a country I can't reach
on a losing political party
bad cook
weak dancer
poor dresser
afraid of people
incapable of getting into a healthy relationship
chatty introvert
dramatic
stupid
crazy.
I don't even like the Beatles.

So go ahead and get married. Have your career and your skills and great talents. Get paid ridiculous amounts of money for little to no work. Take trips and go on a cruise. Send me a hello from Oregon and Virginia and England and Hawaii and New York. Enjoy your craft. Go find better players that don't cry. I hope you're comfortable with someone else to take care of you and your needs and your home. Let your parents take care of your rent while you just go to school in fashion. Is Hawaii just TOO warm? Is your new ipad a little TOO easy to use? Just fire me or set me on fire I don't care. This life was an accident and it's just been thrashed so badly all I can see anymore is trash.

GIS v.s. Asia

*warning- this get's pretty long...*

I shouldn’t complain. But my job is frustrating me. Not that I blame any one particular person and maybe I’m just getting rubbed the wrong way by working for ‘the man’.

They’ve asked me to take on more responsibility for the digital side of the company which I would gladly do and I’ve been preparing to do, but I can’t with all these stupid assignments being thrown on top of the pile.

Yesterday, by noon my legs were killing me because I had to get up from my desk so many times to help people with their computer issues. I had to run to the back server room and crouch under desks and fiddling with boxes and wiring. I hate hardware.

You know, I don’t really feel like typing all this out even. This kind of problem is so much easier to express via voice. I feel like I have to outline all the problems in a list in order to justify my frustration and that would take so long. And I’m not really in the mood to come up with an elegant reader’s digest version. So I’m just going to pretend that everyone works with me already and knows what I’m talking about.

Last night around 5:30 Bill called to ask me to re-run an MMA report for the DMA but include more Index numbers based on nursing homes and all the zips in each NTA. Not really a big deal. But in order to help him along, I also sent him a copy of the Zip Dwelling  Report which breaks down each NTA into zipcodes and tells you the total number and the % of the entire mailed area. You’d think that was going above and beyond. Apparently not.

Katherine asked me to submit a request to GIS to give them not only that information for 4 ADDITIONAL areas but also recreate LA because that Zip dwelling report was generated by a different research company and she wants all 5 areas to MATCH when we show it to the client. So now I’ve got to submit this ridiculously overblown request to GIS and here’s the rub- I don’t actually hear about this report after I submit the request. I’m just doing the stupid donkey-ass labor to get it in. Why am I doing this? This really shouldn’t be my job when THEY are the ones who want it and they have all the same abilities I do to complete it! It would take them less time and it’s their project! But they don’t want to do the leg work. It’s hard to ‘rise to [my] potential’ with stupid backhanded requests like this.

I have ONE assignment to do yesterday and all I could manage was bouncing up and down fixing this and that. Anthony was dumb enough, he *saw* me running around like a crazy person and decided that was the moment to throw on another complaint. His phone wasn’t ringing. This wasn’t a new problem, it had been happening since he got the phone, he just thought RIGHT NOW would be the perfect time to complain about it. So I GET UP from my desk AGAIN so I can’t finish this one little project I’ve had on my desk since that morning. Guess what? It took me 3 seconds to figure out the volume on his ringer was down. It’s not even a complicated process, there’s a freakn’ BUTTON of the FRONT of the phone where if you push it one way or another, the volume goes up and down. I told him I was going to strangle him with his own Ethernet cord.

This same dude in the same day also said his excel was acting up because when he closed the window, the box that asked him if he wanted to save didn’t pop up…. So he was losing all his work. Yes, you read that correctly, he didn’t know how to FILE > SAVE. All his life on every program he has been CLOSING the program and depending on the ‘do you want to save this’ option before closing. I wanted to kill him. I hate hardware problems and I’m a bad person because I don’t like stupid questions where if the questioner had put in the SMALLEST amount of effort, could have figured it out for themselves. I feel like a baby sitter and I’m not even babysitting kids I like. At the same time, when big huge hardware problems and I can’t solve them I feel helpless and lost and everyone needs me to know everything and fix it ALL RIGHT NOW.  It’s so much pressure for something I don’t even like doing. I really don’t think this was in my job description.

But what am I supposed to be doing with my life instead. That itch to go overseas is getting unbearable. All my friends seem to travel there and back with such ease it’s almost painful to watch. My penpal from China came to see me a few weeks ago and it was so nice. He brought me gifts and trinkets and told me all about transportation and the people. He said if I ever visited him he’d take great care of me and made sure I ate the best foods.

Dave’s (you remember, that lawyer I was bonkers about last summer who told me I wasn’t international enough to date him?) mother is visiting him here in the states. And Teida’s mother (Northern China) is coming next month and I want to meet her so badly just to see her and see what she brought with her culturally and physically. Eric Chen and his bride just got back from traveling Taiwan with the parent’s in law and took the most beautiful pictures. Even Hua was over there for a while. But I’ve been swimming in my Japanese lessons. In the car I listen to ‘drive time Japanese’ and I just learned to count to 100. I had a dream last night that someone told me how old they were and I translated it right away. When I get home I gobble the rosetta stone Japanese lessons.  Last night I spent 4 hours researching the course work and study abroad options for BYU MBA. I don’t really want an MBA… I mean, I do- and I’d love to take the classes and go back to a study schedule and steep myself back into the field I love so well, meet with like minds and work with bright youth and feel like I’m going somewhere again.

But I wonder if this craving will dissipate if I could just _go_. If I could just get over it and see it, get it out of my system and then I can settle down. Maybe my yellow fever would die down and I could find peace with myself that if I never worked in marketing again and I never had a set of beautiful dark-haired baby boys that I wouldn’t feel like I had failed. But I’m restless in this job. People say, “Just go!” but I can’t. It’s so expensive and I’d need some kind of guide or help or at least a translator to help me get around. I could go alone technically but it would be a lot more expensive and dangerous. And how will I ever save the money to do it anyway? I want at least ONE of these ventures I’m working on to come through and show success but all that seems far away.

Even if I were to start a master’s program, it wouldn’t be until Fall 2014. 2 years away until I gave away another 2 years of my life. I wouldn’t get to see that beautiful place until Jan 2015. By then, I hope my Japanese is shabby enough to use it but feel completely embarrassed about it.

It’s so far away from submitting this request to GIS.

The Downside to Logic is you Lose.

I've figured out why women are so unreasonable when they fight. Because if they use their brains like I do and wait for an argument that I'm actually right about to fight, I always lose. Not because I'm wrong. But because the other person is never wrong. Tim for example is never wrong. Hua is never wrong. I'd lick the floor of a New York public restroom before I ever expected any concede from either of those two. Better to be a stupid hormonal girl and just pick random fights that have no reasoning or thought to them at all. That way I'll actually win once in a while.

"You hit me and it hurt!"
"Then you should learn to duck better!"

...Wth.


Dear boys,

I hate you right now. Stay away from me or I'll treat you like a pez dispenser.

Casey.