Security measures

One of my friends seems to be particularly good at pointing out the humor behind various guy-girl interactions. Here are ones I really like so far:

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1. The Ambush

'The Ambush' (a term made up by my friend, to my knowledge) describes that all-too-typical scenario when a girl will ask a guy some question that forces him to choose between being nice (or "sensitive") and being honest. Prime example:

Girl: "Does this shirt make me look fat?" (The Ambush)
Guy: Uh...um...

Essentially, the guy is caught between a rock and a hard place. As a girl, I might feel hurt if the guy was honest, but I know I would feel even more hurt if I knew he wasn't being honest. It's a lose-lose situation. So the questions are, for the girl, should she just refrain from ever asking questions like that? And for the guy, how should he respond to that type of question?

2. The Nice Guy Syndrome

The Nice Guy Syndrome describes how girls will often form close friendships with guys that they would never date, and the weird emotions that accompany the guy in such a situation. My friend's example:

Girl: "I want to go to this party, but I don't want anyone to hit on me. Will you please come with me? I'll feel safer then."
Guy: Uh...um...

My friend pontificated at length about how even if he isn't "interested" in the girl, that invitation alone causes a stir of injustice to rise within him. He starts to question why he's viewed by her as a source of protection and platonic friendship but not as anything "more." And though he would never want to date her, he's frustrated that she wouldn't want to date him.

Actually, that situation reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the movie "When Harry Met Sally." In this scene, Harry comforts Sally as she is crying over the fact that her ex-boyfriend just got engaged.

Sally: He just met her... she's supposed to be his transitional person, she's not supposed to be the ONE. All this time I thought he didn't want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn't want to marry me. He didn't love me.
Harry: If you could take him back now, would you?
Sally: No. (begins to cry again) But why didn't he want to marry me?

*****

I think that a common theme in both of these examples is that they really highlight some of the insecurities that we experience. In an Ambush situation, the girl is looking for someone to help her feel more secure in her appearance. Or more secure in how her significant other perceives her appearance, at the very least. In a Nice Guy Syndrome, the guy is looking for affirmation as man, not simply as a friend.

Of course, it is wonderfully nice to occasionally feel a bit more secure. It's a hard journey to get there yourself, and therefore it's really nice to hear compliments from others (including, and occasionally especially, from the opposite sex). But sometimes honesty is...well, honesty, and it can hurt.

I still am figuring out how to deal with some of my insecurities. Do I ask people for feedback and just expect to get devastatingly honest answers, like in the Ambush situation? Or do I keep my insecurities to myself and silently let a sense of injustice creep in, characteristic of the Nice Guy Syndrome? Ideally I should be working to get over some of my insecurities...but it can take a lot of effort, and it's nice to feel support along the way. So I guess another question is how do I go about looking for support without placing undue demands on my friends and family?

Feeling incomplete...

...but this shirt would help. Wait, no, it would just remind me about incompleteness. Oh dear, I'm such a nerd. ;)

Someone please tell me that you know what I'm talking about. ;)

The nobility of accountability

One thing I've learned about myself during grad school is that my motivation really ebbs and flows. Lately it's been ebbing. :) But accountability is a good way to give myself some much-needed help.

* Need to wake up at a reasonable hour? Have my roomie threaten to send in the dog if I'm not up by a certain time.
* Need to stop staring into space during the day? Tell my officemate to look over once in awhile and make sure that I'm typing away for the next x (where x >> 0) minutes.
* Need to overcome various mental academic obstacles? Get together for a long and intense study-session with a friend who needs to do the same.
* Need to keep long-term goals in mind? Tell my advisor what I want to do before I graduate, and ask him to give me occasional deadlines and to make sure that I actually keep my word.
* Need to keep a straight head during emotionally rough times? Figure out what are smart and non-smart courses of action and e-mail a friend who will check up on me to see that I'm sticking with the smart ones.

It's hard for me to decide whether I like being held accountable for my actions. Sure, using accountability can help me to get the job done. But sometimes I wish that I were motivated enough to do these things on my own. It's embarassing to ask people to help me with things that I'm supposed to want to do, or with situations that I've gotten myself into, or with work that I'm being paid to "do."

But on the other hand, God puts others into my life for a reason. I'm not meant to do everything in a box. I'm human and I should need to ask for help. And I see a lot of people in my life who can help me become a stronger/better/wiser person than I am today.

But when I feel like I'm leaning too strongly on others, I start to feel scared. I'm scared that leaning on others too much may cause me to become even lazier and over time, to lose some of my own strength.

So how can I tell if I'm becoming stronger or weaker by getting help from others?

Eighteen candles

Last night I was hit with a sudden pang of intense loneliness. I knew where I wanted to go, because I was lonely for a place. A place from my past; a place that I had wanted to be a part of my future.

Where did I want to go?

Here.

Or, in other words, here. You can even see me in that picture if you know where to look. ;)

For those of you who enjoyed this place as much as I did, maybe you'll be able to understand my sentiments. I don't why last night was the night to be bombared by all of the memories associated with that place, but such is the life I live occasionally. I tried to comfort myself by immersing myself in many memories and trying to remember a lot of what I felt and experienced there. Here's a short and fairly impersonal list:

Tastes: Chocolate chip cookies, lender's bagels, orange juice, wheat bread, and wintergreen lifesavers.
Sights: Chandeliers. Bells. Chimes. Red. White. Friends, friends, friends.
Sounds: Voices of individuals, yet blended beautifully so that individuality only added to the overall sound texture. Murmurs of prayers. Piano. Bells. Harp. Organ.
Touch: Being wrapped in a warm choir robe, handshakes with friends and faculty, feeling physically enveloped in a gorgeous sound, shaky arms at the end of an intense and emotional passage of bell music.

It's hard for me to accept that the life I am living at any given point in time will become merely a memory later. But if it's a beautiful memory, it is ultimately a source of comfort and hope. On the other hand, it also means feeling empty and lost occasionally.

Beyond the web

"Are my stories true, you ask? No, they are imaginary tales, containing fantastic characters and events. In real life, a family doesn't have a child who looks like a mouse; in real life, a spider doesn't spin words in her web. In real life, a swan doesn't blow a trumpet. But real life is only one kind of life; there is also the life of the imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too: truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act. "
~E.B. White (1899-1985)

Well, thanks to an interesting e-mail listserv I'm on, I discovered a new fun piece of writing by E.B. White. It's very whimsical and amusing, at least to me. :)

Here it is: Song of the Queen Bee

Optimization problems

I'm going to venture into math nerdiness for a very short time, because sometimes it's just how I think. Don't worry -- it won't be too painful. :) I'm just going to use some terms from very basic game theory to frame a few questions I want to explore. If you want a better explanation of the theory than what I'm going to give, see this page.

Before I get to the questions, I want to define just a couple of "strategies" for decision-making (believe me, there can be many more!).

1. Maximax -- essentially, you look at the best payoff that each option provides, and you take the option that gives the best of these best payoffs. In other words, you aim to get the best "best" consequence.
2. Maximin -- essentially, you look at the worst payoff that each option provides, and you take the option that gives the best of these worst payoffs. In other words, when following this strategy, you aim to get the least "worst" consequence.

Now, here are the questions: When choosing a option from a set of alternative options, which of these two strategies do you tend to use? Why? And does the particular strategy you use depend on your situation?

I'll give an example of how this may be applied. Say that you're out "spouse-shopping." (Sounds weird, doesn't it? Oh well.) Realistically speaking, you know that marriage is going to produce both highs and lows. These peaks and valleys are inevitable in marriage -- or so I hear. So given that you know that you will experience both highs and lows with any person, what drives you to decide to settle down with person A instead of person B? Are you prone to choose a person who is most likely to maximize the intensity or duration of your highs (the maximax strategy) or a person who is most likely to minimize the intensity of your lows (the maximin strategy)? Do you want to make life more happy and fulfilling when things are good or do you want to make life less difficult and painful when things are bad?

Of course, there are situations in which applying either strategy will produce an identical result -- it would be great to find a spouse who is going to make your good times great and your bad times not all that bad. I'm sure it's possible, even. But still, a lot of marital problems seem to stem from seemingly unbalanced scenarios: "He makes me really happy and we're passionately in love, but when we fight things turn extremely ugly." Or, "You know, we often are good at working through our problems together and we occasionally disagree a bit, but I just never feel any passion in our marriage -- everything seems completely dull."

Now, choosing a spouse is just one (potentially silly) example to highlight some differences between the two strategies. You can apply this to all sorts of choices we make in life, from grocery shopping to investing in stocks. But even more intriguing than the strategies themselves is the question of what these strategies might reveal about ourselves. If we apply the maximax strategy, we're focusing on the positives. Seems nice, but does it mean that we're being ignorant or avoiding important negatives? If we apply the maximin strategy, we're focusing on the negatives. Seems practical, but does it mean that we're letting ourselves be controlled by fear?

Finally, do you use different strategies for different types of choices? If so, why? For particular types of choices, are you sometimes seeking fulfillment and other times seeking security? Does fulfillment provide security? Does security provide fulfillment?

Ack, too many questions. Okay, I'm going to stop rambling for now. :)

Reality check

So for those of you who didn't know, I just spent the last week on vacation in...Jamaica!! Unfortunately, I did not meet a steel drummer (unless you count the keyboard player who set his synthesizer to a steel drum setting, but I'm way above that). :) But I had such a blast. Here are some random thoughts swirling around my head from the trip.

First, I really am very bad with cloudy days. I have to learn to deal better with overcast weather. On our third day in Jamaica I woke up to...no sun! And within a very short time my mood had completely plummeted, even though I was on vacation! Ridiculous, I tell you. Thankfully, drinking caffeinated tea, combined with reading on the cloudy beach, seemed to work wonders. Another case in point is that I was in a superb mood yesterday, even though I was back in Michigan and settling back into work. Why the great mood? I'd like to say that it was because I was thankful for getting home safely (which I am), but I suspect that a large part of it had to do with the fact that the sun was shining brightly. Why Michigan is sunny when Jamaica isn't is beyond me. :)

Second, friendly people make me happy. Jamaican people were very friendly (some of the males were a bit too friendly though), and lots of them waved and yelled hello as you walked/drove/biked past them. No one had inhibitions about asking questions, asking for tips, complimenting you, etc. Of course, some of that was a bit unnerving and occasionally annoying. But after thinking about it for a bit, I've come to the conclusion that it simply shifts the burden of social expectation onto the recipient. In other words, you just have to get used to answering a lot of questions and saying "no" frequently.

Third, I'm way more interested in learning about plants when food is somehow involved. I've always wanted to become a better naturalist and be able to identify plants and such, but I'm never quite motivated enough to actually sit down and really learn what I need to learn. I can identify a few common trees by their leaves and I can identify ash trees by the ski-slope bark pattern (thanks Charlotte!), but that's about it. Anyway, it was neat to get to Jamaica and see coconut trees, lime trees, and the vegetation that produces allspice berries. The lime tree leaves smell like lime (or lemon)! And the allspice leaves smell like allspice!

Fourth, I become sortof uncomfortable when I become aware of the vast difference between poverty and riches. Wherever I went in Jamaica, I could look one direction and see wealth (the tourists and resorts) and look in another direction and see poverty (many of the locals). And it was disturbing to me to be reminded that, for instance, my digital camera alone probably cost more money than a lot of people have to live on. One of my friends recently blogged about feeling a bit of guilt over time and money he has spent on leisure occasionally, and I definitely resonate with that to an extent. Eventually he concluded that leisure is good in that it reminds him that the work he does is not really his to do -- he is God's instrument. Did Jamaica remind me of being God's instrument? Not really, to be honest -- I was busy enjoying the beach! But it has done a bit to tweak my mindset in ways that I think will ultimately lead me to better understand the importance of choosing to be God's instrument.

Fifth, I like how kids think and perceive the world around them. Being around kids turned a "neat" and "pretty" hike up a waterfall into a giggly and exhiliarating adventure. And while I was taking a bike tour along a very poor section of Jamaica, two Jamaican kids sharing an old bike pedaled up to me and biked alongside me for part of my trip. They chatted away, asked about my vacation so far, and swerved around crazily, somehow not hurting their bare feet on the pedals of the bike or on the rocky, dusty road. At one point I asked one of them what he liked most about living in Jamaica. Giving me a huge toothy grin, he stated simply, "Everything." Wow.

Ah, the trip was so cool, and I loved all of it. My friend Lindsey wrote up a great blog entry of what we actually did on our trip, so I didn't try to cover that at all here. If you're interested, take a look at her blog entry about Jamaica. It's titled, appropriately, "Ya Mon!" :)

MI and PA: apples and oranges

Well, today I made the long drive back to MI. I miss home already, but I'm very very thankful for the time that I had there with family and friends. As I drove today I took some time to reflect on some of the little but extremely fun things that I will treasure from the past couple of weeks.

I'm thankful for...

- the cat harassing me and Dad as we were repainting the living room
- helping Mom pet-sit 7 llamas
- watching Conan O'Brien late at night with my brother
- seeing navy and white everywhere :)
- shopping with Mom
- getting to eat at the Corner Room (my favorite non-foreign food SC restaurant) with friends
- getting to eat brunch at the Waffle Shop (my favorite breakfast restaurant ever) with a friend
- having a black lab mix keep my feet warm at night
- baking
- seeing King Kong with Mom (I actually really liked that movie!)
- discovering that I'm worse at Scene-It (TV version) than I am at Power Grid
- having my guy friends beat us gals at Battle of the Sexes, IQ version :(
- getting more Quicken tutorials from Dad (Quicken = best program ever!)
- hanging out with lots of friends from high school at our Christmas party
- having a friend care enough to come over and hang out even when I was really sick (I threw up before and after he came, but not while he was there...phew). :)
- watching DCI finals -- and discovering that Alfred Reed's "Russian Christmas" is a waaaay cool piece for drum corps
- deciding that I really want to get better at chess (for real this time!!!)
- sleeping lots
- celebrating the end of 2005 in style -- with a game of Settlers/Seafarers :)
- hearing my brother and his friends record a mock death metal song (guitar, bass, drums, and vocals). For the record, it turned out really well, and I crack up every time I hear it. They recorded everything in like 3 hours only and then used the mixer and a computer to put the multiple vocal tracks on top of each other. The vocals include lots of screaming/growling with really random and funny lyrics.
- learning how to "properly" knee a person. Yay for my cop friend (who teaches a self-defense course for women) getting a punching bag for Christmas. :)

The only really bad thing that happened over break was that I came down with the stomach flu. And yes, I was very sick...I didn't eat chocolate for 3 whole days!!

By the way, comparing apples and oranges is, in fact, possible. Read this article. :)