The F-Word

No...not that F-word.  Get your minds out of the gutters, people.

Probably the best episode of "Modern Family" ever.

My post is about a different "F-word" that gets thrown around a lot:  friend.  How often do you hear yourself or others use the phrase "my friend from work..." or "my friend from church..." in conversation when describing something said or done by someone you/they happen to know?

I've found that a lot of people are very liberal with this F-word; they're like the Samuel L. Jacksons of the word "friend."  I, however, don't say that people are my "friends" very often.  One practical reason is specificity.  "Friend" is very generic, and if the means through which I know someone is important to the anecdote, I would much rather refer to someone as my co-worker or my roommate or my visiting teacher.

The main reason for my lack of liberality with the F-word is that I have a very conservative definition of what constitutes a friend.  A friend is not just someone I talk to when I see them at church or work or wherever.  A friend is something much more intimate than amicable acquaintance.  A friend is someone whose welfare I think about even when I'm not around them, someone who I would go out of my way to see or talk to, someone with whom I can share good or bad news, someone I trust with my feelings.  Also, a friend is someone who feels all those same things about me.

I hope I don't offend people when I refer to them as acquaintances, or as my hybrid-term (patent pending) "friend-quaintances."  It doesn't mean they'll never ever be my friend; it just means that I'm not quite there yet, but if/when it happens, it'll be good.

Relapse

I thought I was getting over my Hawaii-hate.  It turns out that what I was feeling was something akin to what happens when people eat poisonous mushrooms:  you're horribly sick, then you get a little bit better, and then you get way worse, and then you die.*  I was in the "get a little better" stage, the phase in which one gets raised up very high solely to increase the force with which one hits the ground.  I have allowed myself to be a loner for the past few days, and it has given me time to enumerate my grievances.  Here are two:

• I am feel unattractive in Hawaii, both inherently- and relatively-speaking.  The humidity makes my skin break out and my hair look stupid, and the long hours and early-morning commutes to work give me stress lines and dark circles under my eyes.  Also, I am coming from Boston to Honolulu:  the 20th most attractive city in America to the 9th.  I was on the upper end of average-looking in Boston, what with my plethora of argyle sweaters, my assortment of quirky tights, and my hipster-librarian glasses, but I can't compete with these Hawaiian bronze goddesses; I literally pale in comparison.  Furthermore, I am much older than many of my friend-quaintances, and it shows:  I am an Ann Taylor in a room full of Abercrombies.  Finally, I have developed body-image issues, which is why I never put on a swimsuit which is why I am so pale.
• I don't fit.  I have friend-quaintances, and they're nice people, and some of them I really feel could become actual friends at some point, but as of right now, I feel very alone.  Not alone in the terribly-depressing sense (yet), but in the sense that I have nobody similar to me in age and life situation.  In Boston, everyone was about the same age and everyone was either a grad/professional student or a young professional.  Here, I kind of feel like I'm the only one (see above, re:  I'm old), and that's rough.  Therefore, I have no confidante, no bosom friend, nobody who will come over when I'm feeling very unspecifically sad and let me hug them for two whole minutes, or rather, nobody whom I trust enough to hug for two whole minutes.  On at least one occasion, I felt hopeful that maybe I had found someone like this, but on at least one occasion, it did not turn out well.  Hence the trust issues.

Maybe it's not Hawaii's fault.  Maybe I would feel this in any other place, but any other place isn't an ocean away and five hours behind anyone I would want to call.  Any other place isn't so foreign and hot and bright and crowded and difficult.  Living in Hawaii is difficult.  And looking back over the past six months (yes, it's been exactly six months to the day that I moved here), I can't say that it's gotten any less difficult.  

So that's that.

*This is one of the few things I remember from many semesters of being a TA for Molecular Biology at BYU.

The Babe with the Power

The inevitable has happened:  I got called to be branch choir director.  Some months ago, when I was in "sullen Alex" mode, I would have been like, blah blah...pigeonholed into a music calling...blah...no opportunities for spiritual growth.  But not now, because I have realized the following things:

• I am a dang good choir director.  It is probably the thing I am best at doing that can be done in church.  Maybe I'm not the kindest human being, and maybe I won't bring in delightful baked goods every Sunday, but I will make that choir work harder and sound better than ever before.*
• In Boston, I made 92% of my friends because of (or more realistically, in spite of) the fact that I was their ward choir director.  Maybe this is how I will make more friends here.
• I like the power.  Oh gosh, do I like the power.  There's something about being able to control the voices of the masses with my bare hands that sets something on fire in my blood.  The branch president might as well have given alcohol to a person with car keys.**

At any rate, I'm very excited.  First of all, I have two simultaneous callings (though being Relief Society music coordinator requires very little extracurricular activity), and secondly, I get to be in charge of a branch choir again!  I'm sad that this has happened only a few weeks before I leave for Christmas, and therefore I could not get a huge music program together, but I'll be ready to bring out the big guns for Easter.***

*Even if it means threatening to hit the basses with a music stand.  Hey, I've done it before, and it's quite effective for proper consonant placement.

**Anyone who really knows me should know that I don't require alcohol to do major damage with car keys.

***And also maybe Passover.  I've always wanted to try to get away with some awesome Jewish music in a sacrament meeting.

A Swift Kick in the Bum

I had this thought/epiphany/emotional breakthrough last night.  I need to create my own inciting force, I think.  Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that, but I feel that it might very well have to start with an attitude adjustment.  So here goes...

I am going to stop

• constantly questioning whether or not I made the right choice by coming here.  First of all, I'm 83% sure that the answer to that question is "yes," and secondly, even if I didn't make the right choice, I came out here and there's nothing I can do about it.
• living in the past and wondering what I could have done differently or better. 
• reminiscing and replaying little moments of varying significance for the purpose of hiding and seeking solace in past memories/emotions.  This is a big thing that needs to change:  what has to be so wrong with me that I will think, hey, let me remember this really sad event so that I may make myself very depressed? Must nip that one in the bud.
• worrying about things that are no longer in my control and people of whom I am not the boss.
• hiding out in church from people I'm afraid to be friends with because I'm afraid that saying goodbye is going to suck as much as it did when I said goodbye to people in Boston.

If I find myself doing any of these things, I am going to force myself out of it, possibly with a by-myself dance party.

This said, I reserve the right to

• be sad sometimes and cry when nobody is watching.
• curse Hawaii, especially when people on the bus are stupid.
• get jealous when my old friends start hanging out with people who are cooler than me.
• miss people.  Specific ones, not just people in general.
• decide that this thought/epiphany/emotional breakthrough was just a phase or a product of undigested celery or something and take it all back.

Hugging, Revisited*

*or, One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back

This awkward hug has got nothing on my awkward hugs.

Remember when I wrote a post about how I didn't hug people?  I stuck by that for a while.  Then I got a boyfriend for a little bit, and somehow got really awesome at hugging.  But then I moved to Hawaii and my entire world turned upside down and somehow like an awkward turtle, I regressed ALL the way back into my awkward shell, and once again, I suck at hugging.

This wouldn't have been so bad if I had moved to New York or somewhere where people hate each other, but instead, I moved to Hawaii, an island full of really friendly Polynesians who really like to hug.  And cheek kiss.*  My first Sunday at church, the branch president came up to me and went in for the cheek kiss.  I kind of went with it, but on the inside, I was thinking WHAT IS THIS?  WE HAVE NOT MET.  Sometimes I try to preemptively go for a handshake, forcefully extending my arm before he can get near me, but somehow he turns it into a hug.  The man's an evil genius.

Other people try to hug me, too.  I have to tell them, "no, seriously; you don't understand; I am REALLY bad at hugging."  I go into Flipper mode or T-Rex mode or worse:  this one time I went for the double back pat.  And the guy whose back I double-patted called me on it.  All I could say was, "yes, I know; I'm aware that this just happened."  Also, there's usually this high-pitched noise of blatant discomfort that involuntarily comes out of my mouth.  Don't know what that's about.

So anyway, there you go.  This blog post is me recognizing that this is a problem, yet I have no way to fix it, unless I just go around hugging people awkwardly for no good reason until I start to somehow get better at it.  Awkward side hug booth, anyone?


*This is a thing I do not understand.  Where did this come from?  Who went up to someone one day and was like, "okay, Imma put my face up against your face, and then we're both gonna kiss the air.  1, 2, 3, go!"  Also, what happens if the cheek kiss goes horribly wrong when both parties turn the same way and then it turns into a mouth kiss?  

Happy Birthday, Ryan Davis

You will note that I am in my pajamas, and my ukulele skills are not at their very finest, and maybe I am a little bit awkward when I am talking to my computer screen.  Deal with it.  If you listen closely, you may think that there are actually seven chords in this song, but I'm pretty sure that I completely made one of them up.

A year from now I will be better at playing the ukulele and will write more verses and then this will be on the Youtube with a link to where you can download the song on iTunes.

We Need a Little Christmas...Just Not Quite This Very Minute

At a much darker time in my life, I had a small* role in a high school production of Mame.  For those who don't know Mame, it's probably in the top ten of worst musicals ever.  Basically the only good things to come from this musical are the title song and the ever popular "We Need a Little Christmas."

I still remember one line as croaked sung by the sophomore "tenor"** playing young Patrick:

But Auntie Mame, it's one week from Thanksgiving Day now!

In other words, in 1929/30 or whenever this was supposed to be taking place (sometime in the midst of the Depression, at any rate), it was preposterous to be putting up Christmas decorations a week after Thanksgiving.

We've come a long way since the roaring and/or depressed 1920s.  The gin is out of the bathtub and back in the stores.  You know what's also in the stores?  Christmas decorations.  Starting in October.  Tinsel and red and green wrapping paper and colored lights pushed the costumes and fun-sized candy bars off the shelves before Halloween was even cold in the ground.  It's unfair, I tell you.

I went to the drug store today, two days before Thanksgiving.  The Christmas music was playing nonstop!  I wanted to plead, "just give us two more days, then go nuts!"  Poor Thanksgiving, the overlooked middle child of the holiday season, my favorite of all holidays.

Christmas can be magical.  But when we try to prolong the magic, by the time it's actually Christmas it's become spoiled and exhausted.  Instead of having Christmas to be some big event that we have to spend months "getting ready" for, why can't it sneak up on us naturally, descending upon us as lightly as that first snowflake after Thanksgiving?***

Just something to think about, I guess.



*And by "small" I mean microscopic.  That director did not like me for some reason...probably because I wasn't good at dancing or brown-nosing.  But I'm over it...I got my self-esteem back when I got cast in secondary roles in college operas as a non-voice major.  Take that, Sandy.
**He was not a tenor; he was a baritone, if he was to be considered a singer at all.  This director also thought that a voice part meant being able to hit the notes.  I erroneously believed I was a first soprano for years.
***It kills me that I live in a place where there are going to be no snowflakes.