I got to thinking about a lady I worked with a thousand years ago I called Solitaire. You can probably search the archives for her.
My views on her have changed over the years.
Mind you, I never had much of a problem with her. She liked playing cards. I don’t know whether anyone gave her work to do or if she just liked her cards more than doing work.
My beef was that everyone was perfectly OK with the situation. Meanwhile I worked hard and didn’t feel as special as I was trying to prove I was.
And that rage led me into a web of disaster I couldn’t quite come out of.
I got to thinking about someone else who gets under my skin. I mean I want to rip my brain out of my head, stomp on it three times and shove it back in and hope the memory portion is sufficiently destroyed after an average interaction.
And something occurred to me today that I couldn’t put into words back then.
I don’t know how to NOT notice things.
Maybe it’s a feminine trait. You don’t want to notice that he isn’t the slightest bit interested in your day. Or that he is looking at another girl. Or that other people appear to have some level of favor you can’t figure out how to gain yet. Or that this particular dress really doesn’t fit you quite right. Or that white cake with white icing is really fucking good even if you lie to yourself and swear it’s filled with poison. I notice the little swipes even if they weren’t meant to hurt quite as much as they did. That ain’t being too sensitive — that’s simply being awake.
Trust me. I notice. I notice EVERYTHING.
And unfortunately I have a very hard time NOT COMMENTING on it.
I notice the people who go above/beyond. I welcome the people who email with “oh hey I thought you might need this so I went ahead and did it for you” or “oh hey here’s that thing you requested but I have some more ideas and would love to help you if you would like me to improve it a bit more.” I notice that shit and try to reward it accordingly.
Which makes it all the much harder not to notice its absence.
Don’t get me wrong. You could send me a list of everything you noticed I haven’t achieved. And you might be correct on many accounts. I ain’t no Solitaire and I don’t skate by. But I think I mire myself a little more in the noticing when I need to tune out and notice myself a whole lot more.
If there’s one thing I learned from my Solitaire days, “fair” belongs in no one’s vocabulary. And I think the Solitaire types — and I could be wrong, but I believe my guess is a good one — that they found their own way to make things “fair enough” for themselves.
Maybe they were the go above/beyond people in their day. Maybe they went from noticing everything to trying not to notice anything. Maybe I will be just like them someday.
And maybe I need to just silence my widdle brain now and get back to the business of what I CAN control.
Whatever THAT may be. But, you know. I need to figure it out. And fast.