…are the fucking worst. Jesus, how can you live with yourself if you pretend you were murdered and you are flopping around like you’re having an epileptic fit. How can you look your friends in the eye afterwards? How can you look yourself in the eye afterwards, you fucking fraud!!?!?!
Journal
Birthday Celebration
Today was my birthday. Yesterday as well as the day before yesterday, colleagues had their birthday, too. So when I got to work, and the others had brought a shit-ton of birthday cake, I was really glad that I managed to convince my friend Alina (of Solid Cocktails fame) to make me a bunch of boozy bonbons. They cake came in the morning, and I treated everyone to the bonbons in the late afternoon. They were very well received.
My work is pretty challenging at the moment because I had two new team members start today. This meant I had to welcome them, guide them, set them up and get them started on a project. All new managerial tasks for me. Luckily, both guys were excellent sports and they hit the ground running. Really happy.
Last night, Joasia and I ate at Gebroeders Hartering again, which was absolutely lovely. Today, lots of people messaged me, so I felt quite fortunate. Jody sang for me, Moulsari sang for me, Eva, Scott, Lucie and Minna sang for me. Made me feel loved.
Later this week Jim is going to come over, and we’re planning to have some birthday drinks at House Bar. Thomas, who runs the bar, agreed to make me two different birthday punches for the people I’ve invited. A group of us are going to have dinner at The Beefsteak Club beforehand, and hopefully we’ll do something fun afterwards. Maybe Club NYX. Would be fun.
Why I Closed My Twitter Account
Recently Twitter sent me a notification saying “It was 9 years ago today that you joined Twitter” and the first thing I thought was; time to close down my account. This shit has been going on long enough.
I had been toying with the idea of closing my account down for a while, and the only reason was that the environment was so incredibly toxic. The things I saw were either self-promotion or the ugliest side of identity politics.
You tweet that you think that there are things you agree with when it comes to fourth-wave feminism, and you can expect a vicious response from one side. Say that you believe that you don’t agree with the denialism of ignoring biological difference between men and women, and you can expect a vicious response from the other side.
Both the regressive left and the conservative right have entrenched themselves so deeply in the foxholes they dug on the Twitter Battlesphere, that I got tired of reading those tweets, even from the people that I agreed with. It becomes hard to be a centrist.
In the meantime, I’m playing around with Instagram, but my interest there is slowly fading as well. Social media maakt meer kapot dan je lief is.
An Empty Weekend
Recently I made mention of the fact that I had burned through a lot of my social bandwidth lately, so I decided that I would go training on Friday, have a naughty beverage at HPS afterwards and then have a quiet weekend. It was a success. On Saturday I did some groceries in the morning, having gotten up bright and early (a rarity for Saturdays following an evening at HPS). The rest of the morning was spent writing on the game that I’m going to be running.
In the afternoon, the rest of my gaming group came over and we gamed until the early evening. Then Moulsari came over, we ate together and watched the remainder of Wild Wild Country. The following day I spent writing and gaming until Joasia came back from Poland. We briefly watched something together and called it a day.
I haven’t had a quiet weekend like that in ages and it was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Introverted
Lately, my social schedule has been pretty busy. I enjoy having stuff to do, seeing my friends, partying with them, hanging out with them, helping them out or having them help me out. I enjoy keeping close touch (though I admit I’m not very good at it when it comes to some long distance friendships) and regularly touching base.
Having said that, I’m also noticing that with time, my introverted nature is getting more pronounced and that the moments that I need to lock myself away and spend time by myself are coming around more frequently. Whether it’s gaming, coding something, watching some television or reading a book, these moments become more valuable as time goes on.
I wonder if this is because at my advancing age I am simply less capable of toughing it out and red-lining my social life, or whether my introverted nature is getting more entrenched, like a river etching itself into the bedrock. Regardless, I want to apologise to anyone if I haven’t been keeping in touch with you as regularly as I should, or haven’t been as socially available as before.
It’s not you, it’s me.