Saturday, December 29, 2012

On loss, faking confidence, and self-defense

Hi everyone,

I guess it should happen that as I put more effort into this whole blog business, I would have to work out some kinks.

Yesterday all day as things occurred I was mentally deciding how I was going to write about it that night. So when we got home late last night (late is an understatement: it was like 5 in the am) I was still determined to post something. From 530-630 I wrote a beautiful entry on my iPhone in the notepad. Here i was, in, bed, all lights off excepr for the glow of my screen, with my 2 roommates sleeping and probably hating me. I haven't even met them, they only know me as te guy who rustles things and shifts and zips/unzips bags constantly. Anyway my arms kept falling asleep because of the position I was in but I was determined to finish what I needed to say. I poured my heart out into this thing.

Maybe you know where this is going.

By the way, something I learned that you should know: the iPhone has an undo feature. You just shake the iPhone and it lets you untype or undo the last action. wish I knew that last night. Try it out and practice. If you have another phone name sure you know how to undo, save, etc.

The end of it is that close to 7 in the morning I was frantically trying to undo typing over what I had just crafted so meticulously. It was just moments after I said, "I'm done, it's good, I'm finished," that it vanished.

I was disappointed, but I was exhausted and needing to sleep, and within a couple of minutes realized that it wasn't coming back. I went to bed not wanting to believe that it was gone.

What has surprised me is that I wasn't devastated. I was strangely OK with not be able to post it. Most of the satisfaction I got was in writing it, in staying up late almost obsessivelu determined to finish, and putting down in words what I needed to say. It was this morning that I was clear headed enough to look up the undo feature, and by then it was too late. But that didn't bother me. Lesson learned, now I know for next time.

So that's what I wrote about today to make up for yesterday. I thought you should know why I didn't post, and also hear that life will always include loss and it sucks and that's OK.

It reminds me of one of my favorite poems- "If" by Rudyard Kipling.

"If you can (...) watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss"


Well, I definitely "breathed" a word about the loss of my blog post, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I slept pretty astoundingly come to think of it.

Ok I still need to tell you highlights from yesterday. This is the abbreviated version:

At breakfast in the hostel I sat myself down at a table with 2 girls from Barcelona, pretending to be confident and at ease. We hit it off and had an amazing day enjoying the city. I'm going to pretend to be confident more often.

I got my luggage back (more about his in the draft below)

My friend Ana I got to meet for the first time yesterday. I said a lot of things about her in the lost post, but all you need to know is she's even cooler in person. So she's awesome, and so is Sara.

Lastly, and this is a serious one I spent the most time on, boils down to this plea from me: please go to a self- defense class in 2013. It's not about learning karate moves, it's about being confident, thinking clearly, and using mostly your voice to set boundaries for yourself. Everyone needs to. If you're in Tucson I recommend Combat Fit. Some classes are free.

I went to the clubs with a group from my hostel. It was awesome and fun, until I noticed some creeper approaching women and getting way too friendly with them. It was none of my business until I saw the girls saying no and trying to pull away. He was very aggressive, but just charming enough that it kept going on. I almost lost it. I started intervening. My friends thought I was crazy and getting worked up over nothing, but I was basically witnessing assault before my eyes. My blood was boiling and I couldn't stand that.

I could type up the whole exciting endeavor but in the end I feel like I did the right thing and kept my cool enough not to do anything stupid. A little less self control and I would have. The girl from my group thanked me later and confirmed the guy was as much of a creep as I thought.

So please, take self-defense. It will help protect yourself or someone you love or even a stranger in another country.

I have to stop somewhere. So I'll leave you with the only thing that saved from yesterday, which was the following items. This whole blog post isn't polished, and neither is what I wrote below. I'm not even going to do a final read through. Que serĂ¡ serĂ¡.

¡Nos vemos!
.........
(Original post. First draft)


I don't want to do a play by play of my trip. That never works out. I get caught up in the details, and then it turns into a story that's too long. Some of you might call it an "Anthony story". I guess there's a reason it got that name.

First of all, thanks for reading. What's a blog without readers? I guess that would be a journal, and I already have one of those. And thanks for commenting, mom and Ana! Thats pretty cool to see comments. You still can if you want to

When I was rereading my post from yesterday (I tend to read whatever I write over and over again) I found some egregious errors. I won't tell you what they are. I also wanted to add more in. I saw a perfectly great opportunity for amazing alliteration and I blew it. But you know what? I'm not going to fix them. Like I said, mistakes are OK and I could go on correcting forever. It's time to move on.

Even with the jet lag and lack of sleep and what not, I've felt great. I went to bed at the equivalent of 7 pm and woke up at 2 am. Right now it's 6 pm in Madrid, but that still only 10 am in Tucson. My point is, I have no idea what time my body thinks it is, but with my schedule this last month I think it gave up a long time ago. I think I've been on Spain time for awhile now.

My luggage got to my hotel this morning. I was planning to go retrieve it at the airport, but when I went to the front desk to rent a towel and gave her my name, she got up and left. After a minute she came back and yells "una sorpresa!" (surprise). It was like Christmas in Spain. No, but really I was pretty happy.

It might have gone something like this:

Me: (hand on hip, glaring)
"Where have you been? I've been up all night worrying about you."

Backpack:
*slouching, stares down at the floor*

It could have happened that way. But it didn't. That would be ridiculous.






1 comment: