it never ceases to amaze me how completely frustrating life can be. sometimes it seems that there are no clear answers to be found, ever. nothing just is…rather, it usually just might be this or it might be that. why is it that life has a tendency to lean towards the ambiguous as opposed to the obvious and straightforwardness that we would all rather enjoy?

perhaps it is this way because we feel that we ultimately know what the reality of the situation is, but we aren’t prepared to accept that reality so instead we try to leave things as ambiguous so that we can fool ourselves into thinking that things may not be as obvious as we see it to be. maybe we are just fooling ourselves because we aren’t ready for the disappointment that lies ahead of us.

why is it that there appear to be no clear answers anymore?

maybe they are clear, i just don’t like the picture.

in each of us exists a sadness so profoundly painful that we build tools to help us cope with the situation we are in. denial is a powerful mechanism that we employ to help shape reality into what we want. no, things can’t possibly be as bad as it looks. it just can’t. maybe, just maybe, it isn’t. that’s how it all starts.

i got stuck in a moment tonight where i felt i had hit a low, oddly enough in a time where there was rejoicing and happiness around me. but in that very moment, i felt more alone than i ever had. it was a poignant moment that i got sucked into and from that moment i tried desperately to escape the grasp of sadness’s unyielding hand.

i’m not sure what it was that triggered it all. maybe everything that has been happening to me for the last several weeks was just building up to that moment. maybe, secretly, i knew that the moment was coming and i was afraid of what it would be like. maybe that’s why i’ve been running away from everything familiar. maybe that’s why i’ve become obsessed with cleaning my room, my closet, my surroundings. maybe i’ve been doing everything that i possibly can to avoid this very moment.

i think what it all boils down to is denial. i’ve been trying to deny reality so that i won’t have to look it in the eye and see what it has dealt me.

and i was doing a good job of it…until tonight.

it has been an exhausting week so far. i’ve been working on preparations for these off-site meetings that the company has me going to. for the past two days i’ve been in san francisco attending 8 hour meetings. it has been exhausting, especially because the meetings start very early in the morning. i’ve been driving to oakland and then taking the BART to the embarcadero station every morning.

i must say that taking BART brings back some memories for me. the last time i took BART with any kind of regularity was back in college. BART was my primary method of transportation back home from college. it hasn’t changed much, but there are cameras now inside the trains to monitor what’s going on. fares have also increased since i last used BART.

but i’ve been exhausted. mentally, physically, and emotionally. these past few weeks have been particularly trying for me and i’ve been in need of some kind of release or relaxation.

on monday i stepped onto the volleyball court for the first time in over a month. it felt good to be able to play again. i definitely am not 100% though and i’ve lost about 3 to 4 inches in my vertical. i’m hoping that over time my ankle will strengthen up and i’ll be able to play again.

last night i spent most of the evening working and preparing for the meeting that i had today. i spent a lot of time and energy getting this stuff prepared and done so that today’s meeting would be more productive.

and today…well, after the meeting, i was hoping to chill out a little and i called thanh to see if she wanted to hang out for a little bit since i was in the city, but it turned out that she had already gone home for the day! go figure! the one day that i’m in the city and she ends up being at home. heh.

and tonight some people had wanted to go out but i just wasn’t up for it. the last couple of weeks have been pretty sad for me and i just don’t feel much in the festive mood to go out. so instead, tonight, i stayed in, took a nap, and spent the evening quietly.

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the last two days i’ve been in a meeting. that’s right: A meeting. monday was the kickoff of an incredibly painful meeting, yesterday was an 8 hour meeting…all day…one meeting…ugh.

anyway, today should be the end of the ridiculously long meetings…at least until friday. so i’ve been busy. hopefully, i’ll be freed up soon.

well, i haven’t been doing a very good job of working on [url=http://www.ocliw.com/things/photography/theWallProject/]the wall project[/url] since i first started it, so i thought that i’d see if i took any pictures since then that would be wall-worthy.

it turns out that there were quite a few photos that i am reasonably happy with so i decided to spend the evening working on them and printing them up. it’s weird, i bought a nice photo printer and i have ink for it, but i neglect to use it because i feel like the ink is too expensive to waste on prints that aren’t good enough. as a result, i never ended up making prints of anything. weird, huh? so now i’m going on a crazy 25 full-page print job for all of these images that i have queued up.

this makes me want to go take more pictures so i can finish the project. perhaps part of this weekend will be spent doing just that…now, if only i can find somewhere to take pictures…

i need to resume my search for models, i’m about ready to take portraits, but i don’t think that i have any models to take pictures of.

And So It Goes

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

last week i had a little accident with my flash. i had tripod mounted the camera and flash and i was taking pictures when i accidentally tripped over my tripod sending it crashing down. the flash snapped off the hot shoe mount on my camera and the plastic hot shoe on the flash broke right off.

i was devastated.

after the initial shock, i finally got around to finding out how one would go about fixing something like this. i went to a few camera stores and it seems to be pretty typical that they will send out the equipment to an authorized canon repair shop and the turnaround time is anywhere between 3 to 6 weeks on average. there is a non-refundable $20 deposit to get an estimate of how much the repair will cost and flash repairs generally run between $60-150. just lovely.

but then i found kamera korner. it’s a tiny shop in san jose that does in-house repairs. their prices are fair, but more importantly their staff is friendly and helpful. a very different staff compared to san jose camera, who i hate. i swear, those salespeople must think that they are doing you a favor by acknowledging your existance. stupid arrogant bastards. it used to be that the only way you can get their attention/respect is if you buy only the best of the best gear and if you buy a lot. anyway, i digress.

kamera korner is a pretty good shop, they buy/sell/repair camera gear for all types of brands. they have a nice vintage selection of cameras both 35mm and medium format. very cool.

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when i visited home last night the first thing my mom asked me was whether or not i went to work dressed the way i was. she finds it hard to believe that anyone can go to work wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. i guess it is kind of nice to have such a relaxed dress code at work. i think it must be the industry that i’m in that affords me this kind of casual attire. that’s good though, right?

i thought it was funny though. i guess she is used to my dad’s wardrobe of 20+ suits, so what i wear in comparison is quite different.

i don’t. really, i just don’t want to talk about it yet. i don’t know if i ever will really want to talk about it, but maybe there’ll be a day where i’ll be ok with talking about it.

what i sometimes find strange for myself is that i don’t really like talking about things that really bother me on an emotional level to anyone. there are a very select few that i’m comfortable talking to about anything, but they are far and few.

when i do talk about things that bother me, i think that it just ends up bothering me even more. usually it’s because i’ve already thought of all the angles and talking to someone else just doesn’t really help. instead it just dredges up all the pain all over again without making things better. i guess i just don’t find it useful.

but i do complain about things from time to time. in some ways, just venting about stuff makes me feel better about it. even if no resolution has come out of it, venting about it makes it a little bit more tolerable for me.

i remember this one time when i was with a bunch of accountant friends and they all got together one evening and started a HUGE bitchfest about their jobs. bitch bitch bitch. all night long they would go on and on about how awful their jobs were and how messed up this or that was. at the end of the evening, i was a little scared of these friends. who knew what they said about me when they were in a bad mood behind my back! but at the end of the evening, i think that they all felt better about things just being able to vent about it.

maybe that’s just the way to make sure that things don’t get bottled up in you. just vent it out.

i went home last night to visit my mom and she fed me some dinner. she’s trying this new miso stuffed eggplant recipe and she wanted me to try it. i told her i don’t really like eggplant, but she insisted, so i relented. yup, still don’t like it.

i was thinking though, why is it that no one deep tries eggplant? eggplant tempura? surely it’d taste good, right? hmmmmmm.

so anyway, my mom and i were talking and she was waxing philosophy with me about relationships and what are good things to be found in a good relationship. my mom reminded me a lot about what is important in life, and i’m sure she wasn’t preaching, but there were a lot of things that she said that made me appreciate how lucky i am.

while we were talking, my mom then whipped around and stopped talking to me and dashed over to the tv. AMERICAN IDOL TIME! oh my. my mom is a huge fan of the show. who would have known that a non-english speaking japanese woman would be such a reality tv junkie? i would never have suspected it.

but she loves it.

she asked me about whether or not i saw william hung. she told me she had read articles about him in the local japanese newspaper. very interesting.

while talking to my mom, i realized that she’s amazingly progressive for a woman in her generation. most traditional japanese mothers of her generation would think that there children should be married by the age of 25. we were talking about other japanese families that we knew and how some of the families were pressuring their kids to get married immediately out of college. my mom said that this is something that you shouldn’t rush and you shouldn’t get into a marriage where you don’t fit in with the other person. why would you want to get into a relationship where you would end up fighting for the rest of your life, she asked. it’s true. sometimes she surprises me.

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