Vainglorious Vicissitudes

I just love it when spammers generate fake names using dictionaries instead of phone books. This mailing list I'm on has been getting a string of nearly identical junk emails from people like:

Bemoaned K. Kickoffs
Grandstand V. Straplesses
Hairbrushes A. Fiendish
Proton Q. Flicks
Telephoto V. Informed
Saskatoon G. Naysayer
Temporizing P. Apathetic
Conformists J. Cyclamen
Cenotaph E. Effeminacy
Clue G. Mysteried
Progresses K. Minuend
Stalked P. Disneyland

Actually, Stalked P. Disneyland and Telephoto V. Informed sound almost threatening. I wonder if I could sic the law on them for intimidation, just to screw with them.

A friend had this to say recently, and it describes perfectly something I've observed about myself for a long time:

...my desire to communicate/interact with others seems to be a per-item thing.

That is, there is some thing X that I want to discuss. Once I tell someone, generally, I don't particularly want to talk about it any more. Not that I'd refuse, just that I wouldn't seek it. For some things - important stuff, or if it's something I specifically want multiple perspectives on, or when I'm actually seeking advice - that broadens somewhat.

This also works for other interactions - e.g. talking, touch, getting out, etc. As long as the need is fulfilled, I don't pursue it much.

The unfortunate result of this is that I can tend to neglect my old friends. Not because I don't like them any more, or I don't enjoy talking to them just as much... there's just more folk around to fill a particular conversation-need, and I often default to whoever's closest available (which tends to be the newer ones).

It also means that I don't post about things I've talked about; posting is one of the ways I fill a need to talk about X, and if I've already talked about it with someone on IM or in person or whatnot, i don't really have a drive to post it.

For me, it's not just that I won't seek someone out to tell them something if I've already told it to someone else; even if someone seeks me out and specifically asks about it, I still won't want to go into very much detail because I so hate repeating myself. This results, I think, in my appearing to brush people off sometimes, and I don't like doing that.

Another aspect of this mess is that I can usually vaguely remember having told a friend about something, but have a very hard time remembering which friend I told. I'm fortunate to have very understanding sweeties, because it's a little embarrassing to be constantly saying "did I have this conversation with you, or was it one of my other boyfriends?" And this probably feeds into the not repeating things to some extent, as I sometimes just assume unthinkingly that I have already told the person I'm talking to.

I feel like I could change this if I were willing to, simply by forcing myself to repeat things more often. I just don't think I'm willing to. But I do feel guilty about that.

From the altfriday5:

1. How often do you dance in public?
Not often enough. Used to do ceili every week, haven't been doing it lately. Haven't been going out ballroom dancing much lately either. Don't get many chances to go clubbing--it's tough to do properly without a car, and I don't seem to have any good friends with cars who care for that sort of thing. Truth be told, I've been less inclined to go out for any sort of dancing lately because I'm no longer getting what I want out of it socially, and for some reason I'm not finding it as easy as I used to to just enjoy it without caring about the social aspects. *sigh*

2. Are you selective about the circumstances (music, gotta have a few drinks, club), or will you dance to anything, anywhere, anytime?
I'm self-conscious about dancing if no one else is, but other than that I'll dance to just about anything I can figure out a way to dance to. It's hard to get me to not dance if the right music comes up.

3. Name some music (genres, artists, songs) that would be guaranteed to get you on the floor.
Lively Celtic music'll almost always get me on the dance floor even when there isn't one. When it comes to club-type dancing, though, getting me on the floor and getting me to seriously dance are slightly different matters. I love new wave, for example, but half my energy always goes into singing along with it and my dancing suffers proportionately. Loud techno and industrial, on the other hand, are better at bypassing my verbal centers and hitting me directly in the limbic system--in other words, more likely to send me into the light trance state that's theoretically my goal when dancing my ass off, but which I rarely manage to achieve.

4. Name some music (genres, artists, songs) that would have your ass super-glued to your chair.
Anything too slow to waltz to, I guess. A few years ago I would've said that I'd never figured out how to dance to reggae, but now it occurs to me that I could probably hornpipe to it. (Why, no, I have almost no qualms about doing dances that don't match the venue.)

5. Fill in the blank: In general, dancing makes me feel __________ . (e.g. scared, happy, free, awkward, etc.) Why?
Exhilarated--but these days that's all too quickly followed by Tired. I think the "why" of both is pretty self-explanatory.

Someone asked me last week how my BayCon experience had been. My reply, or most of it: "I did have a good weekend, though I don't seem to have the kind of energy for these things that I once did. (I appear to be growing prematurely old. Bad: less energy to Do Stuff. Good: less burning need to Do Stuff. Bad: the niggling fear that this will make me a less interesting person with a less entertaining life. Sigh.) "

More specifically, I found myself crashing surprisingly early in the evening, but I also found that, compared to previous years, there were fewer things I Really Wanted To Do, and most of those things, when I went and did them, I found I didn't really feel the need to keep doing for very long. In retrospect, I've been noticing this tendency in other situations as well; rather than throw myself bodily into fun activities the way I did as little as a year or two ago, I find myself content to dip a toe in the metaphorical water and then amble away again, satisfied that the water's fine but just as happy to leave it at that as to jump in and start a rousing game of Marco Polo.

I still can't figure out if this is good or bad. I mean, supposedly this is the kind of thing that comes with increasing maturity, and I do think it correlates with my diminishing desires to do things like eat when I'm not really hungry and buy books that are only sort of interesting. And it is nice to know that I can get the flavor of enjoyable things and enjoy them just as much without needing to engage myself in them fully--but is it worth the knowledge that that degree of enjoyment isn't nearly as great as full engagement used to bring? It's like I used to be able to enjoy myself X amount if I threw myself into things and zero amount if I didn't, and now instead I enjoy myself Y amount just by being vaguely involved in fun things, with little difference whether or not I throw myself into them, but Y is noticeably less than X. Or at least it's of a different quality.

Now that I think about it, there are still some activities I can throw myself into and enjoy in that giddy sort of way...but for how much longer will that be true? If this keeps up, will I see any reason to ever leave the house when I'm thirty, or will I be content to sit at home until someone drags me somewhere, and will I never meet people to drag me places because I never go out?

Okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating. I think I may be like a person in a relationship who feels their NRE being replaced by a mellower and more long-term kind of love, and doesn't know what to do with it, and may not even recognize it as love. I do feel myself enjoying life, but it's hard to believe that my overall happiness can be sustained on this quieter sort of enjoyment, and that I don't need more excitement to feel like I'm really having fun. And having been depressed for so long makes me, I suspect, especially scared of becoming Less Happy, in any way, ever.

Tempting. Very tempting. But really, it's a totally unjustifiable expenditure. I wouldn't want it even this much if it weren't being dangled in front of me.

Ah well. If any of you-all wanted a permanent account and didn't already know where to get one, now you do.

Can anyone tell me how to render a Young tableau in LaTeX? It seems like just doing it as a table wouldn't quite cut it, as I'd wind up with annoying extra squares--or is there a way to make a "table" with rows of differing lengths?