The Truth

Let me tell you the truth.
When this blog started, it was just a place for me to describe a fantasy-life that I may have led, if I hadn't been such a wuss. Well, I can't stop being a wuss. It's who I am. So it's unlikely that I'll ever have this fantasy life or any that is based upon acts of non-wussiness. But I can stop being a pansy to the extent of telling the truth, or rather not telling dressed-up lies.
So that's what I hope to do from hereon. It's going to be less interesting, but since it seems I'm the only one who reads this blog, and I'm already bored, I'm really not running much of a risk here. And I'm not going to change the title. I like it.

Here goes.

I work in an ad agency. Yes, advertising should be fun, but these days, it's not so much. There's a lot of boring work, and maybe at some level, my impetus has gone out. I wake up unmotivated, unstimulated by life. And I don't know what to do about it. I don't know how to re-ignite that fire.

Any suggestions?

I Found A Job!

Bah humbug to recession!!! I am now working as a writer at an ad agency (which for confidentiality reasons i cannot mention the name of- they made me sign something while i was too euphoric to read). And what's great is that I found the place all by myself. Well, not entirely. My mom's nosy neighbour, Mrs. Nylon-is-the-new-silk, has a brother who works in this agency. He helped me meet his boss who was bowled over by my writing. He almost said, "Where've you been all my life?" (I'm sure he thought it.) I joined just yesterday. It seemed bad form to start blogging on office time on the first day so I waited for 24 hours to lapse. I'm amazed by my own model behaviour.

Bet you want to know what I've been doing all the time that I was jobless. Well, I decided to make the most of the time to travel and get to know exotic cultures. So spent a lot of time downtown (hey, it's far), eating at the Thai food restaurants and experimenting with off-the-road Lebanese cuisine. Wouldn't recommend Thai food though. It has a way of revisiting your mouth in the night, long after you've forgotten all about the nice lady offering you the massage.

I also read a lot. Caught up on the backlog of Calvin and Hobbes, and the Comics pages of newspapers that my mum had hoarded for decades (in case we ever live in a glass house, surrounded by diarrhoeic pigeons, who compel us to clean it daily) (newspapers are ideal for cleaning glass, according to my mum; they are also ideal for ruining your French manicure, according to me). Feel quite literary now. It's sad that I didn't spend much time browsing literature, as a kid. Might have learnt more than I did browsing shop windows.

Anyway, I am glad I had that break. And I'm glad it's over. I was quite ready for the excitement and the entertainment that being surrounded by a bunch of highly strung morons brings. Not that Mrs. Nylon's daily adventures in the garden shed with Mr. Nylon weren't entertaining. He finds the bedroom environment too pressuring to perform.

Will return to my own performance now. Am already trying to meet unreasonable deadlines with crazy assignments. From the looks of my boss (who has been in the agency for 10 years), I might lose all my hair soon. From the looks of the co-worker whose derriere could have been on the cover of GQ, I might lose a lot more than just hair.

Advertising is fun :)

Working on my Friendship Skills...

...Amongst other things.

The past few days with Gary have been different. For one, we've been keeping our hands to ourselves. And he's not just being a great listener, but also an awesome friend. Thanks to him my job search has extended beyond postings on websites to actually speaking to people with vacancies on board. BTW, this is not a cheap trick to get people looking for jobs or recession-related posts onto my blog. I have genuinely been looking.

I had no idea Gary was such good friend material. Admittedly, he hadn't had a chance to prove his worth in the past given that his lips were always otherwise occupied when we were together. But this recent discovery has led me to wonder- does the road to friendship with a guy go through sex?

Once that was well out of the way, Gary and I had a chance to develop genuine affection and interest in each other. So is the way to make a good friend out of a guy to sleep with him? (I can almost here the men clicking away on this theory. Next thing I know, it'll be in Playboy and there'll be cheesy pick-up lines written about it. For eg. I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Let's just get the sex part out of the way first.) Now I don't want to start some controversy but I really feel like I've stumbled upon something big here.

Will get back to you when I've done further research ;) Hey, before you judge, it's all for a good cause. A gal's caught to have some pals, after all. (I cannot believe I wrote that. I hope he kills me when he reads this.)

I Quit!

Yup! It's true... I'd had enough. Enough of the unrestrained c*&^% and cleavages, malicious rumours (the ones about me), unnecessary politics and oh yes, the work. For some reason, realising that a five-year old untrained in English could do my work was not motivating for me. Okay, I exaggerated- maybe not a five-year old. Ten-year old. It's amazing how much better I felt once I had said it. It was like a gigantic boulder the size of the-mess-my-life-had-become had lifted off my shoulders. I am suddenly breathing better, thinking clearer and radiating happiness from every crevice ;)

Gary seemed to think I was being rash but I told him that a smart person knows when the time is right to leave. Of course if I was really smart I would have quit eight months ago when the right time was actually there. But better late than never, right? Well, he may not have agreed with that but at least he's agreed to help me find another job. I may be doing the dumbest thing possible (looking for a job while people are barely holding on to theirs) but at least I have a good friend to count on. I looked a little worried (I am not entirely unaware of the global economic reality), so he said, "It may not be a good time but I can think of noone else who can make it better."

I love my friends.

Only...

I don't think I will ever stop needing Rehan. I might want a million other guys (and I don't exaggerate), but he's the only one I need. Every time I'm hurt, or it seems like everyone in the world is conspiring against me, I need him. I need him to hold me and reassure me that everything will be alright. The world might be enough when I'm happy, but it doesn't stand a chance when I'm in pain. He's the only one who understands my tears and makes them go away. It's why I am reduced to tears by a simple cut when I see that he's not around. It's why I feel so vulnerable- because he's not there to shield me.
It's why noone else has ever been enough, and can never be enough.
Somebody already is.

The Power of Belief

A Spiffing Start

Happy New Year.

Instead of stating my New Year resolutions first and then forgetting all about them five minutes later, this year I'll do it the other way round. Do it first, and then mention that it was a New Year resolution. One of the resolutions this year is to avoid stating the obvious (with or without the air of profundity). So I've resisted the urge to use the phrase "Another year has gone by" in the first post of the year- a temptation which 13,328 people worldwide could not resist.

So far 2009 has been good. Barack Obama has been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, Pakistan is now at least admitting that there are terrorists within its borders (though it still claims it's not funding them), and there have been dramatic events in my love life. Now I know that you're dying to know what these dramatic events are but please let's discuss the important things first(!).

Obama's inaugural speech was quite refreshing, to be honest. After 8 years of wondering whether political speech-writing as a profession was dead in the US, Obama's writers came like cold showers in the scorching heat of Bushland. And his ability to put life into those words is no less laudable. In these troubled times, people need the confidence that his conviction brings, more than anything else probably. I'm sure that if we can all remain positive this recession will pass faster than last night's burritos.

Pakistan's admission though is less reassuring. They are infamous for going back on their word. But staying on that positive note we discussed, this may be the beginning of a (forced) turnaround in their foreign policy, if you can call terrorism that.

And as for my love life, after seeing Even and the Oops-My-Button-Popped girl making out in the power room, I have taken a vow of abstinence. I still have dreams about it- what I saw, not the vow. Her...er... larger-than-life assets pressed against his face. Yuk! Yuk! Yuk! Yuk! I was looking for some spare screws (straight face) and was told to go check with the carpenter in the power room. Well, there were screws there alright, it's just they were already in use. After my shock subsided, I decided that given my unbelievably atrocious taste in men, my continuing to keep sex as an option on the table would clearly be a mistake. So no more nookie for me (and for Obama it seems, though he was talking about a different kind of disarmament).

And let me tell you, life looks a lot better for it (disarmament on both fronts). I am sleeping less, I am being less friendly with people and my TTK for the past week have been less than 3 per day. (Threats To Kill. Really, keep up.)

So with Obama eschewing violence, Pakistan denying it, and me fighting it (only barely though), the balance of the world is being maintained. Hopefully the equilibrium will last long.