Sublimated Narcissism

Sunday, March 25, 2007

 

my mom sucks at consoling
maybe much shouldn't be expected of her, given she couldn't have had much of a positive example set for her from her narcissitic sadistic alcoholic mother, but still....
i remember dating back to my jr. high school sobbing confidances and even now with this most recent work injustice... she always takes the infuriating the position of humanizing the victimizer.

Sometimes you just want someone to be enraged at the cruelty and injustice of it all.
You don't want them to pardon the transgressor by sayng something like "maybe that's the way they are.." or "maybe there's something you don't know going on behind the scenes...."

I know she says this to make it less personal...

But the truth is, no matter how you try to explain away the motivations of the people crushing you... it doesn't make it any less hurtful.

does it?

katherine 12:01 AM

Friday, March 09, 2007

 

someone please tell me what i want to be when i grow up

katherine 9:27 AM

Monday, November 06, 2006

 

life is nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings...

and in order to prevent it from remaining this way indefinitely, i have taken inspiration from a place which usually fills me with a sense of doom: the corporate world. just so that your heads don't explode with the mind-boggling concept of me finding something hopeful in the bleakness of seas of suits and red tape, i should mention that the scope of the business world's ability to inspire me is very limited.

currently i spend 50 + hours a week at a job that adds nothing to my life except money. the remainder of my day is usually spent reading or watching movies in my filthy apartment while thoroughly intoxicated. any introspection i do almost inevitably centers around the bleakness of my current situation and the seeming impossibility of having a more fulfilling future.

So, my baby step towards a solution:

katherine's personal OKRs: quantifiable stretch goals for the next three months, at which point i will give my completion of these goals a number value from 0-1.

(i have to check out of a hotel very soon so for now i'm just going to add broad categories, further explication will be done later tonight)

1. one hour a day of writing/introspection that does not involve self-pity/loathing.

2. volunteer activity at least two hours a week.

the only worry with this is where to volunteer... when i was religious there were hundreds of different opportunities within my church, now, however, it is more difficult.

at home i volunteered as a docent at strathearn historical park, a low budget museum-ish facility in simi. suffice it to say, this was not very fulfilling... spouting off dates and historical anecdotes to insipid 11 year old boy scouts all the while trying (unsuccessfully) to make them excited about history made me feel even more keenly the desire to fling myself in front of the nearest school bus or SUV.

for now i will look around for an appropriately inspiring activity, which i hope to find within two weeks.

3. no more than 3 drinks a night (1 drink = 1 6oz. glass of wine; 1 12 oz. beer; 1 shot of booze).

4. find at least two female friends in the area.

potential sources: salsa group at work; church group (?) which might be difficult as i am an atheist; volunteer activity

at college i developed this terrible pattern of forming sexually ambiguous friendships with men. as a consequence, i lost almost all of my friends when i started dating michael and somehow have maintained my friendless state post-michael.

i think people primarily form friendships in high school and college, after which point a person's friendship network extends by meeting friends-of-friends, co-workers of friends, etc. by losing touch/moving away from my high-school friends and focusing on only michael in college i think i might have irrevocably settled my future as a social pariah.

but we shall see…

5. no more reading of Russian novels. self-explanatory.

katherine 4:54 PM

Friday, June 23, 2006

 

the end is nigh

Fifteen minutes ago I woke up feeling something crawling across my left shoulder. My immediate reaction was to reach back, grab it with my right hand, squish it, and fling it across the room. Then I screamed a little bit (not too much because now I am a big girl living all by myself and grown-ups don't do that sort of thing). I'm discovering that this was the wrong action to take - the throwing across the room part in particular - because currently I am very much bothered by the now unanswerable question of 'what crawled across my shoulder?'. I fear the worst.

My downstairs neighbors must have some sort of cockroach infestation. I justify this as knowledge by two pieces of evidence: 1) When taking out the trash once, their window was open, the sun was shining in just enough for me to see a huge pile of filth, towering to about waist high, and 2) Despite a concerted effort on my part to be a model of cleanliness ( e.g. taking out the trash, washing the dishes, and disinfecting the sink and stove... all of this every night) I will still occasionally see 1-2 cockcroaches every other day or so. I rule out being, myself, the main cockroach lure in the building because 1-2 is a relatively small number to find when one is actively going on cockroach hunts in the middle of the night (also, see #1 above). If I wake when it's dark, I generally don't just take a sip of water and go back to bed, I go hunting: I slowly sneak into the kitchen; then in a whirlwind of action I turn on the lights, fling the cabinets open, move the chairs to check under the table, and get down to look under the fridge/stove. These hunts are usually unproductive. I generally have a spotting at a totally inappropriate cockroach time: In the middle of the day I will see one, ill-fated roach, crawling across my living room carpet; At 10 am I'll find two cockroaches, similarly fated, pals-ing about and heading towards the trap on my kitchen counter.

Which brings me back to this incident. I went on another hunt afterwards, find nothing. I'm sure, though, that my initial scream rendered this hunt less effective. (Not really a 'scream,' now that I think of it, more like a 'yelp.' I want to save actually screaming for very extreme situations - being murdered, etc. - so that my neighbors will take me seriously when these things occur). In any event, the idea of cockroaches crawling over me in my sleep is just too much to handle.

On a positive note: Upon investigating the spot on my back in question, I see a tiny lump there resembling a bite. Now, this might just be psychosomatic, since my desire to explain the incident sans mention of cockroaches is probably strong enough to cause a change in my physical appearance. But I'm going to ignore that possibility for now. I just recently (as in, five minutes ago) found out that cockroaches do bite; however, I think it's usually to eat rather than to defend oneself from Katherine's right hand. (For more fascinating cockroach information visit: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/cockroach_faq.html). It's a very bizarre day when I would favor the idea of a spider crawling over me in the middle of the night to a cockroach.

Whatever the case may be, I think it best to stay up for a while. If it was a cockroach, undoubtedly there is an entire army of them hiding somewhere in my bedroom, waiting for me to fall asleep again. If it was a spider, it could very easily be poisonous. In which case I should at least stay awake for an additional hour or so, lest I fall asleep and then slip into a coma (Then no one would find me for days, I'd starve to death, and only the smell would alert the neighbors of a problem). I hope my medical insurance has kicked in by now.

katherine 4:05 AM

Sunday, June 11, 2006

 

brief update

I moved.
I now live in Mountain View, 'the heart of Silicon Valley'.

I live alone.
I considered looking in the paper for a roommate. My motivation is doing this was both monetary and social: One bedrooms in this area go for $1000 per month; I also realized that I already chose to socially isolate myself by moving so far away from my family/mike and I considered perhaps excerting some energy into the fight against becoming the pariah queen. However in the end I settled on living alone in a ridiculously priced one-bedroom. Today I purchased two birds, Gottlob and Bertrand, but don't judge me on this right away, I'll write more about it tomorrow.

I think my car might be dying.
Yet, I hesitate to take it to a mechanic. This is very much similar to my hesitation about going to the dentist despite my discovering, the last time I went there, that I have at least two (maybe three) cavities that still need to be worked on. That was three years ago. I know it will be dreadful when I go. I also know that my negligence is only exacerbating an already horrid teeth-state. Yet, there's something comforting in not knowing the full extent of the rot overtaking my teeth. Just as there's something comforting in not knowing the exact life-span of my quickly extinguishing car. I drive to work (at Google) an hour early, along bus routes, just in case.

I look awful.
It's the stress of both the move and the possibility of very embarrassing, costly and public failure. So just at the time when I need to be looking my best in order to impress my bosses and gain friends in an area where I know noone, I can't seem to stop breaking out and I've gained back all the weight I've lost since college. Plus my hair needs a good five inches cut off, and I'm always lazy/awkward about going to a salon (esp. when I look like I do now). I seem to be horribly unprepaired wardrobe-wise for this new working environment as well.

I don't have cable.
It was, I thought, a wise decision at the time. I spent far too much of the past 8 months sitting drunk in front of the television on the weekdays after work. Now I sit drunk in front of a book. This last weekend I reached a new low, sitting in the livingroom in my underwear on the floor cushions that I treat as a couch, laughing out loud listening to Prairie Home Companion on NPR. (Laughing at This American Life or Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me is excusable... but Prairie Home Companion? Come on Katherine).

And sadly, that is all that is happening in my life.

katherine 7:28 PM

Monday, August 15, 2005

 

5 months after graduation and i'm living in my parents' house. i graduated summa cum laude and have no job and am finding it impossible to obtain one. it appears academic accolades are only impressive inasmuch as the education you receive according to your major resembles the training you'd receive at a trade school. i'm 21 and i don't have my driver's license - i made the national dean's list and i still have to ask my mom for a ride to the coffee shop. what have i been doing the past four years?
i suppose things are improving though. yesterday i purchased a car with money from my graduation party. tomorrow i take my driving test.

my update reads like a tedious diary... but at this point in my life, i really don't have any friends to update on the boring day to day life of Katherine. I keep my room immaculate, read half the day, watch horrible movies the other half - not where i imagined i'd be a month before my 22nd birthday... but then again, i used to think armageddon would arrive when i was 16. ah, the joys of growing up in a Catholic household, dreaming of being a warrior for the Christ in the intense battlefields of spirituality.

katherine 8:04 PM

Friday, May 13, 2005

 

there is no me without you. i've always liked to think of myself as "strong personality" (wouldn't we all?). what does that mean anyway... "strong personality"?

fuck the pretense. a full year of fallow creative impulses. a full three years of feeling worthless. i need to start feeling independent again in some way. i need to have some meaning that isn't fully determined by someone else.

confession. i've turned into a bit of an alcoholic in the past two years. a little alcohol, i find, can unlock inhibitions and allow for some honesty behind all this civil bullshit. too much alcohol, however, can interfere with one's ability to type in a semi-efficient way.

so, it's a beginning in any event. a renaissance, if you will (shit i'm ridiculous). until more sober times, goodnight.

katherine 10:01 PM

Monday, November 03, 2003

 

naïve presentation of social determinism

Friday sitting in the philosophy commons room on the third floor of dodd; attending the Q&A about applying to philosophy grad school.

"it's definitely not something you want to go into by default..."


I wonder how much of life we live just by default.
moving along a chain of causation without questioning,
and so one thing leads to another

in the end you seem to be merely a passive participant in your life...
no longer an agent of action,
just 'going with the flow'.

I went to college because that's what you were suppose to do after highschool
I'll go to grad school because that's what you do when you major in philosophy
I'll become a professor in an unfulfilling school (I'm not smart enough to teach anywhere else) because that's what you do after earning a phd
I'll get married and have a couple of children, looking for the fulfillment that my job doesn't give me, because that's what women do, even professionals
and so the causal chain continues...

I am on the outside, looking helplessly on as my life spreads before me;
as the doors of opportunity shut behind me- each decision I make further solidifies my determined future.

But perhaps i'm melodramatic: at any given point i can intervene and move in a new direction...
with a new cookie cutter life stretching before me.
It might be a different cage you create, but it's a trap no less.


Some of my Mormon friends from highschool are getting married at the young age of 20.
Initially it completely baffled me...
the apathy with which they looked on the almost fascist pre-packaged life their church decreed for them since birth.
I was shocked by the absence of concern with which they made a step that would cement the path of the rest of their existence. Isn't it terrifying to see your entire life spread rigidly before you?


it's odd that i can now answer that question: i realize that there really isn't that much difference between my life and thiers.


and yes, it is terrifying.

katherine 12:52 PM

Friday, October 24, 2003

 

comedy: the non-panacea

When in an argument, I try to find the most extreme viewpoint as a means to satirize the situation – rendering it comical and, in so doing, trivial. The levity of constant humor also rescues me from any serious introspection or criticism. When feeling bad about something I dramatize my guilt, making it ridiculously maudlin, and then proceed to laugh it off. Exaggerated self-deprecation is essential in avoiding any serious guilt. Another method of subtle deception of self; yet it is ultimately an unsatisfying one.

Thus when I flippantly typify my personal relationships [of very close, but very brief friendships] by quipping “everyone gets sick of me after a while,” there’s always a slight sting accompanying the following laugh.

Abrupt endings characterize almost all of my phone conversations. There comes a point in the course of the conversation where dialogue slows as people search for things to say. This point is painfully awkward to me, and I do my utmost to avoid it. Consequently, I end phone conversations while both sides are still enjoying themselves and there are other things left to say. No extended “goodbye… see you soon…love you…yeah… yeah… goodbye” bullshit. Just a simple, “alright, I’m leaving, bye” hang up - simple, quick and painless.

It stems from an antipathy I have toward being considered burdensome. I’d rather leave someone and have that person feel dissatisfied than him feel bored. Maybe it goes even deeper to an inherent fear of worthlessness that the tediousness of my conversation would confirm. I constantly judge myself with the estimations of others. For Hobbes, the sense of Pride, or the need for others to estimate your worth to the same degree you estimate it yourself, leads to constant ‘warre’, making life “nasty, brutish… and short” [I forget]. For me, this devaluation of someone thinking my conversation oppressive would result not in war with others; rather it would determine the outcome of an internal war waged over different calculations of self worth. There are undoubtedly many things ‘wrong’ [whatever that means] with basing your sense of self upon what other people think of you; there are also a million reasons that it is irrational to be terrified that the infected will come running through my window in the middle of the night to attack me… but I am guilty of both. Michael says that I should work on my irrational fears… reason myself away from them in the middle of the night, ignore, and suppress them. What about my insecurities with regards to people?

Perhaps it is that friends grow tired of my personality or perhaps my own fear of the possibility of their ennui leads me to have very intimate friendships that last no more than a couple of years. I want to change that with him. I said before that pride is too expensive, and I still feel that it is. So I’ll wait to see, without preemptively fleeing. What this will prove I don’t know: perhaps it will make me more devastated if he does leave me or become tired of me; perhaps I’ll actually decide on my own, independent of the fear of his not loving me, that this relationship won’t work. In any event, I refuse to fall into the old pattern of running away at the first signs of disinterest, at the first slight onslaught against my pride.

I don’t want to flippantly joke about this years to come and silently cry in my bed later on that night.

katherine 5:05 PM

Thursday, October 23, 2003

 

should

the sophomoric selfrighteous
shooting arrows of 'should'
billowing diatribes sans hiatus,
prove only to irritate us
with their lack of comprehension
of the meaning of 'good'

katherine 3:09 PM

Thursday, October 09, 2003

 

addendum
sometimes this entire endeavor seems so superficial... my 'witty' title ceases to be funny when i really do view the blog as a mode of self-glorification.

yet somehow i don’t want to let go. i feel that i’ve lost my sense of self (a blog in itself - i owe you on this one)… though the introspective nature of this blog tends to lead to an unwarranted sense of importance; perhaps an ego boost wouldn’t be too unhealthy for me right now.

mercurial me.

katherine 10:41 PM

Thursday, October 02, 2003

 

I was silly to ever think that i had something importantly unique to say. no one can read anything of value here; gain any knowledge here. I finally have realized that I am ignorant and foolish...

and so, goodbye

katherine 2:50 PM

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

 

overheard [as in overheard my own voice having a conversation.. it's still all very surreal to me]

"I mean, you can snoop all you want on my laptop. Look through all my porn [laughs] Actually, you won't find any porn there, although there are a couple nude pictures of April"

"Excuse me?"

"What?"

"You still have nude pictures of April?!"

"They're artsy"

"Why would you still have nude pictures of your ex when we've been dating for 5 months?!"

"Hey, they're really nicely done: it's on a beach and the sun is shining, you can see them if you want"

"I don't want to see them! I don't care if they're really nicely done. If your interest is merely aesthetic, give them to someone else who can enjoy them because they're 'artsy' but i'll be damned if i'm going to kiss someone who still gazes at his naked ex girlfriend. Delete them"

"I'm not going to delete them"

"I'm not going to kiss you"


i just thought this interchange was slightly comical and slightly pathetic. having no one to vent it to (since he doesn't seem to think it all that drastic) i have to tell you.

katherine 11:15 AM

Sunday, July 06, 2003

 

you leave for an instant, come back and everything's different. i don't even know how to maneuver around blogger anymore.



a little too emo for me

yes. i've been reading over some of my blogs and noticing a trend... despite all of my big-talk-no-bullshit-touchy-feely-crap attitude... i'm too damn sentimental. i'm either:

1. just a tad overly-sensitive [read emotional pussy] and thereby slightly bitter

or

2. a cynical, hardened bitch [which would be rather odd considering my highly-sheltered-paradigm-of-suburban-catholic upbringing]

so i'm going to crush this shit. yes, i can be depressed at times, but life isn't some pathetic sob story featuring the tragic hero, katherine, taking on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune blah blah blah... and stifling her internal struggle only to reveal it to the intimate audience that is the world wide web...
sure... i hate to admit it, but sometimes [read most of the time] i sound like some angsty teenager [shivers in disgust]

so anyway, i promise to be better

katherine 2:30 PM

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

 

is it too jealous of me to not want to share him with drugs and alcohol?

katherine 7:53 PM

Tuesday, May 06, 2003

 

i have a select set of stories that i repeat ad nauseum to crowds of acquaintances, inevitably shouting them over loud music to a drunken audience - my party stories - just cute little anecdotes of my childhood. they always guarantee a laugh or two.

i receive a certain sort of pleasure, of power, relating these stories. the power of the performer. anticipating emotion - stretching that power as far as it can extend, pulling prodding teasing until... release and everyone explodes into laughter or shock. playing god - suddenly i govern someone reactions, holding them in my hand.

yet it never fully satisfies me.

tell them about the time you got your stitches katherine
tell them the fountain story

it used to delight me to relate - not only the sense of performance - but also the script itself: a delightful memory pleasantly colored by that rosy haze of nostalgia. gone now. all that is left is a cheap, tawdry, almost artificial tale. the ultimate goal of my precious memory now is to illicit some easily won wreaking of beer laugh. a sudden [and oh so transient] glint of entertainment passing over some acquaintance's [probably insipid] eye. then it's over and the story has been displayed once again to a greedy [or worse yet uncaring] audience

the prostitution of my memories

every retelling cheapens the memory, the years of accumulated exaggeration in each subsequent telling renders the innocent simplicity of my experiences gaudy and garish. suddenly the anecdote is no longer my own- it's nothing more than a comedic fictional script. my need for the empowerment of performance paradoxically enslaves me: every performance i witness me giving a part of myself away to an audience tat doesn't really care for it anyway.

even if they do, i am forgotten in an instant.

katherine 8:18 PM

Monday, May 05, 2003

 

i'm so tired of grappling with words - turns of phrase, styles of speech trouble me constantly. my obsession with grammar overpowers my abilities of articulation.

i spoke with some man a week ago. he said something to the effect of "it's so much easier once you find your voice as a writer." Voice as a Writer - what does that mean? i am merely a conglomerate (is that even a word?) of all the authors i've read over my life. i have no autonomy as a writer. i stand merely as the compilation of millions of styles i have read - emulating that which i admire until it becomes impossible to sever these manifold intellectual influences from my musings. Tearing this influences from me will eviscerate me entirely as a writer.

tearing these influences from me will eviscerate me entirely as a person.

there is no autonomous, definitive katherine fowler. i have always been so ready to admire and emulate - so willing to mold my definition of self to resemble someone else. this romantic feeling of love (for the first time) merely serves to highlight my lack of identity. the first tangible proof of my dependence and visible adaptation grants me cognizance of the subtle prior sacrifices of identity.

what am i writing anyway? i'm entirely absurd.

I have an idea for a story - an idea for a group of stories. somehow i can't bring myself to write.

should stories flow forth from vague ideas - giving themselves birth in the progression of a creative act? or should they reflect hours of painstaking planning before reaching fruition - forced form, precontrived mood, designed imagery, formulaic metaphor? perhaps only the novice writer must carefully contrive their stories into complex intellectual entities. only the experienced writer can gracefully allow their story to create itself.

maybe my idea for a story isn't so brilliant anyway - another hackneyed example of an intellectually immature coed with delusions of aesthetic grandeur.

I'm utterly ridiculous.

katherine 5:18 PM

Friday, March 21, 2003

 

the iconoclast that is me

haven't blogged for a while

haven't had anything to say

been busy realizing inadequacies. this quarter has primarily served as an insecurity fest for katherine. don't want to go into it much out of fear of maudlin sentiment which only makes people uncomfortable in any event.

the quarter's over now anyway, i intend to start blogging. maybe.

isn't having a blog just the height of pretension?
who the fuck cares what you think katherine? why are your opinions so goddam important?

back home looking forward to a break. time to reconstruct my ego.


do you ever find yourself espousing opinions not really your own only for the sake of pissing other people off?

i do.

all the time.

at school i was undecided about the war. primarly because i was surrounded by staunch (mostly ignorant) antiwar sentiment. here at home all of a sudden i've turned antiwar activist just to piss my mother off.

healthy n'est pas?

katherine 9:37 PM

Friday, February 28, 2003

 

back in black

funny, i just read jojobeans blog and once again realized my patheticness.

how is it that i have no responsibilities,
no involvement in any sort of organizations,
no life

and yet i still feel overwhelmed and find excuses to put off doing my homework until it's one hour till that ten page paper is due and i'm sitting inside of the computer lounge with a lousy 5 pages finally updating instead of writing?

katherine 11:32 AM

Sunday, January 19, 2003

 

Role Playing
not that kind you sick fuck

once again it is the familiar skin of the negligent blogger.

been suffering from depression for the past few days, don't quite feel up to putting on the worn facade of the wit.

am i mixing metaphors?
so very sorry

i'll write again when i don't feel quite so worthless

katherine 2:30 PM

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