Reprive

[major content from an IM with a friend aproximately 7pm Thursday. IM content modified and sanitized. Augmented with new narrative]

I have been dealing with those feelings of kinda worthlessness. Not that I am truely worthless, but I have been lacking that sensation of really making a difference to someone. Or, of being a buddy.

Earlier in the day, I helped a visitor to our building setup and test A/V equipment for a presentation she would be making. I agreed to sit in on her practice speech, along with a few other staff that were working on her project.

When she was finished, she asked if I would come back tonight to the meeting when she made the actual presentation. She was nervous about her presentation, and she wanted that friendly face in the audience – someone who was there for her, not for her project. I agreed.

The day has been a hodgepodge for me, as I am still “catching up” on my game at work, and am just generally unmotivated. My original plan for the day was to just work through until the 6:30pm meeting, but when my machine locked up around 4:15, i set Norton Utilities to running, and told my boss I was going to run home for a bit…

Parradoxx: I went straight home at 4:30, and took a nap (I’ve not been sleeping well at all). While there, my phone rang (which I didn’t answer) and I heard the same ambient noise from the speaker of my answering machine as I heard coming from the street.

Parradoxx: Someone was calling me from the payphone outside….well, that rarely happens, but I was too sleepy to care at the moment. But, at 6pm, I got up and cleaned up and left, to be back here for a Board Meeting. Well, as I was driving off, I saw that The City’s “Thursday Night LIVE” had started up, and there was a band playing down at the end of the street.

Parradoxx: I couldn’t see the band (they were facing away from me) but I identified the cars….. it was the band that Yort is in. Yort is Trynity’s husband, and Trynity is my best-friend in exile.

Parradoxx: One of them tried to call me.

IMfriend: did you go and say hey?.. or try?.. or did you miss out because you didn’t answer?

Parradoxx: I don’t know who, but after-the-fact image analysis shows that Tynity might have been turning the corner to go back “in view” of the stage as I reached the end of the block and turned in my car.

Parradoxx: Not that that means anything else. I actually circled my block once and considered stopping. But I had a personal committment to somebody else to be here for the meeting.

IMfriend: oh boo

Parradoxx: I rationalized it by saying “they all know I don’t answer my home phone” and they didn’t try calling my cell.

Parradoxx: If they really wanted to reach me, they could have.

Parradoxx: The ball is still not in my court.

IMfriend: lol

IMfriend: oh whatever

IMfriend: you didn’t answer your phone!

Parradoxx: But, the truth is also that I was too tired to emotionally handle it too.

Parradoxx: (I NEVER answer my home phone. That is, I screen all calls first.)

IMfriend: aww.. too tired or too emotionally tired?

Parradoxx: Both. For me, its one and the same (I am a thinker. Being emotional requires tremendous personal energy, which I lack right now due to the clouds and lack of sleep!)

IMfriend: i see…

IMfriend: im lacking it now too

IMfriend: but im lacking both

Parradoxx: So now, I am writhing in emotional pain, because I have been hung over with misery and missing my friend for the past two weeks. I mean, thats been depressing for me, but this tonight – I am in pain because I have been touched acutely in a sore place.

I got back to work just minutes before the meeting started. I sat near the back, so I could leave discreetly when she was finished, but made sure she could see my face as she needed to during her presentation.

She ended up doing a fine job, especially when she basically ditched her hand notes, and just used her PowerPoint presentation to spur extemporanious speaking.

[cont’d]