Letter to My Younger Self

Dear younger self,

Most of the time people write these letters to their younger selves after their lives have finally stopped sucking.  They are happily married, have their 2.5 kids, a house with a white picket fence, and a stable career.  Well, I’m writing to you without any assurances that we will ever achieve any of those things.   In fact, currently we are unemployed, single, taking on debt that could easily reach six figures so that we can go back to school, and struggling to make rent payments. 

Don’t worry too much, though.  Your future isn’t tragically awful.  You will finally make friends once you get to middle school, two of whom will stay friends with you for the rest of your life.  In fact, they will pretty much become a second set of siblings to you.  Speaking of siblings, you and your younger brother really won’t get along until after you move away for college.  Until then, it might be best to try to stay in different rooms from each other in order to avoid World War III. 

High school will be a very interesting time for you.  You will have some significant highs, win big awards, apply to college, get your first job, and play so many sports that you will be in the best shape of your life.  You will also have some significant lows. In particular, you might want to be careful once your friends start dating people and get “serious.”  Just because you think of them as your best friends doesn’t mean that they won’t hesitate to move you to the back burner in order to keep their boyfriend.  None of those relationships will ultimately pan out, but it will result in irreparable damage to your friendship with them. Oh, you will also have an opportunity to finally put a certain jerk in his place by taking four dates with you to one school dance.  Trust me, it’ll be awesome. One more thing: don’t give up on that thing that you tried out for in middle school band.  Something will come of it in high school.

You will graduate in the top 10% of your class and move on to a large university. You will go through no less than 5 majors before finally settling on the area of study that you will find fulfilling.  During that time, you will meet many new people and make some fantastic connections.  You will travel all over the world and have opportunities to step far, far outside of your comfort zone. Don’t hesitate when those opportunities present themselves, but also do a gut check every once in awhile.  You’ll know what the right choice is.

After graduation, life will not go the way you expect it to.  Rather than falling into a great job that puts you on a trajectory to greatness, you will struggle to find work.  However, remember those friends from middle school I mentioned earlier?  You will get to take an incredible trip with one of them during the summer after you graduate.  It’s not something that you would expect to enjoy, but it will produce some of the best memories you have with that person for years to come.

Despite your best intentions, plans, and hard work, you will continue to struggle to figure out what to do with your life and where you are going.  In fact, when you write this letter to yourself, you still won’t be sure where you’re going or whether or not you are making the best decision regarding your future.  You will continue to wonder what it is that you are doing wrong when it comes to dating even though you probably aren’t doing anything wrong, per se.  It just isn’t the right time in your life to find that Special Someone.  Despite struggling with depression, anxiety, loneliness, and feeling like you are somehow falling behind your peers, you are sure of one thing: things will ultimately work out in the end.  Probably in a way that you totally didn’t expect.  Even though you will have days where you feel like an utter failure and you will often think that everything you try is a waste of time, you know deep down in your gut that this is just a temporary state and that, ultimately, your efforts will bear fruit.

Now go outside, enjoy the sun, and get ready for your soccer game!

Sincerely,

Your future self  

Oh!  About those friends from middle school…Still your friends, only now they are married. To each other.  Their wedding will be a fantastic day and you will be so happy for them that you’ll want to explode.

Crap Weather Friends

We all have those friends that are only around when things go well: fair weather friends.  When you’re employed, in a great relationship, have lots of free time, etc, these are the friends who are always down to get up and go out to do something. Of course, as soon as life starts getting difficult, as it is wont to do, they disappear as if by magic. This phenomena has been expounded upon by numerous academics, pundits, and facebook status updates.

However, as I am sitting here in limbo (see also: unemployment), I’ve discovered a new kind of friend: the crap weather friend.  These are friends that only talk to you or interact with you when they need something from you.

I’m not talking about people who simply ask for favors when their lives get crazy-busy.  I’m also not talking about people who are down on their luck and need a little extra help now and again.  I’m referring to people that don’t talk to you unless you have something to offer them.

Over the past few weeks, I have discovered a slew of these friends.  To be fair, they haven’t always acted this way and some of them are extremely busy right now with significant others, work, school, etc. I try to give them as much leeway as I can to account for life getting crazy, but when things become a trend that I can no longer ignore, then I have to relegate them to the crap weather friend category.

For example, one of my friends has begun to treat me with what I almost-jokingly refer to as benign neglect.  I will text message, call, or e-mail them to check in and see how things are going, but never get a response.  However, when I contact them in order to ask how some of their problems are going and whether or not they have been resolved, I get an almost instantaneous response.  Again, I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that life is getting in the way, but I still have to wonder…

Another case occurred when I tried to call a friend of mine because I was feeling really down about things.  I don’t do well when I’m unemployed and I was getting cabin fever.  When they called me back, they were very distracted because they were getting ready to meet up with other folks for dinner.  While I appreciated that they had bothered to call me back at all, I was disappointed that they could only take 5 inattentive minutes to check in with me and then didn’t call back when they had more free time (and yes, I did call them again later with the same result).

To complete my use of examples today, I’ve been helping a number of folks look for new apartments since I have much more time on my hands then they do.  I will routinely send them e-mails with apartments they are looking for in their price range, near bus lines, with in-unit washer/dryer, etc.  The typical response to this is a “thanks so much!” and then nothing else.  Even though most of these folks asked me to help them out, they don’t contact me at all with things as simple as updates on how their apartment hunt is going unless I inquire first.  I’ve waited until later in the week when I know their schedules tend to wind down a bit to see if they would be able to hang out, grab coffee, whatever, but rarely do these people respond at all.

As a temporary solution, I have been trying to reach out to other friends so that I do not feel the absence of these friends quite as sharply.  Perhaps this is simply another phase of life where another group of us drift apart and go our separate ways.  If so, I better get on top of things and start filling up my calendar!

If you wonder whether or not you might be a crap weather friend to someone, I've devised a list of attributes to check for:

1. Are there certain friends of yours who only become involved in your life when it sucks/gets busy/something big happens?

2. Is there a particular friend that you contact only when life sucks?

3. Are there people that you spend time with when life's got you down, but you don't spend time with when life is going well? 

If you answered "yes" to these questions, maybe it's time to take a good look at your life and decide whether or not that's the kind of person you want to be.

Dude Brahs on a Ferry

For anyone that knows me in real life, mockery of “dude brahs” should be a very familiar subject. For the two new readers that just randomly came across this blog, “dude brahs” are those guys who never really got past their awful idiot frat guy stage.  As in, popped collar with a goofy haircut that requires far too much product, talking loudly on their cell phone, saying things like, “Dude, brah.  I’ll be there in 20.” 

Dude brahs rarely fail to absolutely make my day. Not only are they generally oblivious to how ridiculous they look/act, but they also tend to blunder through life in spectacular fashion.

Last night, I encountered three dude brahs that not only made my evening, but were so spectacular that they inspired me to write a blog post.

First, a picture.

When I first saw these three, I thought, “I wonder where they are going?  Maybe a big event in Seattle?” Then my friend Justin laughed and said, “No, they are totally planning on going into Seattle to get some action.”

Not wanting to judge too quickly (I know, unusual for me since I am a big-time judge-r), I decided to find a seat next to them on the ferry in order to find out if I was right or if Justin was right.

Within minutes of leaving the ferry terminal, it became painfully apparent that not only had Justin’s assessment been correct, but it was dead-on. Phrases like, “I’m going to go awesome myself up,” and “Red Bull and vodka is pretty much the best drink,” were uttered. A game plan was formed: “Tell you what, let’s hang around a bar near the ferry terminal and I’ll call some girls to see what’s up.” Contingency plans were considered: “So, like, do we want to get, like, two rooms or just one and, like, if one of us scores we just let the other guys know?” (I really wish that I were lying about any of this.)

They were in constant contact with their fellow dude brahs around the Sound: “Martens said that he just got approached by a guy who wanted to punch him in the face.” “Yeah, I’d love to see them try,” (insert fist bump here). Finally, a few words of caution were uttered: “Hey, as long as it’s not a Navy girl, you’re fine.”

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, another night-in-the-towner approached them and gave them some advice.  As a native to the Seattle area with an intimate knowledge of the nightlife scene, she told them what bars and clubs their attire would be best received in.  I believe the words she used were something akin to, “Yeah, that place has, like, plenty of girls (or guys) and dancing and stuff.  They’ll be all like, ‘Oh, you’re wearing some fancy suits!’ and you can be all, ‘Yeah, let’s dance,’ or something.” 

This brief encounter really made me question how we, as a species, have survived as long as we have.  Better yet, I wonder whether or not to believe that humans were able to actually beat out another species for survival.  I mean, how stupid did the Neanderthals have to be in order for early homo sapiens to beat them out in the race for survival?

The Sadness that is Free Online Dating

If you are one of the two or three readers of this blog, you will be familiar with my rants regarding online dating or just dating in general.  Don’t get me wrong; most days I don’t mind being single.  However, I am baffled as to how people meet potential significant others after college. 

After reading about how many relationships these days result from online dating sites, I thought I’d give it a whirl.  As a result, I despair for the future of humanity.  You may think that I am exaggerating, but I’m not.  I've discovered that the guys that I find particularly irritating fall into a few categories:

Inappropriate Age

Now at first I was skeptical, but then I thought that I might as well give this guy a chance and visited his profile.

...Only to discover that he's more than 20 years older than me.  He and my father could have grown up together....Thank you, but NO.

Guys THat cant spell gOoD (or grammer goodly....or punkshu8...)

Racist, Sexist, or Some Other Ist

To be clear, in case you are a new reader, I am half Japanese and half white.

Short and Not-So-Sweet (see also: Boring or Generic)

Kinda Awkward and/or Creepy

A Little Too Persistent

In Conclusion...

I'm done with online dating.  It was intriguing at first, amusing later, and ended up just making me sad in the end.  I feel like online dating is little more at this point than an indictment of education in America.  However, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't bother using sites that require you to pay to use the site.  I wasn't THAT curious about online dating.  I do have at least three friends that I can think of off the top of my head who are currently dating someone that they met through a dating site like match.com or eHarmony. Maybe the lesson to take away here is that free dating sites are amusing, but less than useful, paid sites yield potentially better matches, and I should get more comfortable with my single status.