PASSING FOR NORMAL

The page next to last in my life..


I know I’ll have a great weekend. The weather is just perfect today. I’ve been walking around with this stupid smile all day. I will not miss this Saturday. I am going out.

I missed the Five Boro Bike Tour last Sunday over a paper deadline.
I missed the Yo-Yo Ma concert at the philharmonics yesterday. I had the ticket for 3 months now and I was really looking forward to go but I knew I would have to stay for this last minute experiment. I gave the ticket to a cellist friend of mine and I was happy to see how excited he was.
You see, I do have a great life, except I’m missing it.

Last summer, we spent a month preparing for this camping and white water rafting trip. I had made it once before with the group to what was a one day canoeing trip. This trip was supposed to be for a week. I had bought all what I needed for it. A (15) person tent, sleeping bags and an awesome grill. Aside from this trip, I don’t camp and I don’t grill. You guessed it, I missed it. Well it happened that fleet week was right before that weekend and I met Sebastian that week. The same week I missed my second date with Sebastian over a dinner on my boss’s yacht with some collaborators.
Sometimes I come through. Like Amjad would be dying to see a movie that just came out and I would be too busy for weeks at a time. A year later, I would rent the movie, after he had seen it at least 10 times, and cook him dinner.

Earlier this year, and due to increasing memory loss, I have made a habit to write down everything. I have my little note book in my purse which I take out several times a day. I would write down things that I need to note and appointments I need to add to my calendar, shopping list, the last page is always reserved for phone numbers. Later I started adding any little observation that I would find fascinating at the moment, some poetry lines, thoughts on how to make money, more on how to lose money and mostly ideas on how to torture people around me. The second to last page is why I started this habit in the first place and it was consecrated to things I want to do.

It started with upcoming little events and really silly things like learn how to wrap grape leaves. I would little by little achieve these goals. Another goal would be to learn all the train lines in Manhattan, which i still don't know. Or walk in the rain, I always wanted to do that. I’m afraid to catch a cold though, so one day. I would sometimes catch myself cheating and erasing goals that i did not achieve. Or would start writing down little excuses next to the event stating the very compelling reason that made me miss it. Then the list started building up into these little self-improvement tasks and these cease-the-day type of escapades that, in reality, we never have the time to do. My list goes something like: Take up Yoga, Learn Spanish, Italian and Japanese, move to Chelsea, organize CDs, start a recipe book, go sky diving, lose 20 pounds, live in Paris for a year, buy a car, buy a washer and a dryer, learn an instrument even if it’s going to kill you, learn to assemble the FRET filters on the microscope, finish those Tango lessons, lose 20 pounds…

Well, as you guessed by now, it didn’t work. So I do things in a very messy sloppy unorganized way. Some get done and some don't and probably never will be achieved. There's no use in getting neurotic over it. It is meant to be just for fun anyway, life I mean. If not this concert, another concert, another trip, another dish, another language, another man… I learned to keep going and it’s working out well…