keep on plodding

Gosh emotions are fun. I've complained to my few close friends on a number of occasions about how few emotions I seem to feel...my spectrum of emotion is not so colourful. You probably have all kinds of colour in your spectrum. Like:

Purple: Creative
Pink: Fun and cute
Red: Anger/Passion
Yellow: Happiness
Green: Jealousy
Dark green: Fear
Blue: Sadness
Grey: Stoic, cold
Black: Sexy/Moody

I don't seem to get many of these...mostly Grey/Stoic with flashes of Yellow/Happiness and Red/Passion. Whenever I talk to other people, they seem to feel so much more.
Purple? Pfft, I'm a fiercely logical thinker, which is an enormous dampener of creativity.
Pink? Pfft, heterosexual men are not allowed to be cute.
Green? I don't get jealous. I either get Red/Angry and try to acquire this thing that I don't have, or I sit back and admire the Yellow/Happy splendour.
Dark Green? Hmm, I do feel this occasionally, but only when I look for it, which seems unintuitive since real fear is about the unknown and not being in control.
Blue? What makes people sad? What makes people feel anguish? Those are both genuine questions...I don't know the answer. I haven't shed a tear since 2000, when I was upset because I was forced to go to a school to learn vietnamese. I don't fully understand why I was crying then either.

Why don't I feel any of these fun emotions? I thought that it was because that I'm some kind of freak, who simply lacks these emotions. I read up and watched media with psychopaths like American Psycho, Dexter, Death Note, Silence of the Lambs and many others, hoping to find clues as to why I might be so odd. This was my personal quest for a couple of years, and I considered my quest completed some months ago.

Until yesterday.



A few days ago, I sat down to watch a spot of TV with a housemate. I don't know why I did - I usually find TV so terribly mind rotting. Ah, I remember - I had a friend over who was in the bathroom and I was waiting for her return. Anyway, my housemate pointed something out to me - a judge on the panel for a stand up comic competition had a resemblance to someone we both knew - Valentine's Day. I saw the resemblance right away - not just her appearance, but her mannerisms and energy - the things I'm most attracted to - they were all the same. I instantly realised how much I missed her, and arranged to meet up with her yesterday.

I may be giving her too much credit here, but I think women are diabolically clever in making us wait. It's an amplifier - it makes us that more excited to meet people we like, and also many times more hateful of people we don't. I waited somewhere around 25 minutes for her.

Then I finally saw her. Well, she saw me. She always reacts the same way - she sees me at a distance, and runs up to me with her tiny statured steps and hugs me. Every time. There's something safe and comfortable about people with unique habits. I'd blog about that if I wasn't late for a dance meet right now.

Then there's the way she treats me. I've blogged about how much I dislike extroverts before. Another reason is that many extroverts I have met are incredibly weak people - that is, they seem to cower and "walk on eggshells" around me. I've been told that Valentine's Day can be incredibly insecure, but that was not the impression I got from her yesterday. She was bold, bolder than my male kung fu students who fear me greatly, she challenged me! She challenged my worth and such as a person and I buckled. I went home yesterday feeling a strange kind of emotion. Like anger, but without hatred. It lasted an hour or so - I tried to prolong it with music. It faded, and I then felt something a little more familiar...I'm crazy about her. What is more maddening is that I know she doesn't feel the same.

She makes me feel things I don't normally feel. It's occurred to me that I'm probably not a freak who lacks emotions at all - I probably just lack the exciting stimulus.

It was a good day. :]

Extroverts - people who grow sad when left alone.
Introverts - people who are happy and content in their solitude.

I'm an introvert. A real one. I notice that extroverts love hopping on bandwagons - if at a party, someone says they like something, EVERYONE likes that. If I say I'm an introvert, suddenly everyone is an introvert. Uh huh. This is potentially good, and bad. Good, in that people tend to feel happier when they find people that are like them. Bad, for people like me, because we can see right through the transparency, and feel more alone. We also less special because everyone claims to have what we have, and our uniqueness is what we often take the most pride in.

Not only that, but extroverts believe there is something sad about introverts - that we need to be "fixed." People think that by meeting many people, you can take and share a lot with them and make yourself a richer person than otherwise. I would never choose this kind of life. The life of an introvert is one of unique niches that no one else can do better. By being an extrovert, you become assimilated into a collective. In some way, you resemble your peers. An introvert resembles no one.

I studied martial art once. To some extent, I resembled my peers, shaped by them and my instructors. I saw something wrong with the way of martial art, and I left. I now teach a small class of my own. I shape myself to teach what I wanted, so I resemble no one. I offer something unique and valuable.

I played a game called DotA once. To some extent, I resembled my peers. I picked up the lingo, the attitude, the religious fervor for becoming a stronger player. I saw something wrong with this, and left to teach DotA on my own. I shaped myself to become a teacher I wanted to be. I resemble no one. People flocked from around the world to learn from me. I offered something unique and valuable.

Only in introversion can you create unique value. This is why I'm an introvert, and will never, ever, "fix" myself by becoming extroverted.

But, that said, get a load of this:
"women do twice as much housework as men on average. Mums do an average of five times as much with their children as dads."

I do at LEAST four times as much housework as both of my housemates combined. I put the real number at about 6 times as much. You are probably thinking "that's garbage, sif you do that much." Well, when you do the dishes, take out the trash, and clean ALL the time, you will ALWAYS notice when you don't have to do it.

Imagine working 7 days a week. Or going to school 7 days a week. Doing something, anything, 7 days a week.

Then imagine that on the seventh day, that you don't have to work because it has been done for you. You can relax.

You would fucking notice. And I did too. I -do- notice when work is done without me. I do four to six times, perhaps more, housework as my housemates and I fucking know it. I fucking know it because the kitchen cannot withstand a half hour of their presence without getting messed up again.

I am suffering some sleep deprivation. Last night I stayed up doing some fucking dishes and cleaning the kitchen because it was a fucking PIG STY. I cancelled on going to dance classes tonight, and I'll have to cancel on performing in 3 weeks time as a result - to catch up on sleep. I woke a few hours ago to see the kitchen messed up again. For. Fucks. Sake. I then see them blissfully relaxing in front of their computer, my computer, enjoying their free time. Blissful ignorance of any work that should be done.

I left the kitchen. I clean it anyway because cleaning is what I do, but I don't do a perfect job. I'll save the perfect job for my own bedroom which won't get spoiled as long as I keep the door closed. There's only two creatures in this world I let in there - my friend Alix and the housecat Vala. More on them some other time.

I signed on to MSN. With hardly any wait, I get a message. It's from my bestie, Babs, down in Melbourne. All anger disappears. It's like I've been this giddy and happy all day.

I sign on to facebook. One of my crushes is online. I asked her if she'd like to check out the local dining - I figure she'd surely like something more interesting than Subway now and again. She said yes :]



I desperately need my own space, my sacred time -alone-. My time to shape my own being. And I need people. Just enough to keep my demeanour bright and shiny.