may go to bed early
Dec. 15th, 2018 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffloI mean, I may not. If I don't do it soon, I'll get another wind, and be up a while. But I sure do feel like I could sleep just now. For an hour, anyway, and then wake up with pain and toss and turn 'til dawn.
Anyway.
It's a Saturday. Bert came over and helped me get that storm window frame in place. Turns out it was heavy with all the glass in and the height it had to be hefted to, on a corner of my place where the footing is precarious too. Plus I had it backwards in my head which way it went, and that may the whole she-bang a lot trickier. But it's done. Tomorrow I may rake some leaves to places other than where they are. Or not.
Yesterday was the office party. I was mostly looking forward to a reason to wear my new bow tie, which has spirals and seems sorta holiday-like:
That shirt's not my good dress shirt. It's my shirt with french cuffs. Or blouse, you could say, as it's gender-designated as for females. The sleeves are a little short and the cuffs are a little tight, but when I found the candlestick holder on which I keep my cufflinks, I figured that was a sign to go ahead and wear them. French cuffs are cooler than bow ties, if you ask me. It feels cool to be getting them linked up and having them at the ends of my arms. I'd like to get a french cuff shirt that fits really well.
The office party itself was sorta sad. But a few of us did stick around to play some games--- Bananagrams and the one on Tracy's phone, Celebrity Somethin'. When the games were starting, Georgia told me she doesn't like games. She doesn't see the point in them. Like you should/could be washing dishes or something instead. I said something about the social factor, and the games as a MacGuffin for that. But I've been thinking of it off and on since a fair bit. There are a lot of points to games. To challenge yourself to figure out something on the fly; to do something different, get your cogs turning some fresh way; to see how other people play a game and broaden your mind that way but also learn aobut them; and the best reason of all, if you're a kid or a kid at heart, for anything: to have fun.
Knowing how to have fun and wanting to have fun and finding ways to have fun and having fun are un-fun-ly challenging sometimes. Fun can be elusive. It's even hard to enjoy the goal of fun being realized sometimes, when the company one's in isn't into fun, or doesn't share that goal, or there are so many other goals and needs and desires and insistences and psychological foibles blowing around in the air.
Maybe I'll get a T-shirt that sez "Might be fun." It could say it upside-down, so it's reminding me, vs. saying something to others.
It could be a whole T-shirt line. The curmudgeonly ones would say stuff like "Don't listen to this guy; he's an asshole." Followed maybe by "But let's not stick around here while he figures out how to read upside-down." :)
But if something gets your T-shirt beaten up, it probably gets you beaten up too. Hmmm....
Anyway.
It's a Saturday. Bert came over and helped me get that storm window frame in place. Turns out it was heavy with all the glass in and the height it had to be hefted to, on a corner of my place where the footing is precarious too. Plus I had it backwards in my head which way it went, and that may the whole she-bang a lot trickier. But it's done. Tomorrow I may rake some leaves to places other than where they are. Or not.
Yesterday was the office party. I was mostly looking forward to a reason to wear my new bow tie, which has spirals and seems sorta holiday-like:
That shirt's not my good dress shirt. It's my shirt with french cuffs. Or blouse, you could say, as it's gender-designated as for females. The sleeves are a little short and the cuffs are a little tight, but when I found the candlestick holder on which I keep my cufflinks, I figured that was a sign to go ahead and wear them. French cuffs are cooler than bow ties, if you ask me. It feels cool to be getting them linked up and having them at the ends of my arms. I'd like to get a french cuff shirt that fits really well.
The office party itself was sorta sad. But a few of us did stick around to play some games--- Bananagrams and the one on Tracy's phone, Celebrity Somethin'. When the games were starting, Georgia told me she doesn't like games. She doesn't see the point in them. Like you should/could be washing dishes or something instead. I said something about the social factor, and the games as a MacGuffin for that. But I've been thinking of it off and on since a fair bit. There are a lot of points to games. To challenge yourself to figure out something on the fly; to do something different, get your cogs turning some fresh way; to see how other people play a game and broaden your mind that way but also learn aobut them; and the best reason of all, if you're a kid or a kid at heart, for anything: to have fun.
Knowing how to have fun and wanting to have fun and finding ways to have fun and having fun are un-fun-ly challenging sometimes. Fun can be elusive. It's even hard to enjoy the goal of fun being realized sometimes, when the company one's in isn't into fun, or doesn't share that goal, or there are so many other goals and needs and desires and insistences and psychological foibles blowing around in the air.
Maybe I'll get a T-shirt that sez "Might be fun." It could say it upside-down, so it's reminding me, vs. saying something to others.
It could be a whole T-shirt line. The curmudgeonly ones would say stuff like "Don't listen to this guy; he's an asshole." Followed maybe by "But let's not stick around here while he figures out how to read upside-down." :)
But if something gets your T-shirt beaten up, it probably gets you beaten up too. Hmmm....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 04:57 am (UTC)And I am like. What?
I mean, you could just say "nope haven't seen it yet" and get on with your life. Why try to dismiss something other people obviously enjoy?
Here's the thing. I think I used to be that guy. I don't like party games. To be more blunt, I fucking hate them. I like getting drunk, and I don't mind doing it with other people, but nothing bums me out more than someone suggesting we play Cards Against Humanity or You Don't Know Jack or whatever. I used to complain about the suggestion every time, and started to avoid situations where I knew I might be roped in.
Eventually I realized that also meant avoiding some of my friends who - aside from their passion for party games - are great people. So now I just shut my mouth and play anyway because I don't want to be a dick. And it turns out that just going along for the ride - even if it's not your thing - is more rewarding than getting snobbish over something silly that other people enjoy.
I guess that's part of growing up.
Although, I think you were right to say that these games also act as a way to try to break the ice. I think the key point is that they define a rule-based mechanism for interaction. Having rules avoids the group being dominated by the loudest mouth in the room, like it often is in a (drunken) free-for-all. I think this is especially useful when you are out with coworkers, where there is already some kind of built-in hierarchy. So even if someone doesn't find these kinds of games "fun" per se, they could at least acknowledge their utility.
I do hope that the people who don't find party games fun do still find other things fun. It's true that I don't particularly enjoy trivia or darts or (local fave) liar's dice, but at home I play plenty of single player games that I think are great fun. I imagine a person who honestly sees no benefit to fun pastimes must have a very tedious or stressful life.
no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 06:42 pm (UTC)I suppose in short I don't like when the interpersonal dynamics resemble dysfunction groups I've been messed up by. If inhibition-releasing altered states are involved, all the more likely some "ugh"itude will appear.
Never heard of liar's dice, but I just looked it up. Did you know it was played in that Johnny Depp pirate movie?
no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 16th, 2018 07:01 pm (UTC)It's interesting to think of what separates a game from something "serious" or productive is the element of the utilitarian, on accounta that's also what separates art from not-art, in a certain way. As in the shovel on display in the art museum is art because we're looking at it as art, and considering things like what it represents and is associated with, plus its shapes and design and fundamentals, and all kindsa stuff ancillary to its function. But the shovel in the street or the yard or wherever it's being used to dig is a tool and an implement to accomplish something. Something utilitarian. So that shovel isn't art; it's "just" a tool.
I want the serenity I'm going for to be a serenity sprinkled with moments of aesthetic bliss. Little "a-ha!"s of delight and surprise and recognition of any of the many sorts of the aesthetically pleasing out there. The ones in life and the ones in art. The "cool!" of coincidence, the "whoa" of some unlikely trick being pulled off, the pop of a turn in the expected, particularly if it's a lightening up of things on top of a lighting up of things.
Games set ya off an overlay of a "just cuz it's fun" mission, which is one starting point for trying to get at that sparkle, if only by taking away the imperative that something be *accomplished* in the next little bit (which I've thought is largely what I used to use reefer for). Doesn't work if your fellow players include a "must win" or "must look smart" or "must impress others with my humor" person going overboard and sucking the fun out of things, making the group goal morph toward keeping that insecure person happy.
Geez tho I'm going off in answering your comment!
no subject
Date: Dec. 17th, 2018 01:53 pm (UTC)