i'm in one of those moods where i don't want to do anything. there are actually two such moods: the kind where it's a good thing, where you just want to relax and smile and live, and the kind where it's a bad thing, where you're fidgety without actually having anything in particular to do. i am, of course, in the latter mood. so i figure i'll warm up my creative juices by torturing you, and then perhaps run another installment of artemis.

there are problems with this plan. the main problem is that something is wrong about my room -- the combination of lighting, wind currents, temperature, and humidity is just off. the obvious explanation is that i haven't gotten enough sleep, but that's not quite right. i think it's that when i woke up i did laundry and changed into my backup clothes and it didn't really feel like waking up so i'm still in a torpid state.

i've been thinking a bit about depression (in the abstract, not as it relates to me.) i would define depression, with an eye towards being useful, as being less happy than you should be about your life. plenty of people are sad; many of them have a right to be, because their lives simply aren't that good. i wouldn't call this depression so much as having a bad life. then again, all of this crap is subjective anyway, so...

yesterday i had a lot of fun gaming, which of course brought up a recurring issue: why i have not met any girls who have the same voracity for games as joon and jeremy and i, for three. i take that back -- i've met one, i think, but she seemed to have no grasp of anything else, so that was pretty much a wash.

now, i've thought this a thousand times, but last night it led somewhere different. if what i'm looking for is a female version of myself, then the logical hypothetical is: why am i not female? i tried to imagine a female version of me. obviously this is difficult to do, since i have only nine months of experience inside a female body (actually eight), but it just doesn't seem to compute anyway. this is pretty troubling, since i don't think that there should be any significant sex differences, but i just can't picture a female me.

i think the reason why i find this so hard to picture is the fact that i wouldn't have any of my current friends if i were female. maybe this is oversimplifying, but let's take some case studies. danielle: i don't think i would have investigated as deeply into her or put as much effort into getting to know her as i did if i hadn' t been romantically inclined. we probably wouldn't have been in each other's (?) lives after high school if the effort hadn't been there. i might have gotten to know adrienne otherwise, but at the time i don't think she would have put in the effort to overcome the disjoint social groups and two years if she hadn't been in love with me (i think she would now.)

and so on. while i have non-romantic relationships with most of my female friends now (and most of my friends are female), almost all of them are people that i originally got to know because i was romantically interested in them or vice versa. even shalla; we've never had any romantic involvement, but i doubt that she would have gone out on a limb in contacting me if i were female.

all right, none of this is particularly strange: i put more effort into things that i think have a great potential payoff, and end up getting a lot of payoff there as residuals. (i don't mean to be inhuman; it is much easier to write rationalizations than emotions. hence the current title of the weblog.) the strange thing is that i don't think i'd be friends with most of my male friends if i were female. i can certainly picture the female me to the extent that i can see who i'd be romantically interested in, though that may be disingenuous.

regardless, though, take joon. if i were female, i would still see the faults of his that i see now, except i would be less inclined to tolerate them. with stephen, i would notice more the ways in which we don't click perfectly and less the ways in which we do. with jeremy, which is the most telling evaluation, i would have thought he was really cool upon first meeting, fallen in love, and obsessed to the point where we couldn't have a normal functional friendship. it might work out eventually, but given the situation i'm in now (as far as being in grad school/the real world, etc..), we probably wouldn't have spent as much time together due to situational awkwardness.

try this thought experiment on yourself. i'm curious to know what the results are. i was surprised at mine; i thought i would just flip the switch and keep most of my friends, but the way in which i met my female friends would not carry over if i were also female, and roughly the same with my male friends.

all right, i think i'm warmed up with dreck. i think i will go parse something.

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