I am not a quitter, which I’ve found out these years that is not something to take pride in. It just means that I will not actively make a decision to stop something that I clearly don’t want anymore, even if I haven’t consciously noticed and even when I have. And what’s worse is that if it’s falling apart, I’ll cling to it so hard till it hurts, till it’s shuttered into crumbles of what it once was. This goes for jobs, relationships, friendships, whatever. So I get tired of something but I won’t actively stop it. I will mess up, fuck up till some other person decides for me then try to hold on tighter and then, when there’s nothing left, release, feeling both sadness and joy.
After 2 months of almost no sleeping due to exams and school projects, the day I can finally catch up with work, I get laid off. You know that day. You are sad, you feel like you failed but, at the same time, you feel so HAPPY. You’ve been released. But you are not supposed to feel happy, because what are you going to do now? So even when I have a hard time dealing with changes and letting go, even when I feel numb and sad, I know it’s good and that I’ll be fine. The mourning period is nice because you get to be curled up in bed watching old repeated Seinfeld and Friends episodes while you feel pity for yourself and you get to cook and bake what you like and catch up with Homeland. Being an Audiovisual Design student, it is normal to hear my friends go “Have you watched it yet? You HAVE TO. It’s amazing! Do it NOW, here, have my Netflix password, watch it!” and then I explain that there’s a long list of movies and pilots I have to watch for school, and sometimes, I don’t even watch all of that. So I spend a lot of months a year hoping for school to finish so I can choose what I watch, even if it’s Clueless or Mean Girls or catching up with Homeland or Silicon Valley instead of a Pier Paolo Pasolini film, which I also love, but sometimes I’m just not in the right mood for that.
So where was I? Anyway, I finished my year with mediocre grades, no job, no nothing. Pure self sabotage. I am sort of an expert on that, because when you don’t actively decide to quit, you sabotage yourself till you have a clean slate to work with. As I told a classmate yesterday, even if I wrote that 20 pages script and its 20 pages analysis in 2 days without sleeping after 2 days of no sleeping due to a Sound I project, I really think I’m learning. And I am. Maybe I can’t quote Kierkegaard and Ansperger by heart, but I got it. Something that you learn at design school is to live without sleeping well for months and maybe not sleeping at all for almost a week and to do things fast. Especially because you are not getting paid but putting lots of money into it and need the rest of the time to do something that gives you the money to pay for that. Although sometimes it seems impossible to balance that and you get fired. Ha. But I clearly wanted to pass those classes even if it wasn’t with flying colours like the little nerd in me would have wanted and I clearly didn’t want that job anymore, therefore, my sabotage angel chose for me and did it right. Sabotage is only quitting in a non so active way.
Something that I do a lot is define myself through failure. Imagine you get a job, get promoted, find the love of your life. I usually don’t tell, because, if I like someone I just think I’m gonna jinx it by telling everybody (and when I do is maybe a start on the self sabotage thingy) and if I get a job or good grades, as my dad always put it, is “something that you do for yourself and you have to do things right, that’s the normal thing to do, it shouldn’t be cheered upon”, so, all my As were normal and my classmates Bs deserved a Playstation. So I kinda learnt not to tell nor feel overexcited before something I achieved, but failing, that’s the not normal thing to do, and that’s the one I communicate. Which maybe, should be the other way round. Perhaps I’m just trying to show everybody that they can fail and they can be crazy and they’ll survive regardless.
The silver lining to this rambling is that, yesterday, at this beer event at the lovely Plaermo Hippodrome, which I’ve never visited before because I live blocks away from the one in San Isidro, I was walking around, drinking, looking at guys and as I walked I crossed one that I liked and made eyes at him, then went straight to the toilet, where i was heading. When I got back, he kinda stopped me, we went for more beer and he told me he’d just return from San Francisco, hence the surf-y look. He reminded me of this surfer I hooked up with a few times. And I asked him what it felt like being back, he said he didn’t understand a thing, he was still jet lag and the city seemed strange. He asked me if I was stoned, which I was very much so: “Hence the sexy stoned eyes, disrupting all the square vibes here”, he said, we were on tune regarding the square vibes at the event, even if I look as bad (and as content) as Rihanna when stoned (I know we’d be great friends, RiRi). We were about to kiss. Then he started talking about how San Francisco is different because, for example, Argentinian DJ Hernán Cattaneo went to play there a few dates and “by the fourth night, we were calling each other’s names when we saw and greet each other, it’s all really chill and cool like that”. And the spark was gone. I felt judgy, because I think that doing normal things with someone famous is nothing extraordinary or to take pride in. I get it, part of the flirting, maybe, maybe it was just a comment, anyhow, I wasn’t up for it anymore. I felt like a bitch, maybe I was being one and I also felt what I’ve heard many times before, that “nothing is good enough for me” in a bad way. So I would try to be cool and keep talking to him, and then a friend came and hugged him and they started talking about his trip and decided that it was a perfect time for me to leave, which, before, I wouldn’t have, I would’ve stayed. So that whole “nothing is good enough for you” shit is bullshit. You start thinking it yourself as well, but it is not like that at all, when it isn’t right, it just isn’t right. So yesterday I learnt how to actively quit, even if it was a small insignificant thing.