All right. I'm back in the lab, because even though I had high hopes for finishing last night, they didn't come to pass. I've massaged all my data, but importing it is going to take another hour (probably, as I figure out how to concatenate three month's of data into a single worksheet). I'm actually excited about my analyses. I've been prepping for them for so long ...

In any case, while I'm doing that I think I'll try my hand at another entry. Sorry the last one was so boring. It's just that I've been wanting to talk about my textbooks all semester, to multiple people, so what better place to comment than my very own diary?

Sidenote: Will the discussion of the limit, boundaries, and appropriateness of online journals ever end? It's a recurring theme that one would hope would've been resolved by now. But I guess situations and people are dynamic, and so the solution would be too.

To be honest, I haven't really thought about this entry very much since promising to write it, except to reference it whenever the motivation itself evidences itself too clearly. So I here offer, apologetically, an excuse for not having a logical development with relevant examples in my discussion.

At the risk of committing a horrible social faux pas and identifying the character in the following anecdote ... we'll denote the antagonist as my friend M.

M is of the personality that while I didn't consider him one of my good, close friends, I nevertheless explored topics of a personal and intimate nature with him. You know, he's like DD - very conversant in the method of social interaction girltalking. So that makes up the bulk of our interaction - girltalking.

A few months again, he started getting mean, for a lack of a better way to put it. He was mean to me. At which point, I internally threw up my hands and shouted silently, "I don't have to put up with this! It's no loss to me to stop talking to you!" Which is true. I really don't think I get any sort of utility from his "friendship" anymore, if you can call it that, since I believe it's so one-way. However, I reacted non-plussedly and continued being polite to him, so I think he's probably labouring under the impression that we're still friends, even though I harbour no friendly feelings for him anymore, just a weary sense of obligation to girltalk with him when he needs the support.

I snap into this mode, when he talks to me, where I'm pure counsellour, commenting and questioning from instinct and training, not from any emotional response. There's no genuine feeling behind how I react to him. I'm just being ... polite. Taking time out of my busy life, not letting his mean attitude piss me off, exerting myself to counsel well - all so I'm not rude. I'm sure he'd feel patronized if he knew how I truly felt about the situation and would brush me away angrily, saying "I don't need you!" but the truth is, I don't do it because I think he hasn't anybody else in the world and that I'm the best confidant he could possibly have - I do it because I don't want to be rude. Being outright honest about how I feel about him would be rude, don't you see, it would be impolite. I don't want to be impolite. If I ever figure out a polite, non-confrontational way in which to avoid him, I'd probably take it and stop spending time and energy on a project with a ROI of 0. The thing reason I don't already simply stop is because my ROI would be negative for that time period in which I would have to be rude.

I really wish I could use Chris's computer right now, with its way too fast to be decent processor and simply sick amount of RAM. That'd be coming in handy right about ... now. Why on Earth did I have to do a project with so much damn data? And why do I insist on analyzing three month's worth of data instead of just one or two? Because I already feel bad about not analyzing a year's worth ...

This sort of automatic friendliness, not really backed up by genuine emotional commitment, occurs not only with M but also with a couple of other people (who are not mean, but nice, so I don't get pissed off when I interact with them).

More episodically, and less generally, this motivation also comes to the fore in my interaction with people about whom I actually care. Rather than reacting out of a sense of genuine pleasure or anticipation or whathaveyou, I react out of that sense of politeness. The difference between the manifestation of the politeness motivation in the latter case and the manifestation in the former case is that it isn't the foundation, only the (by and large) small pieces which smooth things over (this is where I wish I knew more carpentry terms).

*sigh* I don't think I did a very good job of explaining this at all. But it's a very strong motivation that significantly impacts my behaviour.

Really not going so very well. Didn't include DC in my list of 10 regions and can't get seem to get the third month. Somehow 30 MB + 30 MB = 140 MB. Once again feeling defeated. Looks like will be spending afternoon here as well. Dammit, must begin studying for other exams! Why, why, why ...

you just didn't know when it was coming - 2005-03-23

one free trip to washington, dc - 2005-03-22

sharing myself - 2005-03-20

dreaming down highways - 2005-03-20

when the day was bright and new - 2005-03-18