Talia Tokugawa’s Blog

Well it’s a kind of Good news, good news, bad today…

I can’t speak too much of the good, one project I have been working on has pretty much drawn to a close so you maybe getting a sudden influx of posts, which I guess is good news.

Another thing I have been waiting on for a long time has come through and that thing is really good news.. more on that later…

And the bad… I guess it’s more a personal realisation more than news. It seems when it comes to friends I have a hard time sorting what is really important. For the second time in as many months I have found myself having to have a particular conversation. I don’t like having that conversation, but more so, I dislike that I let myself get to the state of having to have that conversation.

It all stems from not dealing with stuff. My parents when I was younger took me on courses about life and this is one of the things that was mentioned in it. The analogy used in that case was “shit under your carpet”. Imagine a room with a really nice carpet in it, you really like sitting on this carpet, chilling out on this carpet is a really good place to be. Then something happens. Someone comes into you room and takes a dump in the corner. Now at this point you have the choice of two things, you either deal with that properly, or you just sweep it under the corner of your nice carpet. Either choice, you go on about your life and then the same thing happens again, and again, and again. Now it would be nice to just stop the shit from happening, but thats not in human nature. So after a while you find yourself in one of two positions. Either you have been dealing with shit as it happens and you still have your nice rug to chill out on, or you find yourself sitting on a pile of shit with a scrubby carpet perched on the top.

So in terms of that analogy, I guess the “conversation” is the point where you realise that you are perched on that pile and to make things right you are going to have to shovel a load of shit and hope that those stains will come out of your abused carpet. Obviously I would rather not be shoveling right now and given the choice I would rather those stains weren’t there but as the saying goes, “shit happens”.

That is about as far as the original analogy goes. It does over simplify things and there are occasions in which dealing with the shits are harder or easier. For example, say you are in that room with someone you care about and worry about their opinion of you. Say it’s you that has that shit.. It’s definitely a lot easier to sweep that under the carpet and hope they don’t notice. As I am coming to realise, people are not that stupid, and your fooling yourself when you think that shit won’t smell. It is you that is stupid making that assumption.

As a further extension, there is a third option at that perched point of realisation. Find another room and another carpet. Again this is another sweeping action as there is still a room with a pile and a carpet even if you are in another room. However… in the case of the two recent conversations I came to realise that I could not just leave those carpets… I would rather shovel that shit and try scrub those stains rather than leave for other rooms and carpets. If it were possible to get back to that point of having a nice clean carpet I would work at it, even if the chance were small.

So, to the two recipients of “those conversations”..  if you ever happen to read this, I am truely sorry and I will try clean those carpets so we can maybe someday chill out on them together like when we first found those rooms and those nice clean carpets.

I know this is quite a random blog post and out the norm from what I would normally post, but the good, good news left me feeling up to trying to clean that carpet and the result of the particular conversation was justified but left me somewhat crestfallen. What was worse is that I didn’t even realise I had been “defriended” in SL. This led to another realisation (and probably a future post) having half the population of SecondLife does me no favours.

So as a first step on the road to a cleaner carpet, I am doing a little friends list cleaning. Last time I did this was just the removal of people that hadn’t logged in within 3 months of when I was tidying. This time I am being far more stringent in my selection. I am checking profiles of names I don’t recognise and if I can’t see a reason for their being there then they are being removed. I have been working on this whilst thinking about this post and for people of “A” alone thats over 40 people. I know this is only a small thing, but not having 20 people logging in and out every minute should allow me to concentrate on those that mean more to me.

I should really close this up as it has become more of an essay than I originally intended. Two things before I do… once more.. sorry.. and if anyone sees me sweeping shit, please please call me on it.