and so it snows.

as a pharmacist, during work you encounter people who are rude and for some reason decide to pick on you. and then i tend to go into this self destructive cycle whereby i try to analyse what it was that i did that made them treat me this way. and the point is, it usually isn't anything i've done, and yet i still do it, blame myself. and usually these trouble makers are losers themselves, and to have to spend more than a moment's thought on them is.... well, sad. i think we should have courses available where we can learn to unlearn this self-blame attitude, i mean, why do I care? i don't understand it. why do i care? and yet i still do. y'know what i should say? i should turn the phrase 'Fuck'em' into my mantra. fuck them, fuck them all.

getting to work on time doesn't necessarily have to mean waking up earlier, it can also mean spending less time getting ready in the mornings.

foolish crush
Its funny how in life, different people have a completely different perception of the same situation. Well, that sentence just there, can be interpreted in so many different ways. The way in which I mean though, is in relationships. Apart from my family of course, I think we're slightly dysfunctional, but we all know were we stand, and occasionally we'll go to the cinema together. I mean, for example, people you think of as friends, people you fancy. OK, specifically people you hold a secret torch for.
In my case, it was this one guy, a French-Canadian guy I met on two occasions in two separate conferences. I remember when I first saw him, in a conference in Switzerland, I thought, my god, that guy is fucking gorgeous, the way you do, sometimes. To my total surprise, he came over to talk to me, and even more surprising, we actually got on fairly well. Over the next few days - the conference was only three days, we'd sit together in lectures and have lunch together. To describe the extent of my initial attraction to him, just sitting next to him made me all, well, antsy, which from me is really saying something.
When then the conference ended, that was it, we went our separate ways. We made no promises to keep in contact, I was still with my soon to be ex-boyfriend at the time. And although he was very cute, I also thought he was geeky, in a dorky way, and his flirtatiousness was overtly obvious, the way it is when you're used to having members of the opposite sex falling at your feet. Nevertheless, I think of him as being part of the reason why I subsequently broke up with my then boyfriend, who in comparison was a fat, ugly, lazy, uneducated toad, whom I stayed with for as long as I did because I didn’t think I would find anyone better.
We met again at a conference in Hawaii. I avoided him for much of the time there, but we did have one conversation when the conference was coming to an end and everyone was going their separate ways, during which he was unrelentingly flirtateous. He did yawn though, finishing the conversation, and made his excuses to leave, saying he hadn't slept that well last night. His last words to me were 'I'll see you again, ok?' And I really thought that we would.
At the time, I didn't think that much about it, but as time went on, months, which turned into a year or so, I began to think more and more about him. I think that when you’re not attractive in an obvious way, and you don’t have the most outgoing personality in the world, trying to not be lonely becomes a real struggle. Where guys you might be interested in never ask you out, and when becomes years since you last went out on a date, you really start to question yourself and take a long hard look at your life. And things like this become almost poignant.
I had asked him to e-mail me from Australia, where he said he was doing some kind of project, but heard nothing from him. I subsequently heard about him from a girl in our department who had also been doing an ethnobotanical study in Australia. I had specifically asked her whether she'd met him whilst she was out there, and although the chances were remote, Australia’s the size of the USA, she actually had met him, at a martial arts class. But he had not asked her about me at all.
I ended up e-mailing him, asking him whether he would be attending a conference I was interested in, and although he e-mailed me back, it was very platonic, almost polite. I replied, and his second e-mail seemed to be a regurgitation of the first, to which I was so disgusted I didn’t bother to respond any further.
I still think about him quite a lot though, and recently, there was an opportunity to see him again, as there was another conference in South Africa, which he attended. As fate would have it, even though most of the people from my department were going, I couldn't go as I had to finish my thesis. Plus I couldn't really bring myself to spend £800 on a whim to see a guy who clearly didn't feel the same way. I thought about telling one of my colleagues to look out for him, but fortunately didn't. Because as I later found out, he spent quite a bit of time with my colleagues, and not once did he mention me. Not only that, the girls didn't seem all that keen on him, and thought him big headed as he was clearly trying it on with a lot of the girls there.
I had, perhaps in my wildest dreams after all, thought that we would be destined to see each other again, such was the connection I thought we had. Now I see that I live a very sheltered life, where my encounters with Don Juans have been extremely limited. Even so, the next time an intelligent good looking guy asks me out, although it hasn’t happened yet! - I’m not going to say no. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and look out for my next core-shaker.