dinner, Tarzan, being vague and being successful

Just had Steve over for dinner and a DVD. I'd spent the day staring at a computer screen at work, so I wasn't feeling terribly sociable. Gemma, Gin, Geoff and Boony and I gathered around the kitchen table and peel pistachio nuts, because pistachio pasta is the only dish that Gemma can cook. That was pretty nice - felt like a community bonding event, like shelling peas on the veranda or something.

Before dinner Geoff said, "It'll be quiet without Dave around."
I said, "What do you mean?"
And Geoff said, "Dave's gone on leave."
I sort of went, "Oh yeah", but really, I had no idea that Dave was going on leave. I felt ridiculous, because I live with Dave, and I should have realised that he was going on leave and wouldn't be around for a week. I felt incredibly vague, and also kind of out of the loop, which is quite a common sensation for me.

I realised something about myself - I can only concentrate on one thing at once. If I'm watching TV, I can't talk. If I'm talking, I can't watch TV. If I'm typing, I shut out everything else that is going on in the room. I am ridiculously incompetant at multi-tasking - to the extent that I can't even drink my drink while I eat dinner - I have to have it at the end, or else be really intentional about stopping mid-way to down half a glass. Today was extra-bad - I couldn't have the salad at the same time as the pasta. And I'm a girl. I defy the odds.

So Steve picked Tarzan to watch, which was hilarious. It had all the social norms of a family from the 1950s, only it was set in the jungle and involved bad grammar. Tarzan plays the hero man and Jane and the other women in the movie play the doting, relatively passive women. But it was quite enjoyable. I find it hard to follow old movies, because the sound is all weird and maybe because it's in black and white. The films are just so foreign to what I'm used to - I find it hard to get past the fact that they make no attempt that making anything realistic - it's all about made-up faces (in the jungle for goodness sake!), perfect hair and general Hollywood glamour. Maybe if I watched that films enough I would come to appreciate their art, and see that the acting, which seems so shit to me, is really a cultural norm as much as today's acting is. But I'm not really committed enough to watch more old movies.

Well, it seems things are going well at work. John, my boss, has decided that I'm brilliant, because of the pieces published. He even mentioned a pay rise today! My paper on land tenure and disasters has just been accepted, albeit with a shit-load of changes. So my academic self-efficacy had increased of late, even in the face of the 58% I got for Professional Practice. So what if I'll make a bad lawyer? Who wants to be a lawyer, anyway? But it's funny how your self-perception is so tied to how the world perceives you! Even though I pride myself in not caring that much...in reality, I have so much tied to that stuff. It's hard to feel self-worth in simply living and breathing - I have to DO something, BE someone, be RESPECTED by other people. The myth of success is so prevalent and pervasive, and so dang hard to extract myself from!

Mum made a quilt for me because I finished law. It was so special. I didn't know how to thank her properly, or tell her how I felt. We don't really do that in our family. Maybe I'll write her a letter.