Another Earth

I watched this today and it was interesting. I wanted to love it, but I found it depressing--not in the helpful, carthartic way, but more in the "meh, my life sucks" way.

I've thought before about mirror or alterate universes, and if one (or many) did exist, would I be there? Would the other me be better off, or would she have fucked things up even worse than I have? I can't help but think that if this universe/world/reality is one of many where a version of me exists, I'm the one who drew the short straw.

If there is another me out there, there is probably another you. I hope that mirror-me and mirror-you are together and happy. I hope mirror-me didn't make whatever mistake I did that ruined everything. God I miss you so much.

Snow Patrol - New York

"Though there's distance and there's silence your words have never left me
They're the prayer that I say every day"

Years later, this is still true. I miss you so much.

Mad Girl's Love Song - Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Sometimes I do wonder if I made you up inside my head--could it be that all of the tangible reminders I have of you are just figments of my imagination? Then I think that no matter how creative I fancy myself to be, I could never have made up someone like you. No other man, real or imagined, will ever compare.

So, happy birthday. If I could have one wish for your birthday, it would be that I could forget you, or at least move on. WTF is wrong with me?

I hope you're ok

When I read today about the earthquake in southern Spain (very near where you live), I couldn't help but think of you, and hope that you're ok.

The fact that I still give a shit about you is one of the very many reasons why I hate myself right now.

I remember arms reached out too late

Dear Cute Co-worker,

You may or may not have noticed the silly crush I've developed on you over the last two months or so. I hope not. Anyway, just as I was working up the courage to be a functional human being and try to have a conversation with you about something other than work, you announced you got a new job and are leaving at the end of the week.

Lucky for you, bummer for me.

So thanks for:
*Helping me with the assignments for the stupid training class I'm taking
*Making my Mondays less dreadful by attending my group's mostly pointless morning meeting (even though you do spend most of it reading Twitter on your phone--yes, we've all noticed ;). I don't know how you got tasked with the liason job, but at least it brightened my day... :)
*Having a funny beer-related sticker at your desk (so I know you're not a super-TBM like all of the other people at work). It was nice to think there was at least one person I might truly be able to relate to.
*Telling me I looked nice yesterday ("not that you don't look nice every day," LOL) and
*Complimenting the cookies I brought to the meeting, even after I said they were from pre-made dough. I doubt they were actually better than X's home made cookies, but it was a sweet thing to say. (X=Another co-worker, famous for his awesome baking skills).
*Getting shit signed off and returned to me within a reasonable amount of time, and basically just being good to work with
*Getting paper towels for me when I spilled my tea (because I'm a clumsy ass)

I really would've liked to get to know you better, and I'm filled with shame and regret about being such a miserable failure socially. It seems to be the story of my life that just as I'm finally starting to get my shit together, the opportunity has passed.

So good luck at the new job, and while I did appreciate your invitation to come with, I explained that I interviewed with that company last year and they didn't want to hire me. :( But it seemed like a cool place and I hope you will be happy.

Yours truly,
Purple Goat

And now for the song of the day: You Are Goodbye - Holly Conlan.

It made a nice soundtrack for the pity party I've been throwing myself today.

99th percentile

My official MAT score arrived in the mail today. It is the same as the preliminary score (478), but now I know my percentile: 99.

This is a score high enough to join most of the high IQ societies, including Mensa, Triple 9, Intertel and One-in-a-Thousand. I'm thinking of applying.

I don't mean to keep harping on about this, it's just that it's the first really good thing that's happened to me in a long time. My life generally sucks. I hate my job and don't think I'm good at it; my dad has been sick and spent the holidays in the hospital; I'm stuck in a state I hate, where I feel alone and like a complete outsider all the time; I constantly feel exhausted, run down and awful, but none of the doctors I've seen have been able to help me... etc.

This test score is the only thing in recent memory that has actually made me feel good about myself. I feel like framing the results page and hanging it on the wall over my desk at work, or getting a 99 and/or 478 tatooed somewhere on my body.

MAT 478

I'm applying to a graduate program in Technical Writing. Since my GRE scores are a million years old and IMO, not impressive, I had to take another graduate entrance exam. One of the options was the MAT--Miller Analogies Test.

Basically, it's 120 questions and you have 1 hour to answer them. Only 100 are scored, the other 20 are experimental, and you don't know which ones those are. All of the questions are analogies, like:

hot : cold :: ____ : small

and you have to fill in the blank using one of the multiple choice answers. However, the questions can be about anything, including mathmeticians and their theories, scientists and their discoveries, historical figures and events, and weird numerical/math analogies.

The score range is 200-600, with a mean of 400 and a standard deviation of 25.

I took the test last night. I was worried because I went in feeling totally exhausted and brain dead. You know the kind of exhaustion where you feel weird and shaky, like maybe you shouldn't drive or even leave your house? (I call this "scary tired," and it happens to me several times each month). That's how I felt when I left work, and taking some time to rest at home didn't help.

I was also worried because most of the questions on the practice tests seemed difficult, with really obscure topics (German expressionist filmmaking, anyone?) and I didn't do very well on many of them. But most of the questions on the real test seemed much less difficult. At first I wondered if they only seemed easy because I was spaced out and not paying attention, but the level of difficulty increased later on in the test. I skipped several questions, but had time to go back to them; and still had time to check about 2/3 of my answers. I was glad I did, because there were a few where I knew the right answer, but had marked the wrong one.

Unfortunately, 478 is only a preliminary score. I won't know the official score until 3-4 weeks when it arrives in the mail. I hope the official score is as good or better, but I can't imagine why it would be any different than the preliminary. According to this page, a score of 478 equates to answering ~85 of the 100 scored questions correctly. It also puts me at 3 standard deviations better than the mean. :) As long as my official score is at least equivalent, I'll be a happy camper.

I asked the guy at the testing center what kind of scores people usually get, and he said that the highest he'd seen in 10 years of working there was 480.

I know I shouldn't rely on a standardized test to validate my self worth, but getting a good score with so little time to prepare (less than 2 weeks) was a huge win for me, the first I've had in quite some time. It's the first thing in a long time that's brought me even the tiniest slice of lasting joy. After spending the past 4 months at a new job where I feel overwhelmed, clueless, incompetent and stupid every day, I really needed a reminder that I'm actually an intelligent person (and not Homer Simpson working at the nuclear plant).