I mass-emailed my friends letting them know about this blog. Surprisingly I got a response from my friend Msaada whom I haven't communicated with in probably 8 years. She's doing really well. In giving her a more fully detailed narrative of my recent life, I realized I could use what I had written as a basis for a blog update for all my loved ones to see:
-How've you been?
I'm good. I was a depressed alchoholic for a long time and that impeded a lot of my happiness and caused a lot of drama. Aisha's turned my life around almost 180 degrees. Hopefully I've had a similar positive impact on her life.
-How is your father doing now?
He's at home now and doing better. He met with the oncologist a week ago and the doctor said he was too physically weak from the stroke to even think of beginning chemotherapy. He's set for another meeting with the doc on the 10th and I hope he's improved enough where we can seriously discuss treatment options.
-How are your mom and sister?
They're good. My sister has become quite a down-to-earth and mature woman with an innate kindness and glimpses of artistic ability. I'd like to think of her as a better version of me. She's in her last year of undergrad studies at Cal Poly Pomona (I think) studying Nutrition. My brother is doing well too and is living in LA with my folks. He's working as a Finance analyst for a defense contractor.
-How is Aisha?
She's great. Aisha's taking the City by its horns and kicking its ass. The primary reason we moved out here is so that she can go back to school to study Fashion Marketing and Merchandising. We looked around some schools in the Bay Area, but it just sounded more fun and made more sense for her to study fashion in NY. She was able to find us an apartment, enroll for school and get two jobs within two weeks of our arrival here. She is in the process of quitting one job to spend more time on school and with me and the Mochster. She's also completely taken over the office at the other job she is keeping.
-How long have you been dating? How did you meet?
We've been dating for over three years now. Time goes by really fast. We met as peer project managers at a technology sales vendor we used to both work at. She had risen to become a Director responsible for one-half of her company's business. She hated it and has always wanted a career in fashion and here we are.
-What area of fashion is she interested in?
The business side. I asked her if she was excited to create some pieces by herself and said I was pleased that she'll learn how to sew. She turned to me and asked "Ain't there people I can hire for that?"
-What exactly is your occupation now?
I am responsible globally for the first-level support group at a software company based out of San Francisco. They were nice enough to move me to NYC and I work from home. What's really nice is since they are based out of SF, I get to fly back to California fairly often. I get to visit friends in the Bay Area as well as swing by LA.
-Are you happy and content?
Pretty much. You remember how the outer edges of a parabola always comes infinitely close to the Y-axis without ever touching it? That's where I am. Infinitely close to Nirvana. I do get the biological urge to go hump a woman's leg every so often.
As much as I love interior design and design in general, this blog will NOT become a generic design blog like so many I've seen recently.
[Sorry for the run-on intro sentence, but I did warn you that this is a rant.]
You know what I'm talking about. They're basically glorified photo wishlists of multi-thousand dollar designer pieces with no critical analysis, content or discussion. I've seen over 10 of these so far while looking for personal design resources.
Know what else bugs me about them besides them being generally less useful than staring at a manufacturer's catalog? The sheer incestuosness of this particular blogging community. You go to one site and then go to another and you'll see the exact same pictures on the same day. The "writers" of these blogs basically browse each other's sites and then cut and paste into their own site. Welcome to the 21st Century: the cut-and-paste dawn of the digital sampling monoculture.
Real design is timeless. Just like the concept of cool is timeless. They are timeless due to their originality. Uniqueness defies and defines eras. It is an insult to ape the scene like so many of these LA/SF/NYC cultural transients that are now termed "hipsters".
As a sidenote, why does everyone in Hollywood and Silver Lake have a goatee now? I know I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but that was the impression I got on my last visit to LA in September. When did these neighborhoods become "hot"? I remember growing up in LA and Hollywood was a dump. There are now million-dollar lofts on Skid Row. Ridiculous. These new residents have never hustled in their lives and now they're living the good life and ignoring their neighbors in the heart of urban misery USA.
The one good thing is that I have discovered http://www.apartmenttherapy.com
Granted, I'm an urban snob and seeing the occassional snapshots of modernist living spaces in Fremont, CA and suburbia USA leaves me amused in a bitter way. It's the equivalent scenario to me of the adoption of rap by white suburban kids. You can ape the words, but you can never feel the pain. It's soulless mimicry.
I think if I was black, I'd be angry all the time.
