i love macs

i'd like to take this opportunity to praise apple. yesterday, i bought a macbook pro from the apple store (they have this deal where college students can purchase a macbook and get a free ipod touch). i originally fell in love with the mac after i gradually commandeered the macbook i'd bought for my wife a few years ago. once i used the mac applications (particularly imovie and garageband), well, i was hooked. i'd heard that various professionals preferred macs. for example, a lot of photo enthusiasts utilize mac-based photo-editing software. and none other than thom yorke uses a mac on occasion to record his work (witness thom and jonny playing a cover of portishead's "the rip"; there's a white macbook sitting on the table before them). as soon as i started using some of these mac-based applications, i understood. there's something about presentation and style that goes a long way, and mac programs tend to have a lot of that. but it's more than that. mac software tends to be "well-thought out." it's as though a photographer, or a musician, or whatever, brainstormed the perfect software to assist in dream realization. contrast that with a lot of windows applications, which appear to have been put together piecemeal by programmers to fulfill a checklist of basic requirements. sure, these programs might "do the job," but oftentimes, it's a real pain to get it to even perform a partial realization of one's visions...

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i think i'm running into a spate of bad luck. i won't mention specifics, but let me say that a really stubborn headache and my first real encounter with a courtroom haven't been the end of my woes... if i really allow it to get to me, then i might fall further into depression, and i can't afford to do this. people do depend on me, on occasion: my wife, my children, my patients, my students. and i can't let anyone down...

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i think i have a generally dim view of people in general. it's not that i dislike people, because i don't. it's just that i don't trust people will help me, and in fact, are more apt to hold me in disdain, or actively work against me. i have been ignored or humiliated in the past, and thus don't expect people to react favorably to me, or to my requests for assistance.

i try to get beyond the "small talk" and "drama" and "politics" that people exude, and get at their "heart" (which itself could be a construct). i try to help people in the most effective and hidden ways i know. this is the manner in which i communicate myself to the world...

the problem with my reluctance/inability to trust that others could or would be kind to me is this. there's a kind of myopia in a person who fails to trust the world. such a person can only "see" others in proximity, and definitely cannot extend vision to encompass a wide horizon full of free and easy relations. i, quite frankly, don't believe in such a "world vision"; never have and never will... and yet, i can't deny that i feel a certain jealousy towards people who can walk in the world with such ease and confidence, voicing their own feelings with such verve and strength, firm in the faith that others will receive and understand and sympathize and cheer on their every whim and sentiment...

for me, there is and has always been a great distance between myself and the world.

my concern is this: if i don't believe in the kindness of the world, am i doing it (and myself) a disservice? not sure, and even less certain that i could change myself if it were. in my experience, people don't give a carp about people... you just do what is right, and by accident, sometimes people will realize/recognize you. other than that, though, you walk alone.

jeez, i am getting progressively darker and gloomier... but that's me right now. won't hide it.