Until two or three minutes ago, I thought The Grey Album was lost to me forever since that server and that CD and my iPod are all long gone, daddy, gone but then I remembered there was an internet. Sometimes I forget. But there is an internet and nothing ever goes away from the internet so I am currently listening to The Grey Album.
I should probably keep on with a theme here and talk about the ethics of all of this but I spend so much time worried about the ethics of things and Jay-Z and the Beatles and Danger Mouse are all fine. They're fine. Well, a couple of the Beatles are dead and I really haven't heard much from Danger Mouse in a while, but according to Wikipedia this is because I am old and out of touch and not because he is not enjoying a fulsome, rewarding career (I may have put some words in Wikipedia's mouth there).
Since all of the parties involved in The Grey Album who still walk the earth seem to be fine, I'll instead tell you about this Jay-Z-esque moment of clarity I had today. It was amazing. Listen up:
I had a frustrating morning professionally. They happen. I sent an email expressing frustration which was received poorly and the fellow who had the poor reception made sure to CC some people who are routinely mad at me on the castigating response so everyone could focus on how I'm an asshole rather than the problem. This is my interpretation. You can't have it. It's mine.
I was angry. But I was also worried and upset that people were mad at me.
Shortly after, I went to walk the dogs and to ruminate on this. Almost as soon as I was out the door, the anger was completely unseated by the worry and upset and I was braced to spend the walk (and most of the rest of the day and much of the night) consumed with "you stupid bitch" regret and desperate mental gymnastics trying to conjure up a way to make everyone not mad at me. Instead, all of the sudden, somewhere between Bunker's and Ginger's poops, this thought flew into my brain: I don't really have to care that these people are mad at me. I just like that decided not to accommodate my practically pathological need to be liked.
See, I have a lifelong problem with needing people to like me.
Lookit: I am a woman who is well aware of all the ways in which I am goddamn fucking replete in character flaws. I have a whole bunch of 'em and I could quite easily delineate them to you (sometimes it's how I get myself to sleep). I have many of these because I am a human person and we all have a host of 'em. If we didn't have a host of character flaws, no one would like us because we'd be robots and not cool interesting robots like in Westworld or Battlestar Galactica. Boring ones like the ones who took all the factory jobs like a bunch of dickhead robots.
So there are a lot of ways that I don't mind being a normal flawed human person. But this fear of offense, this need to be liked, is really not great, Bob.
And because I've been this way for so long, I've sort of accepted that I yam who I yam and stopped trying to stop trying to make sure everyone likes me.
And then, just like that, I decided "there's not really a whole goddamn lot I can do about this so I'm just going to move on." And then, you know what, I moved on.
What do you think about that?
I know, Jay-Z. It's pretty great!
