Scrapbook

Sometimes I feel as if I am an automaton with the way my life passes in routine format and another busy week evaporates with the sun being a stranger but I earned the right to get away early on Friday which is as a warm smile over and above the sense of achievement from a wonderfully productive time at work. I have heard of a questioning phrase which asks, "Live to work or work to live" and I don't quite understand it. Apparently it alludes to the extremes of how we work and stresses the first point of work as being almost your sole reason to live and then jumps across the range to its opposite of just going in and just completing your assigned task and then start looking forward to a time you can leave.
How would it be then if it was your own business? Would you increase your efforts and improve your dedication and you create a more positive attitude and would such positive results bring you reward and joy as you saw your business become a success? Does working for someone else then excuse you to make less of a contribution?
I love to give my best at work and I give that extra effort and that's just the way I am. I believe it's the way we all are in the office. I believe that this will not only benefit the company as a whole but will also benefit me in terms of being well thought of as a loyal employee and when we begin our imminent restructure I won't be lost in the background. Perhaps this had been in the planning stage for quite a while but the present condition of the global markets has accelerated the introduction. At the end of the restructure we should be more streamlined, more efficient and more profitable. When viewed analogously as the artist creating a carved sculpture from a piece of wood, I would like to be a part of the final masterpiece and not a shaving cast off upon the floor to be swept away later.
Why change something if it works?
A lazy thought offered by those who fear change. Change is imminent and we all undergo it all of the time and in all aspects of our lives, even aging changes us. But change does not have to mean dismantling what is there if it works. As an example, the engine in our cars works on the same principle has it has been for many years but today's engines are vastly superior in design, performance and efficiency than those of yesteryear. We are creatures of habit but we overlook how much we are also creatures of adaptability.
It could all change and in just a single heartbeat!

Hitomi was a little upset before we sat down to dinner and when I asked her why she remarked that whenever 'we' decide to do something it's always done 'my way' and I listened to her and I began to feel really awful too. I think that we naturally fell into the roles of one of us taking the lead but I admitted that I hadn't realized that this had included dominance over our decision making. I apologized at once and while wondering how long this has been in her mind, I also wondered how long I feel it had been this, always or recently? When we are physical she takes the lead and that is how both of us like it but now she says she wants to feel the equality in other areas of our relationship and also our decision making.
I at once hugged her and told her that I loved her. Is that reassurance for the both of us?
It's great she tells me her heart because she so easily sees into mine and I said to her, "You take the lead tonight, where shall we go?"
She looked in my eyes and smiled and said "I don't know Momo, where would you like to go?"
That made us both laugh but she decided on Advocates which is a popular bar on the corner just two blocks before our usual dive, the Mars. When we arrived the place was packed full and spilling its exuberance into the street and it's just too cold on the outside of the huddled penguin pack and too much more effort to fight your way to the bar past all of the distractions and stray hands. We backtracked a little and tried the tamago which is an exquisite girls only bar. This was our first time in there and quite a warm and serene atmosphere it was too. It's nice to check out new places and of course we had what we expected in that everyone gave us the eye as we made our way to the bar and they checked us out. The bar hostess was a very masculine looking girl but very appealing and friendly and after a little chat with her, Hitomi whispered into my ear that when we spoke of her we would refer to her as 'gentle-butch' ha-ha. It did not feel like the place where you can just let go and be the party animal like we do in the Mars bar but this place had a much more refined and subdued aura about it with a dressing of elegance of the corporate kind rather than the cocktail dresses and silver dinner service. We sank rather than relaxed into the soft comfortable chairs and sipped from our long tall glasses. I don't know what it is that I felt and I know I complain that sometimes the girls at the Mars go too far sometimes but here I definitely felt as if the girls looking at us had repressed frustrations and wanted us to join their assertion classes.
Oohh dominatrix! Tie me up and whip me where it won't show!
We stayed for two drinks only and then decided that this wasn't quite us in tonight's mood or clothes and headed out into the cold night holding each others warm hands. We ended up in the Mars after all and felt much better as we were greeted with the warm smiles from familiar faces and here we know that we could really relax and that my dear friends, is the purpose of a nice night out!

It's good that you occasionally see yourself though someone else's eyes.
It can be as shocking as hearing your own voice recorded for the first time and you ask incredulously, I don't sound like that do I?
Now it's I don't look like that in your eyes do I?
Every mirror I have seems to be one taken from the amusement park and distorts me in so many different and unusual ways!

I'm not straight and neither are my mirrors. How ironic! But having seen the image from the other side gives me something constructive to work on. Life is like dancing through mazes and we are led through it by many different ways. If she allows me the lead at the start do I lead on to the end? Of course not and I would go anywhere that she would lead me too! Taking the lead is not a bad thing for either of us in whichever situation that we feel comfortable in doing so as long as that lead is not an overpowering dominance and stifles the other.

After a visit to a new bar I ask, who likes my new title-bar? I said goodbye to the saxophone motif on the 5-line music paper background and made it look like a little more 'Jazzy' and aligned it artistically to how I feel. I think it represents me well!