The Meaning of Liff

Liff (n.): a book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words. 'This book will change your life'.

The Meaning of Liff is a 200-something page book by Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that is simply a dictionary of made-up words, liff being one of them which lends itself to the title. I thought it was a pretty witty title, and as such makes it perfectly acceptable for me to steal as my own.

Since I've gotten my new eBook reader, I've read 2 full books, plus parts of many other books. I loves it. Also, in the past week I've rearranged my apartment, found the post office and mailed things to family, and started barefoot running.

First, to the barefoot running. My stomach is probably larger now than it has ever been in life, but that's kind of like saying I'm the fattest kid at anorexia camp. I'm not particularly worried about it, in fact I get a wonderful feeling of accomplishment when I realize that I'm not hungry, and that I'm eating at least 3 meals a day, unlike before I moved here and I was eating maybe 2 meals a day if I was lucky. However, my pants are starting to shrink or something, so I figure I'll get my waist to shrink a little along with them. And as for the barefoot aspect of barefoot running, of course I would do that and I'm sure none of you are surprised. While I'm beginning I'm just running around the block so my body can re-learn how to run properly. As my form gets more natural (and therefore better, faster, more effecient, etc) I will start running longer, obviously.

In the past week, a couple of changes have come over my psyche. Perhaps a quick history is in order. When I first started working at Topia, I was trying to make friends, and I was being myself. I didn't really make any true friends at Topia, and thought that maybe being myself somehow offended others, or something, so I began to chip away at myself. By that I mean I tried to talk less, be less the center of attention, be more comfortable alone, etc. At first I thought this was a good thing and that I would finally stop being so prideful and attention-needy. However, if that was my goal I wasn't going about it the right way, and looking back I can see I was kind of dying inside, and passing it off as something else. My self-confidence was slipping, my humor was going, etc.

Anyway, in the past week I've decided to throw all that crap away and just do what I feel like. In other words, do what I want and consequences (and others) be damned. As a result, I'm much more happy, my self-confidence is returning, and I crack jokes whenever and however I want, and if someone's offended well then they aren't listening right. I'm not entirely sure what has caused this change, but it could be a couple of things. In the past two weeks I've attended a meetup group that just improvises and jams in a guy's apartment, so music has returned to my life. I also attended an atheist meetup group whose sole purpose was to explain to each other why Christians were wrong. As a result, I got the chance to discuss religion. Those are the two greatests passions in my life, I've realized, and they were missing. Another great passion in my life is reading, and it, too, was missing until I bought this eBook reader. I was also under the impression that a co-worker didn't like me, despised me even, for a reason I could not begin to fathom. I finally asked a close friend of hers and he responded with absolute confusion, and said that idea never crossed his mind. This, too, has put me at ease because in my times of weakness and self-consciousness, I had invented all kinds of terrible things I unwittingly did to her/didn't do to her, and thought that she had convinced others I was a terrible person. I was kinda creating my own personal hell, though it's difficult to accurately represent the situation to you because my current state of mind is so contrary to what it was just a couple of weeks ago. In all likelihood I'm representing it much too graphically, but I'm trying to get it right.

As you can see, many changes have happened and I'm not sure what, if any of them, are solely (or even particularly) responsible for my new-found happiness. All I know is, I've got a new book toy thingy, and I don't give a damn no more.