Friday, July 15, 2005

What's my motivation?






Ok, the neighbour who is addicted to karaoke? She's also addicted to self-help. She is constantly looking for a quick fix to her problems, a solution to what ails her, some kind of guide to life, some perfect label to give herself (right now she's ADHD with a touch of the bipolar, but that's just this week). Anyways, last night she insisted that she and crazy Polish Kate and I needed to get our shit together and listen to some Tony Robbins, or as my co-worker Tim calls him, the Man with the World's Biggest Teeth. She figures that listening to Tony Robbins together while writing notes in journals that she bought us would be just the ticket to happiness for all three of us.

Now, despite my neighbour's weird affection for karaoke and motivational speakers, I like her. She is incredibly sweet and warm and kind, and has gone out of her way for me on more than one occasion, so the least I can do is hang out at her house, eat a few h'ors douvres while we huddle around a stereo and listen to some shiny-toothed cheeseball tell us how we're all essentially lazy and how we need to find successful role models to mentor us. I mean, it couldn't be worse than sitting at home thinking about the nasty and entirely predictable response to my email that J sent me, could it?

Well, it came close. It was painful. What made it worse was that my two crazy neighbours started acting like they were in a Baptist church, and anytime Tony Robbins said anything that rang true with them in any capacity, they would yell out, "Oh yeah!" "Sing it Tony!" or my favourite, "Mind juice! I gotta write that down!" They kept glancing at me and wondering why I wasn't writing things down, and finally I told them, "I'm an aural learner," to which they nodded and sighed, "ooooohhhhh!" as if that made complete sense to them. Dodged a bullet there. I'm quite certain the two of them are looking at their notes today, which seemed to consist of shiny little phrases which appealed to them both, and are wondering what they mean--neither of them bothered to jot down any kind of context for these catch-phrases, so I can see them both sitting at home, trying to stay motivated and reading their notes and thinking to themselves, "what was he talking about when he said "integral force fountain?'"

I have nothing against Tony Robbins--I'm sure he's a great guy. I just don't want to dip fruit in yogurt and listen to him make me feel like shit on a Tuesday night. Maybe it's just me. The dude sure does have big shiny teeth though.

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