Working Hard At Work, Preparing To Work Hard At Home, Wanting To Work Harder At Customer Service

Well I made a big push yesterday when I had a few blocks of free time and was able to wrap up on Part I of my current big writing project. Feels good to have done that. Now I need to start looking at Part II. Part II is called 'The Use Of Art'. I have it subdivided into some sections. Here is my outline for it:

PART II: The Use of Art: Emotional Expression for the Artist and the Community

II.1. Art as Emotional, Social, and Historical

1. Art, Experience, and Empathy

2. The Artist and The Audience: How Does Individual Expression Relate to Collective Experience?

3. The Artist's Empathy With the Audience: Expressing The Quality of Contemporary Experience

4. The Audience’s Empathy and Collaboration With the Artist

5.. Knowledge of Self and Knowledge of Others: That Artist's Universal Expression as Enabling Empathy

6. Art and the Attitude of Modernity

II.2. Art and Status Functions

7. Art As A Means To Understanding The Present: What Is The Universal Thing That The Artist Tries to Communicate?

8. John Searle's Status Functions And Specifying The Universality Of The Artist's Expression: Understanding Society's Linguistic Structure as Understanding the Task of the Artist

9. The Artist as Enabling Freedom With New Status Functions

10. New Status Functions as New Thoughts as New Brains: Art and Neuroplasticity

I hope that I can make quick and good work out of this outline and the quotations I have already selected from The Principles Of Art. I think that the outline is looking interesting.

This project still does feel quite daunting, even though I have already written so much. Oh well.

I feel happy these days.

Feeling confused as always. But feeling like I'm working hard to be social, to be loving.

I still don't think I push myself to accost customers with my friendliness.

I get shy.

I don't ask them how their day is because they just babble at me. They ignore my hellos and just order order order.

All they do is tell me what they want.

Is this really what our culture asks them to do?

Are they really encouraged in some ways to ignore more and to treat me as simply a means to coffee?

It seems like it.

One thing that is awfully strange and a bit upsetting is when I try to talk to someone and they just blurt their order at me, and then moments later I see them warmly greeting a friend.

Suddenly they are so human! So animated! So social!

Where was my love?! Where was my warm greeting?! Are those who get your coffee not worthy of the greetings that you bestow upon friends?! Apparently not.

But hey. Let me also say, today I had an experience where I had about four customers in a row that I knew, and I made small talk with every single one of them as I made their drink. Had some people come right out and ask me things, tell me things about themselves.

What a delight.

It was very exciting for me.

To make you coffee and to feel human simultaneously! What a treat!

I really don't mean to be so self-loathing.

I'm very happy.

But I think I'm very busy exploring questions of contemporary culture.

I am curious why people treat me the way they do, and if it is a generalizable phenomenon.

I am curious about meta-narration. Theorizing.

Can it be done about these times?

Some people are so delightful.

But some people just throw their money at me. I sure don't understand that. Rudey.

I suspect we have different standards.

But how to empathize and make a value judgment simultaneously?

That is an interesting question. I don't know.

I prefer to empathize. But then I just feel infuriated. Not quite infuriated.

I feel hurt.

I empathize with a person who does something that hurts me. Oh well.

I empathize with myself.

This sure did collapse into an enter spazz babble fest.

Onward with my life.

I will continue to love.

I want to continue to love.

I want to be more abrasive with my friendliness to customers who seem to ignore me.

A common dialog for me:

"Hey there how are you doing?"

"Double tall nonfat latte"

"Okay. That'll be 3.25"

I simply shut down.

I met this one girl, a delightfully friendly girl, who told me how she worked at Starbucks. She told me how people did the exact same thing to her. And how she said "Double tall latte ok sure, but how is your day going?!"

She was insistent with her small talk! That is how I long to be! But I fold too frequently.

I give in and simply become their coffee robot!

I must be insistent with my personality! I must impose my small talk! Haha!

It would make me feel better perhaps. I should try to remember that girl.

She sure was an inspiration.

Don't stop believing in the power of small talk!

I made small talk with a friendly guy who gift wrapped some things for me today. That will be nice to see him and to know his name from now on. We shall continue our small talk, I hope.

I am done here.

I will hopefully have more resolve to be insistent with my small talk after this bit of writing.

Lovingly, over and out.