Cleaning/packing

Cleaning house can be really painful sometimes, because looking back on certain things bring back memories that I'd rather let sit on the shelves for a while.

But it can also be kind of amusing. In a dark way. Something I wrote in a notebook a long time ago while attending a conference:

"58% of intellectual capital around the globe comes from women"

A statistic I no doubt thought was cool at the time, but that I find completely non-nonsensical now (my less sophisticated response while reading it -- "WTF?!"). How do you even measure something as intangible as "intellectual capital," anyways? Doesn't each company define it differently? And even if you could create a common definition (which I guess does sort of exist), how could you quantify it? For the world, no less!

And what about survey biases? Blanket statements like the one above kind of bother me. Not that I'm a statistics snob, but I don't like people trying to make themselves sound progressive with strange statistics that don't really mean anything in the end. I guess that's politics, though.

Marriage (or lack thereof)

Maybe it's because I'm hormonal, but every other day I somehow get quite upset over little things that multiply into bigger ones.

Case in point - today, some friends of mine were joking about the kind of man I was going to marry. It was all very harmless in tone, as in "oh, I can't imagine the kind of person you're going to end up with," but for some reason, this put me on the defensive. First of all, why are we talking about marriage, of all things? Why not date or boyfriend... why husband? This is another part of getting older, I suppose, that these sorts of conversations actually seem less absurd that they would. Second, I don't exactly appreciate the insinuation, however joking, that it would be crazy to find somebody who would actually marry me. Obviously I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I think I have enough insecurities and enough hormones floating around in my head that these sorts of things really don't help. Third, and most importantly (and this relates to the first), why marriage? Who says I'm getting married in the first place?

Of course my parents wouldn't understand this. Later tonight, we had some family friends over, and it was the same old conversation. "Have you found a boyfriend yet?" Only this time, when I said no, the response was really offsetting. "You'd better find one soon, and get married, too." My parents didn't say anything, but I know that they agreed. My grandparents as well... they keep telling me that they want to see me get married sometime in their lifetimes. I'd do a lot to make them happy, but I don't know if I can do that.

To me, marriage is such a huge thing that I can't even imagine it happening. And if (miraculously) I ever find a nice boyfriend, I certainly don't want to be pressured by outside forces into this huge commitment. Marriage is so much of a non-issue for me, yet so much of a legitimate issue for others who think they have some sort of stake in my life. Just thinking about this makes me sad as well as nauseous.

Yeah... hormones majorly suck.