I wish I was Catholic or Jewish

I am catholic, technically. Both my parents were raised Catholic. As kids, though, my brothers and I weren't raised with any religion. In my life I've been inside a church about ten times. As kids we said abreviated prayers, "Now I lay me down to sleep. God bless everyone I love". That's it.

A quality I see in large Catholic families- my father's is one, my mother's, though not as large, is another- is activity. Keeping busy. Little idle time.

My brothers and I had chores and schoolwork and play, but there was a shitload of idle time and lots of TV. Honestly, it made me kind of dull. Or maybe I was dull anyway. Chicken or egg.

And Jews seem to be very ambitious. They look at the world a certain way. They see opportunities.

You know I'm obsessed with Patti Stanger and her show The Millionaire Matchmaker. She's so smart and she's always thinking. She's always observing people and you can tell watching the show, she always has. She's got everybody pinned down, in a box, in a catagory. She asks a question but she knows the answer. She says something and already knows what the responce will be because she knows people.

The flipside that makes me uneasy is that it's a little too calculated. It's all a game. Manipulating people, telling people exactly what you know they want to hear. Sell, sell, sell. And I'm not anti-business. It's just "networking" that bothers me- looking at social situations and trying to turn it into business. But oh well. It doesn't bother me much. It just isn't me.

What I've been thinking lately is, though, I've got to become a lot more disciplined. Of course that always happens after I read a Madonna interview (I just read one from a 1989 issue of Interview and the 1994 Norman Mailer piece from Esquire.

If I kept busier and had more self-control I'd be much better off.