M: what’s got you into the class stuff?
M: you gonna start reading racial theory next?
B: Sorta.
B: some of this is a product of the work I’m doing with organizing urban farming
B: and trying to thoughtfully cross racial and class lines.
B: without being too much of an entitled white yuppie.
M: that’s a good thing
M: well that’s cool, i never thought you’d be one to be into that sort of literature
M: i thought you insisted on being apathetic 😉

Excerpts from a recent conversation with a ghost from my past.. I’ve hacked out most of the conversation to provide context for the last two lines. I finished Man’s Search for Meaning yesterday, which is only part a memoir of Nazi concentration camps, but also part an overview of Logotherapy. In regard to another M, I’ve been moving from the “I used to date a girl named M, who…” which was an attempt to move hope solidly into the past, into a couple things. To the degree that my feelings survived after reading Love and Limerance last year and deciding I wasn’t an oddity for having them, however unreciprocated, I’ve still been treating them as a burden. Due to reading Frankl, I’ve been thinking more about treating them as an opportunity to bear that suffering in a positive way, and stop trying to stop feeling the way I do. Instead, when I catch myself, I think about how happy M makes me just by existing. That’s sort of wonderful, partly because it doesn’t require her to care at all.

I’ve got some clear short term goals, which is sort of new for me. I know I’ve been talking about July for some time, but it’s getting bigger than it was. When I say a lot is changing, this lot consists significantly of parts of me, internals by way of externals. Bigger risks? Maybe. The upsides of always having had my own ideas of what is easy or hard is proving spectacular.