Searching my email for ‘bernard’ brings up one of my lawyers, my goal, as well as, for different reasons, emails with two different people I am or was close to. I’m beside myself today, thinking about living better. Seeing so very much emotion represented in a page of search results sort of puts me in my place, so to speak.
… and it remains baggage for me because it represents for me everyone that implied that something was wrong with me for still having feelings for her and for having loved her. Anyway, point is that your feelings will stick with you. They’re yours, not theirs, so don’t get to feeling too guilty about them.
I have so much work to do, so much reading to do, and so much I want to write about. My life would be made right now if I could just go snuggle some place warm.
You’d think the weeks where I don’t want to get hurt because I don’t want to have to answer the “how many drinks do you have a week” question at the hospital that week would be sign enough. Nope, it’s taking realizing that my insatiable hunger that has no interest in most food is actually craving for alcohol to figure that one out. Shit. The asian lady at the grocery store spent five minutes recommending different foods that are good for curing hunger this morning and I’m pretty sure she told me to be careful and not eat too much so that I don’t get fat.
Nothing like high-fiving on bike rides to remind me that if I’m going to have a less complicated life in the future I need to shut the fuck up. Oh, hi internet, didn’t see you there; failure two. Anyway, despite all of this weeks bad choices made on whims and feelings rather than fore-thought, it’s been better than last week. Here’s to reunions capping the weekend off on a much higher note than last.
I spend the evening worrying about everyone but myself. There is no time to worry about myself. Who is? I am. So much energy goes into taking care of everyone else. A little nurturing wouldn’t hurt.
No, I don’t want to know about who shes been with. I don’t care who she is caught up on. I’m tired of hearing who she has made out with. I’m tired of being taken for granted and not loved.
I’m pretty sure (hoping?) this didn’t work as intended, but I got up this morning to being sent a link to this:
Is there anything in your life that you don’t really want but nevertheless find it hard to part with? A situation or experience that gives you a perverse sense of comfort because of its familiarity, even though it has a steep emotional cost and doesn’t serve your higher dreams? If so, the coming week will be an excellent time to change your relationship with it. You will make dramatic progress if you brainstorm about how you could break up the stagnant energy that keeps you entranced and entrapped.
I’m reading This I Believe right now, and want to be reading it more than doing anything else. That desire isn’t too ultimately distracting, although some other thoughts are, and here we go.
A year ago, for the first time ever really, I started thinking about my future. I’ve never been particularly interested in the long-term future. Two questions became important. 1) How do I want to be living and 2) Who do I want to be there. Do I want to change how I’ve been living? In this introspective search for what constitutes the internal definition of normality, I’ve been thinking a lot about what is different between how I live and how I want to be living. Nay, I’m wondering what I’d be sacrificing to “settle down” and if it’s worth it. See how the two are linked?
Flipping back through old journal entries I’m easily distracted by faintly similar topics. This is all so familiar. “me: My endgame is finding a cohort I can love and support who wants to do crazy things with me, live according to our ethics, and have a positive impact on the parts of the world that around us.”
The first question in the discussion of how I live is choosing at what level to evaluate; how deeply. Lets start pretty shallow with a brain dump of how I’ve been spending my time.
Alright, there’s been a lot of drinking. I can probably part with that either way. There’s a lot of building, both projects and getting involved in events. What do I identify with and want to do? Will 2009 have been a good year? I don’t know. It was a hard year. I still can’t stop pushing those boundaries, ignoring my wounds and pushing hard for emotional truth. Jesus though. I can’t fucking believe where I was a year ago. If by no other sign than that; I need to find a lower gear.
I keep feeling like I’m supposed to be heading down a path of forming a long-term relationship, finding a house, with a garage for my projects settling into working normal hours so I can be home for dinner. Like there’s an expectation of that, but I don’t know from who. And for what? Why make this sacrifice? For love? Should I have to?
No. I’ve proven to myself that traditionally education not only wasn’t right for me, but it was holding me back. I keep making the connection between dropping out of high school and going through a period of soul searching with this last year. There’s a reason for that. Some day I’ll learn to trust my intuition a little better. I simply don’t live a traditional life and it’s not going to ever be that way.
It’s funny having friends that think getting drunk and sleeping in the back of a dump truck is totally an average day, but running a web operations infrastructure for a large company is totally something else. Then I have friends who are the complete opposite. Friends who find building and riding a tallbike is a Tuesday, and others who think it’s amazing. I’m feeling some degree of this is normal, but we’re getting a point. I live for today, without structure, because structure inhibits. Sure, it’s reliable and comforting, but I don’t want complacency. It’s only good for so long. There’s no fear of becoming a couch potato, or emotionally devastated to the point of holing up, because there’s too much left to do. I just can’t still that long. Something is out there, and I’m still looking for it.
“I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final destination, but its pursuit” – Andrew Sullivan
Heart, what a defiant and mystical beast you are. Probably five months ago I took a bike ride down Olympia with friends for a farm party. It was an awfully strange and emotional weekend. This weekend the fall version of that party occurred. Same ride, and once again, quite the emotional weekend. All the same, though we’ve cycled, we’re not back where we started.
There was a time in my life where I developed a mental image of walking down a difficult path and rather than fighting it I side stepped. Like the invisible plank in the Last Crusade, another path is there that I can’t see. Maybe I’m just happy I woke up sans hangover this morning, maybe it’s all in the tallbike ride to work, but I’m somewhere else today. That which I had to leave behind to get here, is worth mourning for a moment.
Why was I so exhausted last week? It wasn’t the 135mi bike ride (well, physically maybe), nor working a lot. Perhaps you could attribute it all to the lack of sleep, but I’m figuring a significant portion of the cause was trying so hard. Some number of years ago I joined a road trip to Boozy Canada organized by some friends at the last moment for the weekend. While I did end up having to lead the trip (somehow I was the only one who knew how to get to Canada) that I wasn’t leading was absolutely wonderful at the time. Nothing is more tiring than leading, because I take everyones feelings into account when I do and it is a giant weight on me. I know I can’t change that I do that, but I’m thinking I may have found that other path for a while where I can justifiably say that everyone else needs to make the effort for a while if I’m important to them.
Much conversation has been had across the last week on the subject of short-term versus long-term relationships. More specifically what you’re looking for from the start, not necessarily what you’re willing to live with, such as accepting complacency in finding a relationship that is comfortable but not what you really want. I realized recently that I knew what I wanted, but I hadn’t given much thought to the labels. From the start, I’ve always been looking for a relationship with the hopes it would work out in the long-term. I missed the concept of a short-term relationship because it didn’t make sense to the rest of me. I realize now that not everyone I’ve dated has been on that path. A couple conversations lately have been poking at the exterior of this. One about breakups where someone says “something just isn’t right”, and can’t finger it, but wants out immediately rather than discussing it. Fear of their own feelings? Guilt for having feelings for someone else?
Even when I crossed the bridge of evaluating what I wanted from a relationship rather than assuming the path was obvious, I seemed to have missed this. Having a checkbox on the stranger personals for both short and long term relationships (among others) went over my head with only a “huh”. So now when I’m peeking between the blinds of my feelings toward others, I’ve been somewhat carefully considering what it is that they really want, how exactly they want to live their lives and how they are now. The quote from last night about emotional imperatives is stuck in my mind. Carefully, as openly as possible (not easy! hard work!), I’m working towards conversing on these subjects more.
Certain things make time fluctuate such that it becomes difficult to tell when anything happened. Staying up late is one of those. Last night was my first full nights sleep in such a while. I had to set quite a bit down and let it go, despite texts and emails from everyone about the end of the world piling up and worry in my head and heart, and just sleep.
I’m sitting at Smarty Pants having dinner, my first time in a bar in a while (Ginger says just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen), reviewing the week and thinking about the next few days. Should the weekend be a cross race and some tinkering around the shop on bikes, a camping trip to Olympia, or more time in the office attempting to quell some complaints? The decision is bigger than me, which tends to leave me over thinking the choice.
Despite much of the last couple of days being spent helping Jeni move, today was spent moving office furniture to conclude my long delayed personal project of ridding the office of the better part of a decade’s collection of old, unused desks and filing cabinets. Whilst driving I enlisted some counsel, which was mostly the acknowledgment of the emotional difficulty of taking others into account. As it should be though, life isn’t easy or simple and I left being pandered to behind some time ago.
My shins and back are sore from climbing stairs and lugging bits. The office had an “end of quarter” party today, some new morale enhancing scheme that came along with the acquisition. I happened back into the office in the midst of this between trips and snuck in to grab a beer, then escaped back to my office to deal with those emails that seemed most urgent. Drinking the beer, a coworker came in and commented about not having the energy for the coerced socialization either.
Deification is the real problem. If you understand the condition well enough to predict its course, you are less likely to make damaging life decisions based on its emotional imperatives.
I often comment that I can’t understand boredom, because I have more interests than time. However, I have recognized recently that one may have circumstances that inhibit them from engaging their interests. I suppose I’m glad that my social, financial and cultural realities allow me what they do. All the same, I find myself having to choose carefully how to spend my time more than I have in the past. To some degree this is newly found consciousness and the acknowledgment that Fear Of Missing Out often keeps me from making the choices that construct the foundations of a life of meaning.
The more I consider stepping back and taking life slow, the more solidly I feel that it is cliche advice, further that it fails to acknowledge the experience I have with my thoughts and feelings. Everyone with something to say advises that feelings tend to blur the logic in our choices, but this is something that I’m fully aware of, and seemingly rather indifferent to. If I’m not living according to how I feel, what is the point? Short of a life of pure logic, even living for what one thinks is righteous appears to be subtly trying to feel good about who one is. I nearly tire of arguments where someone is simply unwilling to admit to themselves that they’re making all of their choices because of their feelings.
But still, I’m cautious, nervous of being hurt, especially reluctant to share how I honestly feel, exponentially so (untrustingly?) after being abandoned when I was last assured it was safe to. My feeling shouldn’t be a burden, I’ve never believed they should be, but I worry others will feel burdened by them. Frankly, those who have most strongly claimed they weren’t were also those who have most strongly felt they were.
Always concerned and stressed about problems that don’t yet exist, but worried about how I will deal with them when they, I feel, inevitably will. How do you show your concern when a hug, or even your presence, is the problem? The short-answer-to-every-dilemma folks would have plenty to say, I’m sure. Why does it matter so much? I feel so god-damn strongly that building a long-term intimate relationship is an arm of the tree of leading a meaningful life. Heart is what is important, and due to how I feel, there’s an abundance of it awaiting an opportunity to be appreciated. Once again my heart releases me on my own recognizance, like an authority figure reminding me that it has expectations of me.
I’m ultimately a positive person. As open and willing as I am to admit my feelings, particularly my desire, sadness, and hurt, I try to feel like this is some kind of ever improving triumph over how I expect I should be. It is not. More and more I find myself saying that the way I am is not the product of some focused self-assessment and articulate resulting plan of action, it simply is the way I am. While writing that, I recognize it isn’t likely all that true, because it operates on the utterly bullshit cultural implication that growth is something that happens amidst life defining moments. ‘However, I’ve been at this life for years now; I really tried; the traditional regret is just not happening.’
It doesn’t work that way. I recently read a quote imbued in a facebook status update by an old coworker recently about there being only a handful of life defining moments and I felt wholly sad for them. There feels a clear relationship between ones level of distraction and ones thoughtfulness about what is going on around them. Save the extremists who are fascinated by what they do defining who they are and their ultimate value, every moment is an opportunity for the unknown. It’s really best to let it go.
Three drinks in at the bar and I’m worried about being productive later tonight. Maybe I should avoid any responsible projects and put that chainring on the cross bike. I’ve noticed I’m more emotionally honest (and thus have more cause for careful concern) when I’m tired than when I’m drunk. It isn’t a matter of having more practice at one than the other, so I wonder where that comes from.
The problem with honesty is when it isn’t reciprocal. Or, if it is, it is two unidirectional streams of honesty. This feels like an extension of the “waiting for ones turn to talk” phenomenon. I worry much more about the unspoken conclusions that people draw than the absurd ones that they might express. Perhaps I’ve simply become accustomed to an unreasonable normalcy. Although a friend recently reminded me that often one will say things that they don’t feel to sound reasonable when accosted, it is still what thoughts remain that I can’t cross-examine that worry me.
On the ‘replacing feelings with hookers’ front, it is worth contemplating that when people choose to leave our lives, we still have to live with ourselves. And we are who we are, which isn’t an excuse for our actions, but the reality of our feelings. I shouldn’t allow myself to be so affected by others reactions to my feelings, and ensure that my actions are ones that I’m morally comfortable with.