I was thinking about how there isn’t time for dating someone and spending much time with them, that there hasn’t really been since I first started dating here. Maybe, a little, back three years ago when I was working for a startup that wasn’t trying particularly hard at being like a startup. But since then? I wanted to email M about my thoughts, and then I shook my head at myself, because noone has been less receptive to my thoughts then her since C used to tell me that I thought too much in high school.

I was talking about this the other night with C, indirectly. I said that I tend to see people I’m dating only once, maybe twice a week and he commented on that feeling much more doable than what he usually experiences. The irony of M’s ‘what do you want’ trap was not lost on me at the time, and feels less funny now.

Time to eat.

Life’s too short to be bummed out all the time

A few times when talking to J I’ve been describing a positive character trait and noted that I take no credit for having it, I’ve just always been that way. I often wonder if super-positive people were always that way, and say such things as an excuse, or if they used to live in bummer-town and somehow grew/talked their way out of it. I’d love to hear the latter story.

Spring cleaning today, getting rid of cruft, sorting paperwork, a lot of it from five years ago. The domestic partnership agreement with M for health insurance…

I talked with C a lot last night about relationships. My first two relationships, with H + M, were my only long-term ones. In the five years hence I’ve dated quite a bit. While refining what I’m looking for seems like a great idea, it also makes all of this seem, harder. My expectations and standards have changed, raised?, so significantly and feel like I’ve only come close one or twice to starting another long-term relationship.

I feel helpless to make sense of it. There was a couple times last night when I sort of exclaimed to C, “but that’s what I mean! I have all these data points but they isn’t anything solid coming out of them.”

I knew I could promise him I’d feel the same way every morning. In a way that I… I never could with you.

This is exactly what I struggle with when it comes to dating.

I’ve been talking a lot about class, coming to terms with being upper-middle class while at least half my time is spent with kids living, mostly by choice near the poverty line. An argument about lack of motivation also exists here, but there is more of that and social stigma than I believe educated decisions. I’ve joked for a while with friends about my father recommending I consider getting a new truck to improve my image as I’m not “finding the kind of woman I want.” I love the suburban though, as do most of my friends. For that matter, all the girls I’ve liked do as well. I considered buying a pickup truck recently to have a smaller and newer vehicle. Some arguments against were that I simply don’t drive that often, especially outside of vacations. In the end, I don’t need another vehicle. I was just thinking about how vehicles are anti-investments. They’re a financial suck, however justified.

So what instead? There’s been a bit of talk with key kids in my life about land ownership, privilege, lordship, and class over the last year. I’m glad I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think I’ve found any answers. I wrote in internal company email recently where we were discussing why an open source project hadn’t solved a particular problem yet, and I said, “because it is hard.”

Hard. The hard problems aren’t easy, and it’s interesting that I’m really only interested things that are hard to get anymore.

I couldn’t. I don’t.

I’m back at work. I should probably brew a pot of coffee. Tonight was my first dork event representing Opscode. Woot. We all had to introduce ourselves; when I mentioned I was the third Chef committer Adam added that I was also a multi-MVP and something about being a pimp. This is another life. Then, the Highline for the AA fundraiser for the Young Farmers Mixer. God, I spent hours talking to different people I knew and still didn’t get to talk to everyone. I could go on about knowing over twenty people there, from bikes, the awful shark, urban farming, & squid and ink. It’s fascinating, I suppose, to me. As I rode down to the office and looked out over the sound I thought about how absurd it is that this is my life.

I awoke this morning dazed by a dream that brought back old faces from Maine. How can I feel alone after leaving such a party, seeing so many friends, being hit on, being social so successful? I’ve had a, worry, about M, all night. Oh, I finally got to talk to J again today. So much to catch up on. Shit, I don’t know. If it weren’t for feeling lonely, I think I wouldn’t date on principal. And so it goes.

I was chatting with K about the past relationships that I was the most emotionally attached to being the hardest and most argumentative. She replied with an “of course.” Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I guess I was looking at it from a perspective that falling in love makes everything complicated, but, I now look at it that falling in love makes everything important.

There is this file named after M in the home directory of my server. I stumble across it now and then. It’s an email I somehow saved, I’m not sure how or why, because I use google apps for my mail and all that.

Just keep being you, I’m pretty fond of you that way.

It’s fucking strange. It’s so happy, but without looking it’s days before we broke up. As I read it I think that M felt guilt and pressure about being good enough for me. I think about J speculating about her feeling like she didn’t deserve me. I think about M talking about my being remarkable and K speaking of the wonderful things I do. And I go back and read it again and think. I’m so nice in this email. Happy, and nice, and eager about the future and making everything work out. And I think of A asking me where I learned to communicate so well. And I know, from all of this, I couldn’t have done a thing about any of it.

I haven’t known what to say since I’ve returned home. An entire life was squeezed into a few weeks between two others. The current one is only a couple of days old and has been spent getting used to the new technology (mac book pro), culture (foosball) and coffee shops (cherry street!) around my new job. I’ve been keeping my schedule open to decide what to place back in it. Cyclocross starts this weekend.

K and I rode with .83 last night and friends wondered with me how long it had been. I recalled that M + J showed up at the start of the last ride and took off, and realized it was the ride three months ago where M was at the prefunk, where I drank heavily, and spent the rest of the ride sitting alone at the bars drinking water, watching the tv, and thinking about where to go from there. That’s when I started the effort to change my social life. I did drink once this past week. It the midst of a social drinking culture I allowed myself to go out for the big burn on Saturday and drink with friends, although I didn’t feel at all like drinking the next day. This is fine. I rarely crave whiskey any longer, I just feel awkward and out of place in these social situations. Anyway, it was a good ride in circles around downtown between Westlake and 9 Million. We left early to ride to Georgetown and lay around. We watched a movie, Star Trek, and I thought about how long it had been out. As I watched for K’s approval of the movie I was reminded of my birthday near opening day of the movie, and my hopes to have had shared that moment with M. I’m glad my birthday was shared with friends and family this year, as I realize the last few were tainted with heartbreak and death.

I had a great conversation with K about not knowing what lies between those I am in love with whom I can’t work out a relationship with, and those who I’ve loved that are special to me that I could have worked out a relationship with but did not feel right about it. Of course, I can’t explain exactly what right is. So it’s good to have had that conversation and agreed that life is about working through these things with other people. This feels starkly different than M. I feel good about it.

I’m not convinced that I’ll feel better if I don’t drink. How do I say that right? Moderation? I’m over thinking this and it hurts.