Wading through basic online training for the ARC CAS software this morning. I loved the part where it showed me where the minimize button was. I added ARC to my linkedin profile the other day while talking about my tech experience to someone there. He added me on linkedin as a colleague and the site asked me why I hadn’t added that position yet. It was kind of a nice moment, feeling like I accomplished what I set out to do and I’m now involved. What now? More training. For what? Being prepared for opportunity. November goals for meaningful activity have all been successful.

Which is good right now. Last night I was feeling exhausted like a couple months ago, but different and I wanted to talk to someone about it so I called mom. She said, “it is hard saying goodbye to someone.”

Yeah.

The nose isn’t just a little bloody when I blow it now, apparently it’s actively bleeding in my sleep. Only a little, no cause for concern, but I’m finding myself considering the pros and cons of having a nose. I chuckle for a moment remembering M teasing me about a pimple or some other random aberration on my nose I don’t notice due to the lack of use of mirrors.

At 3:30am, is there too much on my mind to sleep again after five hours of sleep? I find myself doing this math a lot. Sleeping a solid night is really hard. One part stress, one part age, one part heart? Oh, heart. Some days you just don’t know what’s good for you. You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie…

I thought about reading, but there’s so very much to do at work I might as well drink a cup of coffee (since All City isn’t open yet) and go in. I can always nap there later.

Some time ago I was writing about fear, reading back over it, patterns jump off the page at me. It’s not my fathers duty (or is it?), but if it wasn’t for my heart I’d probably spend a lot of time head down getting shit done. Which would probably be an imbalance.

I’m still operating on the general belief that I can’t control how I feel but I can control my actions. When people really don’t care how I feel, out of common disinterest in feelings, lack of proximity, or just being emotionally incapable of dealing with it, I have to afford them that and go about my business.

I think he says he doesn’t like you(r beard) because he likes you and misses you
he asked again why you weren’t staying the night

Kids are hard. I’ve thought about kids a lot the last year or two. Not in “thought about having them soon”, although that being an eventuality [or not] has been slipping into relationship conversations as I get older. I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing what I can in that situation to be protective of that kid, but I worry. It’s hard enough having relationships with people and discussion how you feel. It’s harder with a kid who, by nature of their age, just hasn’t development the social and emotional skills to know what’s going on. At all. I have an image in my mind of riding back from Blue Hill, unsure why, with my mother in the Subaru and asking her why she and dad were separating. My memory is of a sigh and an its-complicated type of response. And I can’t blame her, because it is, and how do you explain that to a kid?

Sometimes I wonder that about relationships with other people. Have they spent significant time thinking about the things you have? Do you just trust that they have? Lately I’ve been relative explicit with the possibility that they haven’t, and I’m trusting that they will be able to handle that and receive it with maturity and compassion.

A: I wonder if [your emotions] sometimes feels like a curse or a burden or a flaw, esp in this world, but I think that your emotions are beautiful… though I personally haven’t been privvy to what I consider a great deal of them

My response was interesting on an introspective level. Certainly nine months ago they felt like a curse, and using the word burden holds some irony. Many conversations were had with my mother over the summer about the consequences of not feeling the way I do, and what a terrible cost that would be. A lot of effort went into discerning that, and I came out at terms with them, having better tools for recognizing what I can and can not change. Once again, another conversation deviates into the realm of “it seems like you could find someone else who respected, loved, admired, and fit with you more.” I get defensive of my feelings at the time, but I suppose I have to stop and consider that sometimes, to be fair to those who have expressed similarly. I want to reply with, “well, here I am” but I’ve had a couple great relationships over the last year or two that I’ve ended despite dating good people who cared for me a great deal, making time to include me in their life and convey their feelings for me through their actions. So it isn’t fair for me to claim that hasn’t happened, and I have to admit that I chose to end those relationships fully consciously because they weren’t what I felt I wanted. And that’s through no fault of their own, which is one of those lessons I’ve gotten better at holding on to from this summer.

Ahhhh! Okay, quickly now, before I forget.

A while ago I got an email via the Seattle Critical Mass website which I inherited when the last person hosting it had some issues with their hosting company. This fella had something like thirty years of experience commuting by bicycle and had a thing or two to say about us kids blocking traffic. I told him he was a stupid old man… wait, no. Actually, we had a bit of a discourse and I never heard back from him, so maybe he got my message about thinking about his accusations and researching them before making broad statements about their validity. Anyway, the point is the whole “I was cycling while you were still in the womb” part (yes, he said something like that).

When I was a teenager working with technology, I had pretty strong hate for age discrimination. It bugged me when I knew more than someone, but they either didn’t stop to realize that or they did realize that and it punctured their self-esteem. After a certain point that all calmed down, and people generally tend to think I am older than I am because of my experience now. Still, the implication that being old means you have more experience bugs me sometimes. There’s a general argument against this that you could have been doing stupid shit for those thirty years. Experience isn’t always progressive.

I’ve avoided telling ARC a whole lot about my computer experience until recently because I wanted to stop short of anyone asking me to fix their computer, but I spoke up recently about a problem with the esvolunteers website. As soon as I thought about saying, “I’ve been working in IT for fifteen years” I fell on the floor in epileptic shock. Okay, maybe, sorta almost. I settled with starting off the paragraph with:

About 15 years ago I started to learn to build and troubleshoot workstations. Since then I have progressively found more interesting things to do. These days I run the production systems for a web based service for a local company.

Granted, experience can mean a lot. I can only do what I do now because of my experience elsewhere, including outside of technology. But it is not the determining factor. In job postings under ‘required qualifications’ some friends of mine end with ‘Awesomeness trumps all other requirements.’

[boys|girls] suck, pick one. China pisses off google. etc etc etc.

What have I been up to? Well, I just logged into google reader and saw I’ve written ten journal entries since the last time I did. Whoops. Actually, I’ve been doing more writing that that elsewhere too. I’ve been in a tree, at a fire burning trees, tromping about with trees. I have my own photos somewhere of what I’ve been up to lately; I probably won’t remember it all until I pull them off the camera. But yeah, doing stuff. And you know, the stuff there are pictures of isn’t even the cool stuff. But that’s all relative, like stoves and girls.

I bought plane tickets for Shmoocon, deciding February just isn’t the right time to tack on a trip home. I’d like to wait until there’s less snow. We’re significantly less hindered by the snow back home than here, but it does make for a bit of a hibernation season all the same.

Spent a long time today talking about how I feel. Not a long time. The usual Tuesday hour, actually. What do you do, when the things you’ve “built” were secondary? Can you “throw it all away?” What matters? Not my 401k. I’ll put my 401k down on that feeling I get when I’m hanging out with M mattering. I still have a 401k, right? I don’t know. I don’t open that mail. If it doesn’t work out, would I regret not having the 401k, or if I didn’t try, would I regret not having tried? I sided with the latter. Material shit can be utilitarian shit, granted. I don’t know it is a matter of value, but a value of meaning. Am I blowing smoke up my own ass?

I mean, how I feel matters and should steer me, right?

happy new yrs from your long distance crush (wait, crusher?)

G! I’m so excited to hear from her tonight, even though I’m about 10 days behind the mail. G was responsible for turning me on to the concept of limerance six months ago, which lead to buying Love and Limerance and ultimately making me feel all that much less weird.

Thoughts of mortality earlier gave me some fear of regret. I sat on that for a while and sided on it usually being best to communicate than not to. Relationship FOMO sometimes makes me want to keep my mouth shut, but then this little voice pops up in my head chastising me in a soft tone with love. The voice reminds me that I’m being honest about how I feel and that is a good thing. In the sort of way that it’s the Right Thing[tm] good. I ponder for a bit about if I’m rationalizing the past. Right or wrong, I always feel a lot better when I get something off my chest. It’s good for me, and I hope the people that care about me want that. I’m definitely more at ease now than prior to my letter. I’m not anxiously awaiting a response, I’m smart enough to surmise what it is, and that writing the letter was more to be able to tell myself that I had put forth the effort and it wasn’t going to work out, so I won’t regret not have later. And also to simply say what I felt. Am I repeating myself yet? I’m just thinking out loud at this point. Stupid unintelligible streams of consciousness.

So that’s done. Uhh, what’s next? Deploying servers in Ireland! Oh technology, together we’ll build something beautiful.

I was telling A about my identity is survivorship-bias theory and she replied with:

I think it’s often the tail wagging the dog, their finding a persona… an identity… after their behavior, to rationalize it.

I continue to enjoy her smarts.

I love you. Email exchanges with the cousin of a friend that died recently develop into: live each day like it is your last? Meh. Maybe. No regrets. What’s interesting about that is I’ve always felt like that meant living without care or concern. What I feel right now, is a fear of living with care and concern, and regretting not doing anything about how I feel.

That whole “before I crash” thing? I must have hit post in my sleep. And typed most of that in my sleep too. If this sleep weirdness is still going on after this week I’ll likely bite the bullet and finally start tracking it so I can try to figure it out. I barely slept Saturday night, then a short nap for a couple of hours around 9am. I’ve dragged myself up after eight hours of sleep to keep from getting too much at once, even if I should be catching up from yesterday.

I did about 40mi RT yesterday meeting up with Bike Sabbath and going to Lynnwood Skate and Bowl. Good times were had, skating was fun, biking in always fun, drank a bunch but not too much. I like riding with that group. I want to say it is a maturity level, but that is just the first word that comes to mind. Certainly there seems to be a shortage of drama, a simpleness, it feels more like hanging out and less like bro-town when the drinking hits. Anyhow, got home in the rain around midnight. There were many offers for a couch, but I figured I ought to just make it back home. Turned out to not be that bad except the last stop for the remainder of the group was still ten miles from home for me.

Somehow I tore another pair of Carhartts on the way downtown. I don’t understand how I’m getting so destructive on pants, and it’s making me a little nervous to wear the Filson’s pants my grandparents bought me for Christmas. Looks like heavy rain for a few days so I might as well start though.

There’s a bigger thread in last nights note about flirting that I think I was really trying to get to but couldn’t because writing while I was sleeping and was pretty close to a pure emotional dump. I think I’ve written in the past about dating exhaustion, feeling like I’m putting an incredible amount of energy forth to be honest and communicate clearly, while being supportive of other peoples issues. Eventually, this level of energy consumption sneaks up on you. It isn’t like physical activity, you can’t attribute it to a hard day of work or a long bike ride. It is most similar to stress in that, at the time you feel a tinge of it’s weight, but it isn’t until later that you feel the burden of the accumulation.

Years ago in Maine I would occasionally trot off to my father’s house for a couple of nights to hide from everyone and recover. That transparent weight of holding everything together socially got to be too much at times. I recall my friend Ben inviting me once on a trip to Canada with some friends, and how surprisingly excited I was at the idea because it wasn’t mine, I didn’t have to plan it or get anyone involved. I could just go and have a good time. Of course, once we got going it turned out the consensus of how to get to Canada was to just drive north until you hit a border, so I ended up driving.

Looks like they’re rebuilding the Airport Way bridge over the Argo yard in 2011. Just got distracted making sure my complaints about cycling over the Argo yard were lodged.

So, I have a pretty good idea of who I am, what issues I’m working on, and what I want in a relationship. Life is definitely a lot easier when other people do too. I’ve never expected life to be easy though, and consider helping a partner though this to be par, especially since I believe this evolves throughout life as we grow and change. Assuming that we do. Perhaps because of my sense of time, I feel in a hurry. Not because of my age, but because time feels like it goes so very fast. Sometimes I have to sit myself down and remind myself it has only been a few days since something happened and I should wait and see what occurs next.

I feel out of energy for this, and I’m not sure that I made my point, but I’ve at least accomplished feeling better. I have a lot of evening plans this week, so I best get to work soon and actually do some of it.

Hell of a day. Lets see how much I can get down before I crash.

Essentially M recently asked me if she had been ‘cock-blocking me’, and hilarity ensued. I expressed to her while it wasn’t what I was looking for, I certainly didn’t mind the flirting, since nobody else is flirting with me at the moment. More importantly, I can’t remember when the last time someone flirted with me was, which means it has certainly happened earlier than I remember. There’s that whole gender role issue to start with, and I’m under no misconception that there is anything wrong with me to prevent girls from flirting with me, but it doesn’t happen all that often. I tend to write this off as the ones that do are super confident. But all of my relationships for years have been a product of me pushing them. Most recently, A commenting that “[she] is not hitting on me”.

And thus casual dating began, because the relationships I wanted were not manifesting and that isn’t for a lack of me trying.

I shared a lot with Dad today. There was some sad news. An old friend from school passed and whatnot. More meaningfully was talking with him about how he still had unresolved feelings about the “beehive” he had stepped and his acknowledgement of my feelings for M when I talked to him about wanting to bring her home. I was very up front with him about that, and he was very understanding of my motives and my feelings.