I really need it. I missed an advocacy meeting today because I crashed on a futon at work at 5pm.

I had dinner tonight with a friend and a long discussion about J calling me out on M, and wondering if I’m only wanting what I can’t have. In the past we’ve talked about why I wasn’t happy with the relationships I had, and I can’t complain so much anymore. There are plenty of great women in my life these days.

This friend wondered if I should just cut off M altogether. Maybe. There really isn’t much to cut off, which is kind of the point.

Well, no, the point is wondering why I care so much about something that isn’t there. Meh.

My physical sense of self usually find balance in goofiness. I don’t take it very seriously and shrug it off with a joke. I’m unable to fully comprehend how, large, I seem in this AA group photo.

Ambiguous. There’s definitely a different between the new and unknown, and that which is there but carries no certainty. In traditional worn out habit, Tori and I drove to Fred Meyer for movies and ice cream, retiring to basement-land with comfort food, couches, and 500 days of Summer.

This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

I’m sure I quoted this when I first watched it in the theater. This is another busy week as I wrap up big changes in my life and begin new chapters, so I don’t know why I am awake at 2am. Finding rest, albeit not sleeping. I just…. I’m glad that as people choose to come and go from my life, they continue to amaze me and cause wonderment and respect.

In the fall of 2002 I hired a few friends to work under me doing telecommunications salvage for three weeks at a time on a national contract. Questionable Content reminded me of these times today. I remember sitting down with each of them after they expressed interest and telling them that this job meant something to me and I took it seriously. I remember a conversation with Matthew years prior about how it was hard to find someone who worked as hard as I did and was self motivated and interested in learning more and doing a better job. I take pride in my work ethic, I always have. I finished reading Shop Class as Soulcraft last night which articulated to me a lot of why I both fix small engines and web infrastructures; the nature of the beast. Anyway, hiring friends didn’t really work out because few of them had pride in their work. You had to have a reason to do a good job.

I recently had a conversation about interviewing friends with another friend of mine. We didn’t talk about work ethics, but I think we did indirectly. What tier do you stick people in who sort of care? Tier-2, where they don’t have to deal with customers but aren’t responsible either for getting shit done. This is like middle management. It is the meatcloud of hiring friends.

Anyway, when I have time, there’s a discussion here to be had about work being exciting [or not].

I started building a shed for Alleycat Acres today. I suppose building sheds for other people keeps my yard from filling up with them.

I brought home my sleeping bag from work today. The end of an era.

D was at the bar tonight and he went off on how much he admires you 🙂 it was awesome we had a bryan love fest about you awesomeness

I woke up to this text message. It’s nice to still get drunken texts even though I don’t drink anymore. What is it? Almost 11 weeks. I’m switching to months permanently soon as week-math is too hard. But, it is worth pointing out that it’s been long enough that I have to actually do the math now. Speaking of which. I told my dad this week that I was sober it didn’t sound that important to him. When I was in Maine visiting back in May just before I stopped drinking I didn’t drink much and he commented on it at the time. He used to make a comment about how alcohol was a dangerous habit or something, but I haven’t heard him say it in so long that I’ve forgotten. He told my grandparents and when I talked to them it wasn’t that significant to them either. I suppose this is all to be expected from a family of alcoholics; if it was significant to them maybe they would have changed themselves.

In any case, it’s awesome to be awesome. I got to talk to J about taking on the burden of other people’s problems. We ended up talking about M, of course. When I mentioned friends and family thinking M was selfish for the way that she left me, J immediately disagreed and started talking, for perhaps the longest single thought she’s given me in over a year of sessions, about how she though that M felt that she did not deserve me, or deserve the amount of love I was offering her. I noted that I thought M felt that she didn’t want comfort, which could have been feeling she didn’t deserve comfort, on some deeper usually-left-for-people-smarter-than-me-to-imply level.

I once dated someone who, thought, that they had been sexually abused. To explain further, they presented it as a dream from their childhood, which, (god I’m doing it again) seems like a perfect coping mechanism. Anyway, they were very adamant that I not derive anything from it, that I not try to explain any part of who they were or why they acted the way they did from it. So, because of this per se, but I try not to.

J ultimately left me with a choice, to stand by M, investing in that her ambiguity is a product of what she thinks about herself, or to emotionally leave town, never to return the same.

I won’t get to talk to J again until tomorrow afternoon. That seems awfully far away. There’s this duality of the near and the far right now.

Five years since M and I moved to Seattle from Maine. Three years since the motorcycle accident marks nearly three years since I started at Widemile. Now? We embrace the unknown. That goes on the whiteboard. I keep building, and building, this, upward [mobility]? Toward what? New challenges. Instead, I’m pulling out the carpet, taking a a bunch of risks; emotional and financial don’t seem to touch the reality of the changes.

There’s too much answering, too much reasoning. Five years ago I moved out here to, what, find something new. M said to try working at a big company but that’s lost in M’s ideas about my supposed lack of appreciation for all that I had; to not be the go to tech guy somewhere.

I couldn’t explain it all today. I wish I could explain it to someone right now. Where is everyone that I love right now? There’s just too much vaguery here.

K and I spent something like nine hours talking yesterday. Mostly lying in the grass, barely existing to others in a strange park that provided endless entertainment by way of strange people doing strange things. This was good. This is as things should be. Time to stop trying to solving everyone’s problems, to take care of everyone? Time to just let go of them and live my life?

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.

I’m great at recognizing the physical and emotional tells that I’m tired these days. Talking on the phone to a friend today I said that I should probably go because I just recently left my therapists office and I was in quite the telling mood. As we talked about dating I started chattering about past flames and then, really cut myself off, until another day.

I’m really into Megan Myers. I’m into more art lately. That’s weird. Anyway, I saw some of Megan’s work at Katy’s Cafe in the CD the other day, and there’s some that I want to buy. Really though, I want to commission something, but I distrustful of my heart. That which is meaningful, the memories I want to draw upon, are inappropriate now in that “should move on” sort of way.

I spent some time talking to J today about M, how I had been putting her in the past by reminding myself of how a lack of time wasn’t true, evidenced by her continuing to date others, and that I’d told myself that she didn’t really like me that much. J questioned me if I really believed that, because she didn’t. I squeamishly admitted I didn’t with an embarrassed smile, but explained that I didn’t really have any other course of action. What’s done is done, and what could be said has been. Life is different now, even if my feelings, ultimately, aren’t.

See? I’m saying too much again.

To PDX tomorrow for the rest of the week. Next week, the end of July. Everything happens next week. July, you’ve been foretold of.

Man, oktrends is interesting. I feel like it dispels a lot of myth, especially ones that would have been beneficial to eliminate. All that is missing from The Big Lies in Online Dating is real versus reported penis length. So, “The Patented OkCupid Income Revelator Machine” reveals that a 28 year old male living in Georgetown (98108) is likely to be making $25,670. 98101 (Downtown) reports $28,850. Ignoring the 404 errors in the applet, this seems to scale up to shy of $50,000 at age 50. I suppose, living in a tech city, I would expect this higher, but it’s only high tech for a few people, the upper class. Even my tech friends don’t live extravagant lifestyles, so this is easy to forget, as most of my friends live paycheck to paycheck as cheaply as possible. It’s only starting to sink in that I’m upper class.

I feel like linking to a class structure and labeling myself relative to it would be giving away too much. Except for my closest friends whose ear I turn to for guidance, I get by telling people I make ‘more than enough money’. I need to read the wikipedia page on social class more when I get a chance. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just say I get paid above average. Part of not answering what range my income is in, is this taboo, in at least my industry, against talking about it with other people. I wonder how far spread that is.

If you’re 23 or older and don’t make much money, go die in a fire.

So obviously this brings us back to my fathers recent drop about how I should buy a new truck because my image may be keeping me from finding the women I want. Now, all of my friends I’ve discussed this with, were immediately of my opinion, that my image keeps me from finding the woman that I don’t want. Now there’s an argument that the diamond in the rough would be filtering out women who I would have reciprocal interest with but who skip me over like i do girls whose photos are all of them drinking with their girl friends in a bar, and not take the time to get to know me. I don’t believe this is a real issue. These situations say something about someone.

What’s the likely-hood of meeting a romantic interest who makes nearly as much as I do but lives as nearly non-materialistically as I do? Probably pretty slim. But I care about the latter much more than the former, and I’m much more interested in how people live than how much money they make.

In the “How Many Messages a Man Gets, by Age and Income” heat-map, it leaves out the group that doesn’t answer, but the message is clear that admitting my incoming would earn me more messages. Earn… Yeah, see that’s the problem. I wonder how much of this is a product of socializing mostly with people who don’t make a lot of money, or being taboo, or about morality?

How could you ask someone you cherish to share such an uncertain future?

Can I explain this? I have written this? So there was this scene in Timer, that I’m paraphrasing due to an incomplete memory, where boy tells girl that he loves her, and he knows it, and doesn’t need a timer to know that. Girl can not respond reciprocally. Later scene, girl tries to patch it up, but in the course of which realize it is ruined. She knows she loves him now. He’s glad that she was able to love someone.

I ran into T today, and we talked about how if one more guy told her that he was just a loner, she was going to [whatever]. She started talking about how guys think she’s too much, too into them, but it isn’t that she’s particularly crazy about them, but just that she’s excited. That sunshine makes her excited. So, so much having a crush. I told her that I thought I was the other way, sort of, where I feel strongly about people (or I don’t) and I tell them but I don’t expect them to do anything about it.

The history of my past with M is melting down into that I liked her more than she liked me. And so it goes.