Perhaps I’m just holding myself to what I feel is an observed standard; if so many people aspire to do something with their lives, but end up watching Lost instead, is that my destiny? My own experience should probably be trusted more than this. In a ‘shoulders of giants’ sort of way, and congruent with Matt Ridley’s When Ideas Have Sex Ted talk, it seems that as long as you want to keep doing so, you keep doing more. But more is quality, not quantity. The idea of specialization is peculiar to a DIY kid like me, whose career happens to have grown extremely specialized, especially in comparison to your average assembly line technicians and baristas.

And so Sunday begins. Not a day off, but a day of doing different things.

Chatter of M lately has spawned a lot of thought. To what degree do goals, and timelines, become a hindrance? I talked with H over food about my dilemma wherein eventually I can no longer top my prior accomplishments. Yet, in the same conversation, I talked about how I have a direction more than I have a goal. My thoughts about Good have thus seized a hold of and manipulated my traditional lifestyle of taking everything as it comes. And while deep primal parts of me may pain over feeling not chosen, not the best, not wanted, when dust settles I am simply uninterested in those that aren’t producing. It’s nothing personal, but it comes close to my sarcastic remarks about people consuming my oxygen. While it takes all kinds, I don’t really need to be friends with them.

The past, is so far away. The future holds so much possibility of so much to do. Sometimes prioritizing it is the hardest part. When I look back over the last social five years of my life in Seattle, or look over my resume, or the chronicles of my romantic interests; the shift is amazing. While I fear eventually running out of fuel, of waking up to find some magic piece run dry, it seems to be all the reason to take more risks.

Restlessly, producing.

Over two months sober now. And Whole? Whole. Present. Yeah. Confident that everything is going to be alright, somehow, despite thinking (more than feeling) that things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. Oh well. Unrequited. And time moves on. Everything is happening though!

For a while my father has been nagging me that I’ll have to replace the Suburban sooner or later and I should start saving for a new car. When I struggled to get it through emissions most recently, due to accidently waterboarding the engine (while in storage in the backyard for some repairs, so no hydrolock), dad pointed out that I’d need to replace it within a year now because it likely wouldn’t pass again. Now, I don’t argue with my father. I’ve carefully constructed our relationship over the years as I’ve learned more about him. Come to think of it though, I don’t really argue with anyone. A really good way to not know how I feel or what I think is to be short with me or tell me what I should do or think in any closed-minded manner. With the settlement from my motorcycle accident upcoming, my father was giving me financial advice and brought up the truck again. This time, he had a new argument, “I know you’re not finding what you’re looking for in a woman, you may want to consider it has to do with your image.” I immediately felt not understood and wanted to talk to friends and ex-girlfriends for whom my truck reflected my identity. Later I called me mother and told her the story but joked that if buying a new truck would increase the number of women that wanted to date me, then I am going to try to keep this truck as long as possible to filter out those whose priorities conflict with mine.

Which brings up lifestyle. I’ve been talking about depth lately, let’s talk about adventure. C told me that boys she has dated in the past hadn’t included her in adventures because they didn’t think she could hack it. The other night I was itching for some kind of adventure, and was wistfully reminiscent of hiking around Cougar Mountain at night with A. I sent C a text message to see if she wanted some adventure. She replied that she wasn’t dressed for adventure, but that she’d like to hang out. She showed up dressed in flip-flops and a nice skirt. When I told this story to T, she rebuked that she’s had many an adventure in a skirt. But, it was a nice skirt. Which is to say, it wasn’t an adventure-ready skirt. Now, if I’ve just left my lawyers office in a suit, I’m going to head home to change before doing anything adventurous, granted, but that’s what, ten days a year? Tops. Probably like two on average. This is a matter of lifestyle. I had some really meaningful time with M the other night. I am jealous of her road-trip. Although, I’ve mostly been successful at putting the past in the past, and I’ve simultaneously been thinking a lot about not ‘worrying about problems before they are problems.’ So the period of being wistful about joining her is pretty much behind me. Still. Sometimes being successful and busy and doing good leaves you without time for proper adventure.

Successful. I remembered recently G admitting that she had thought she could ‘clean me up’ and help me be successful. For whatever the cost to build it, I’m glad my humility has kept me approachable.

Only by spending time with some of them after class, in their homes, did I make a connection between the relative opulence of their residences, the profession, style and grace of their parents, and how they behaved and were treated by the other kids at school.

It’s interesting to think that most of my humility, stoicism, and confidence come from my family and the environment in which I grew up in.

I told M today that I realized the other day that I grew up recently. This is a statement about priorities more than one about a lack thereof previously. Incidentally, two people have mentioned having feelings of love for me in the last few days that were genuine yet devoid of any romantic interest, also notably sober and not my family. It’s interesting that they were both people I had non-reciprocated feelings for. She commented on my seeming whole, and I told her that those things we had talked about six months ago that I wasn’t doing because I had wanted to do with a partner, I had stopped waiting for.

Both K and M brought up a mutual acquaintance in the last couple of days, one who I know in a multitude of ways and I’m just too tired to really notice anymore. I’m not sure what that says.

The last productive thing I did tonight was repair the retracting spring on the pull starter for the rototiller, as we’ll be using it twice in the next week for AA as well as loaning it out to another urban farming project. I still have blogs to work on, work to do, books to read, but I’m not really sure I can do more than sleep. As the mother says in How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, “Brush my teeth, I’ve got letters to write.”

I made pretty clear statements to M about friendship, how it is a real word to me, that I have less time than ever for pretending and higher bars for meaningful success. I think I’ve been feeling like I’m trying to solve problems before they’ve occurred again, but I’m likely mostly defensive. I start to feel like I’ve been pulling away from trying to get closer to people, but it isn’t true when I do the math. I can say that I’m moving on. I’m rationalizing the past being that and not trying to hold on to it any longer.

I made it through a couple busy days. I spent all morning today working on scheduling, working meetings around travel to Portland, arranging hotels, finding the right time outside of work for ARC classes, seeing friends, tying up loose ends.

When I revealed to K that I had read her published paper I had already discussed the ties of the subject to my father. She said that someone else had read it before going on a date with her before, and done some research beforehand on it’s background to discuss it. She commented on how I had a common name that one would have trouble finding on Google, but I told her I already had that market pretty well cornered having been around the internet longer and much more than any musicians or photographers with the same name. I quipped, however, that nobody was going to have read my essay on configuration management before a date. I’d be shocked if anyone I have ever dated has, actually. This takes us back ten years to M’s mother asking me if I’d date someone who wasn’t interested in computers.

Loose ends. I was so exhausted Sunday, and I thought my efforts related to M were failing. I think they have been successful, yet, there’s so much more going on, that likely helps it not matter. I sort through the people in my life and find awesomeness, more than I have time for. Part of me hopes I’m not manufacturing a new house of cards, but on some level I don’t really care if I do. Because it’s really enough at this point.

The future’s so bright, I’ve got to wear shades.

My body definitely prefers sleep schedules. I spent Thursday volunteering for the Red Cross, then literally worked all night, slept two hours, and volunteered again until about 8pm last night. Let’s say ten hours later, and I’m up again to go back to the chapter for a regional drill with expectations to be there most of the weekend. I kept thinking about how easy it is though, compared to a lot of the work I’ve done. It has strange reminders to my past.

Thursday I drove by an apartment building that had burnt down that we had opened a shelter for and the smell immediately brought back a strange memory of our house fire when I was a child. I mentioned it to T, and she reminded me that I had said something similar once when we were on a camping trip.

In my half-awake daze, I feel like I’ve talked and thought about so much since I last wrote and as I haven’t since Tuesday it is quite true with all the waking hours in between. A conversation with T about M lead me to writing “I once dated this girl M, who…” on my whiteboard to appropriately reassociate, or recategorize, my thoughts into the past and stop trying to hold on to the thread of connectedness we have remaining. This feels heartless, when distilled like this. Like there’s much more to be said. Maybe that’s the point I’m missing though. Maybe it’s that I’m not accepting what is real? *sigh* I think of M calling to prove our relationship is important, but fell perhaps she was convincing herself more than me. I can’t make other sense out of the distance. I count the number of times I’ve seen her in the last year, and yet while I still excuse the majority of them because of other priorities I can’t see the pattern changing. I suppose, ultimately, there’s nothing to say here. Like others, I once dated this girl, M, who disappeared.

A series of events related to K lead me to reading about bioethics where debate seems to include ‘critical interests’ versus ‘experiential interests.’ I can’t.. I can’t parse all of this right now. There’s too much. This reading hit very close to home with my father, and simultaneously it touched the introspective thoughts of late. So very very much is connected right now.

I’m totally out of time and in a rush. Notes left on the table of my mind. Disruptive dreams.

Talking to J today about passion she offered depth as being a better way to articulate what I’ve been getting at.

Which is a great line of thought. It isn’t that people haven’t heard or considered about their passion, lives, or others. It is that they have not thought about it in depth, or critically. It was a passing thought between thinking about their 401k and the next episode of Lost, or whatever people watch now.

Incidentally, the word ‘depth’ came up in T’s journal today too. This insight is creating a shift in a lot of patterns that I need to draw out. Now! Why is my whiteboard so far away?

Mouse-over for most recent xkcd:

A breadth-first search makes a lot of sense for dating in general, actually; it suggests dating a bunch of people casually before getting serious, rather than having a series of five-year relationships one after the other.

The last eighteen months of breadth-first dating arose from starting to understand how meeting a ‘nice girl’ was not the solution. Ironically, just yesterday, a friend said to me, “if only I could just meet a nice guy.” I wasn’t sure where to start. On the surface, I’ve come full circle recently, except that it was not a circle I did not learn from. I’ve had at least two conversations over the last couple of days with friends about passion, and the difficulty of finding a strong woman with passion who isn’t defiantly strong; afraid of love or empathy or denouncing feelings. Who is also nice. Now, I’m not asking for wonders per se, we’re not talking about the perfect individual. This is surely a farce, but rather a special blend. Each trait would be struggling for the top and one would find it difficult to keep them perfectly balanced in the long term. As it should be.

I saw a random online dating profile recently where someone described themselves as being passionate, but it came off as defensive. My first analogy is that it was like saying “I’m not short, I’m vertically challenged,” but with less humor. Like, I’m not ditzy, I’m passionate. I still struggle with describing the personality that I read into here. I think for this person it was a cover for leaping without looking, not being that smart, but being somewhat loud and overbearing about something. Is my passion then calculated? Perhaps. When I think about the tone of my advocacy efforts, about how I am often not being as outwardly fair about all sides of an issue as I am inside, I’d have to agree. I recall talking to J about how happy I was listening to M talk about what she believed in. There was a shadow or a veil of embarrassment or humility there over her passion but I could empathize with her passion. I was proud and loved that.

J once told me she believed that this sort of breadth first dating made a lot of sense because it would be difficult for me to find a partner who thought as much as I did about relationships and was as passionate as I am. I think I have been in agreement the last few months both mentally and emotionally, which is important. Still, it is a balance that wavers. Further, I am in the midst of a huge tidal shift of priorities as sobriety has left a lot behind on the beachhead.

Funny how they always want to be friends after they rip your guts out.

As much as I sometimes feel so unsure of where my connections are, its while going on about how much a movie that seems shallow was written to make a meaningful point that a shallow comment resonates with me.