I tune last.fm to Lucero.

Where did we leave off two weeks ago, J? Everything has been great. What could I possibly have to complain about? I’m always bringing up Frankl. I had to walk to the bookshelf to remember his name. I saw my precalc book from last year. I forgot B’s name for five minutes today while talking to J. It’s going, slowly. I bring up Frankl’s theory on there always being something else to mourn, beneath that which seems the worst. The case for tragic optimism.

Ben Nichols comes on.

Various memories stick with me. I’ll always remember my father’s roommate Stan telling me about his never-satiated quest for higher pay grades in the Navy. He tells me this to send home the message that it’s always something else, to just live.

When did that sink in for me? Then? Before? I feel like it always has been. I used to joke that I had all of life figured out except relationships. I used to think I was broken, that everything else wasn’t worth bringing up in therapy because it was just hard, but it was life. That it was only relationships that needed fixing. But no, it’s all just hard, some are just easier than others.

My fear of ending up sad and alone like my father has driven me in many subtle ways; too subtle to attribute. What happened? When did dating level out with everything else? When did it become as easy as all the other hard stuff? Did I admit defeat?

I told J today I couldn’t think of a happier time than walking into M’s living room and seeing her. We were talking about how to tell if I felt I was afraid of settling. What is that? I mean, I had to have had fun, but was it all the sort of riding bikes and drinking fun that isn’t particularly meaningful and fades into the forgotten past?

The more I do, the more achieve, the less it seems to matter. Where do you find someone whom has realized that, standing silently next to you, looking down. You walk into the woods.

T and I talked extensively about my pondering about the stereotypes of bitchy girls, and how nearly everyone I’ve dated, especially the last couple of years, has been incredibly nice. I wondered if the stereotypes were bullshit, which was mostly a leadin to realizing that I’m specifically attracted to people I’d describe as sweet. While I think some of the people I’ve dated might take offense to that, behind closed doors they’d probably admit their hearts are much bigger than they’re willing to expose to the general public. How do I have an eye for this? Today, xkcd has the antithesis.

Shits been making me feel old, and partly as a consequence, it has triggered reconsideration of a few aspects of dating. I got an email from K the other day wherein we were discussing our schedules for the fall and how we can probably only hang out on weekends. This reminds me of my recent conversation with C about how dating is usually seeing someone once or twice a week and his surprise at that. Which leads to recalling M’s assertion about not being able to manage that amount of time, more weight on her being confused and not being able to deal with trying to figure it out. It wasn’t ever about spending time with me being a problem, but confronting the issues that my feelings were bringing up.

I once dated a girl, who…

The knees hurt pretty regularly. I guess I’m getting too old to be mashing high gear ratios on the fixed gear. Hrmf.

Long conversation, well, long period of thinking out loud, today with T about dating and worrying that dating is ultimately prematurely giving in to a desire for intimacy. I’ve been pretty self-deprecating lately, I must be tired.

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.