It’s been years since I’ve seen Eric. Having noticed on Linedin that he was looking for work, I made lunch plans with him for today. We inevitably discussed the demise of our former common employer, and we talked about why I left. It’s interesting to compare leaving there, and leaving my last job, the only two jobs I’ve ever really quit.

I’ll never forget asking Eric to go out to his car to talk and me breaking down because of M. I joked with her a couple days ago, and I’m still measuring that.

I got a letter from my grandparents (fathers side) today. They’ve been doing some cutting on the old family farm, which is a woodlot now, and distributed the profit amongst the family. Meanwhile I’m looking at purchasing a woodlot myself, and I’ve been neck deep in reading zoning codes, forestry management books, and browsing real estate.

Eric and I talked about keeping busy. He had read the index to my website and commented on how much I’ve spread out and put myself out there since I moved here five years ago. It’s hard to remember that person that I was then. I realize I’ve been unknowingly talking a lot lately about finding new paths. Work is relatively interesting, but not really interesting, and more and more the challenges aren’t there. I’m not sure where that is going to take me, but I’m proud of the places it has so far.

My grandfather called me to today to discuss their impending intervention with my father regarding his health and his stubbornness surrounding his inability to care for himself. I can’t talk about interventions without thinking back ten years to when my friends all agreed our friend needed help. Somehow I ended up being the one to bring it up, and felt like a friend on each side of me took a step back when I did, as if I was overreacting.

There isn’t overreaction here though. I’m convinced that the speed at which we approach the end of my fathers life continues to increase. I’ve discussed the lack of my fathers living will or advance directives with others, but today was the first time anyone has asked me if I knew if he had burial plans. In early November when I spoke to MA’s mother on the subject, she brought up how her father had been convinced he was going to die but then lived on for decades. Having met him later in those decades, they were calm nursing home years at the end. There’s more to that. I’ll ask M about it. I thought about this, the slow aging process. I thought about it then, and I’ve thought about it before. I imagined my father stumbling around somewhere on oxygen. As the pace of the deterioration of this health quickens, I expect that less.

G and I chat. She says, “I feel like I can’t do a lot the things i want to do with my life until I’m settled with a partner.” We discuss this, I relate the conversations I’ve had with others about this, particularly with M and how thoughts and feelings have changed since talking to M about it in February of this year. What was some day then, is reading, researching, and exploring the possibilities in earnest today. Making plans.

MA and I chat. She says, “it is really good you have support though.” I wonder. I think about K saying, “i realized i don’t think of you as someone who needs help. whoa.” I feel bad that relationship didn’t work out. I think about MB being glad that I had friends to take care of me. Did I? Did she think so? Or did she not want to feel bad about not giving and loving? K would have been really good for me, in this circumstance, because she cared. She later said, “i guess part of my initial impression of you as the ultimate self-sufficient superperson has stuck around. so. attitude adjustment time. feel free to ask for and expect help from me.” I do miss K, and think she would have taken care of me if I let her. I don’t regret that, I’m okay, with the reality of finding a relationship that is mutual. The pessimism and patience talk.

Honestly, as much support as I may have, I think I rarely use any of it. My vulnerability is controlled. Perhaps that is as it should be. Maybe it shouldn’t be let down like I last allowed with MB.

MA says, “i really believe you avoid regret by having your actions guided by love, as corny as that sounds.” I don’t know what else to say to her. “[you] are trying to do your best by him.”

I got this somewhat recently from V. It meant a lot to me, but I don’t know exactly why yet.

Dewd, okay, this happened a few days ago but I’ve just now got internet and remembered to tell you. But if/when you have kids, you’ll be adorable. I saw this guy who looked like you but a bit older and he was cooing to his baby who giggled and then like, bit his nose (I think the baby was still figuring out kisses) and it was SO FRICKIN’ CUTE I almost died.

Anyway, so if you were ever worried about kids killing your image, heck no. They’ll only help.

I struggling to describe this tide that’s forming.

Some number of months ago I woken up in the morning, and, I wanted to have children with M. I was troubled by that at the time because I couldn’t really articulate it. The significance, in retrospect, was that I wanted it. I am not really used to that feeling. I am much more accustomed to deciding some activity would be enjoyable. I brought it up with M later, still not really knowing what this experience was, and she was quick to point out she had “no intention of bringing any children into this world.” I can’t say I was disappointed, I don’t think I knew what to make of much of it at the time.

I think that people often have a hard time distinguishing between their needs and their wants, while I have the echo of my father being clear about there being a difference from my childhood. Perhaps I have a harder time allowing my desires where most have a harder time going without them. There is certainly much of this in “M vs M,” as I’ve grown to accept the things that I want are going to be unique to me and not necessarily the best I could do by measure of virtue or culture.

I didn’t tell M about my experience because I wanted to go down that road at the time, but because she is meaningful to me, and it was something that had her essence at the core of it.

I recently bought two books for her, or at least, with her in mind; they were meant to be some kind of Christmas gifts but I swayed and decided I’d read them first and go from there. The first was Why We Run, and the second A Year in the Maine Woods. The first came from thinking about her solace in physical activity, and the latter as a way to connect my thoughts about Maine with her. I didn’t realize until I got home that they were both by Bernd Heinrich.

I’ve been reading the second, but decided to abandon it tonight. After about fifty pages the book is more a diary than a story. The pages consist of the birds and plants that Heinrich sees, the history of the land, and the passing of time. Its written very matter of factually, and comes near to being lists written as paragraphs. I set it down, having finished my dinner at a nearby pub, and just sat. The sound of the crowd was something I had never heard before. Why? Not because it was a different consistency, but, I suppose I sat in a way that I hadn’t previously.

A lot has happened during the last week….I think, talking to myself is making feel too alone.

Want / work.

I really want to build a camp. I’ve been wasting hours thinking about it, but then telling myself I should wait a year or two and sell some stock to pay for it. But then I am often feeling like I don’t stop, and I should. My weekends roll into weekdays, and back again. On the upside, it’s nice that my job is great and that can happen. I don’t know. Maybe life is too short to wait.

The section on Love of God in The Art of Loving was perhaps the most moving piece in the direction of God I’ve ever read. Having first read The Road Less Traveled as a teenager, and multiple times since then, I’ve always felt that the chapter on grace was out of place. I wonder if I would feel otherwise if I read it yesterday, or now. Fromm engages the concept of God as something undefinable but through the paradox of defining what God is not. Through the discussion of many subjects the idea is drawn, “… to a mature stage where God ceases to be an outside power, where man has incorporated the principles of love and justice into himself, where he has become one with God, and eventually, to a point where he speaks of God only in a poetic, symbolic sense.”

In other news. Today was the start of another two week sprint at work. At one point, hours into the planning process, I realized just how much time was spent working. A while ago, sorting through a relapse of disappointment in the ability of educational systems to teach, I was looking at two year or shorter programs. Not really that I thought I could take them, because I’m convinced that the time constraints of these programs won’t ever fit into my life, nor my lifestyle, but I was pondering that. I was interested in some kind of forestry management program, and trying to figure out how you achieved such education without spending two years of your life in school. On one hand, two years isn’t a horribly long amount of time for something you could do for the rest of your life. I looked at the Commercial Driver Training program at South Seattle Community College and wondered what exactly one did for 11 weeks, or 360 hours. As I currently hold a Class B CDL, I was dumb-founded.

Some time after I dropped out of high school I was considering what to do with my life now that I had chosen to take responsibility for it. Eastern Maine Technical College (EMTC), now known as Eastern Maine Community College (EMCC), has a new computer networking program coming up and I was planning on taking that. Since it was new, it wasn’t until late in the planning process that I got a hold of a program syllabus. I was pretty disappointed to find that the fourth quarter of the second year would bring us around to discussing the TCP/IP model. At the time, I was reading about that in TCP/IP illustrated. This was good stuff, but seemed far from the pinnacle of two years of education. In retrospect, as I’ve now taught dozens of peoples about networking, they were doing it wrong and this was definitely a sign of failure.

What could I do with 360 hours? The point is a lot. I can’t sit still, not for long.

Spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming.

When I read my email on my phone in the morning, it makes getting out of bed and sitting down at my computer to read my email a bit disappointing.

Oh, hello there Monday. Are we going to build some awesome today?

My father listens to NOAA weather radio every day. I have a bookmark in Delicious for the NWS Area Forecast Discussion (AFD) for Seattle. This is how times change.

Sleep has been strange and my “positional vertigo” is still worse after sleeping than any other time, although relatively innocuous compared to the strength of symptoms the first day. As I continue reading The Art of Loving I paused and looked at my over my white-board. At one point I captured a quote from the television show House where Cuddy says to House, “I love you. I wish I didn’t but I can’t help it.” I’m tempted to spare the explanation of the circumstances, but I realize they’re somewhat relevant in a moment. I think I wrote the quote down because I identified with struggling with who I had strong feelings for. It hasn’t been for the most convenient or, more specifically, those who I’ve felt have had good relationship qualities like strong communication skills, reasonableness, and patience.

In House, Cuddy convincingly tries to date a man who is reliable and would make a “good” father for her child. He is the “good” things that House is not. Yet, in the end, or at least at the end of the season I watched, she leaves him for House. Perhaps because drama retains viewers and viewers sell advertisements, but I often think there is a “Star Trek” kind of humanity in good television. When I had saved the quote, I identified with being frustrated with having little control over who I had strong feelings toward, but tonight while reviewing the white-board I realized that there was a much larger commonality.

I’ve had a change of heart lately, or perhaps, a decision has been made about my life hence-forth. I’ve roughly labelled it pessimism, but mostly because that term is swooping and is easily at hand. I’ve had great conversations about the importance of finding someone who fills a good deal of the roles I’m looking for in a partner. Yet, I’ve realized those are more, intangible. More so, they are niceties and not deal-breakers. It is funny to consider a checklist of what I think a person should be like, since I’m mostly indifferent to these traits being particularly important otherwise. I suppose that is significant. As I’ve dated women who I consider intelligent, caring, and motivated, those who have been well balanced and whose lives aren’t all that different from mine (although, hmm, I do feel so alone still in ways. That’s worth considering further.), I still haven’t felt great about the relationships. This has been framed as “I shouldn’t be dating people I should be friends with,” lately. So my change heart is that I am no longer convinced that finding a great partner is a matter of finding a great person measured by socially ideal traits. I have. They were all great. It wasn’t, apparently, right.

I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I wrote Sorry. Well, I can, I know what I think, I just don’t know how it came out that way.

I have a great deal of frustration over folks not getting it, and not bothering to ask me about it. Like the entire episode with everyone implying I only fall in love with people who break up with me. Granted, I lose out a bit because I’m frustrated with having to keep having that conversation. I’ve tried off and on, in different ways and degrees, over the years to try to explain some things to M. I don’t know that they get across, and I think. Well. Hmm. I think this may have been a mistake. I think, in retrospect, its a matter of figuring out other people as best you can and letting them figure you out at their own pace. Hmm.

Not having had many good leaders, maybe a couple, I’ve been wondering what that is lately. Part of it is setting an example, and perhaps that is unintentionally the most common by way of experience. But what is conscious? I can’t identify a situation in the last five years or so where I think a move was made for my benefit.

There is a commonality at play here. As Fromm speaks of the anxiety of separation, perhaps this is my disappointment in my connections with other people.

My ideal guy is an axe wielding bearded mountain man who is too busy chopping wood to fill out an online dating profile.

But I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, I grew up, well, next to nowhere. Right? I don’t know. I want to have people who say this sort of thing read We Took to the Woods. Still, might that be too romantic?

I tried to talk to the girls about quantifying how much they’ve dated, but we ended up spending most of the time discussing the rules for if you’d count someone or not. Ultimately, have I been dating too much? Relative to the first 25 years of my life, the last three has been, well, busy. From a perspective of Maslow, this is to be expected. I’m relatively successful in the other parts of my life. I’m seem past the conversations of this past spring regarding how I was waiting for a partner for certain things to change, so they could change together. Partially, reality is catching up with me. My father seems to get exponentially worse as time passes. People I’ve never met ask me to come and talk about what I do. I have more insurance policies than I care to keep track of. Are these the things by which to measure life? Or is it the discussions about what’s important. There was a time when I didn’t consider moving from Seattle, not because I was against the idea but just because I was caught up in life. Now it feels inevitable, only a matter of years. Will I finish up my current project in the new few years and move on, or will something else enticing keep me here rather than taking me back to the woods.

In the second chapter Fromm has begun to talk about how all anxiety stems from our aloneness. I spoke to M tonight about my problems sleeping last night, and stress came up. That’s too complicated to draw those lines, but sure, its a big empty bed, and I’ll play some Whiskey & Company to that.

My Aunt asked me about Sarah Palin on facebook today. I figured it would be worthy to safe my response to look back upon from the future.

That’s my uncontrollable sarcasm as work. You’re probably used to being protected from it, but now that you’re on the internet you’re exposed.

This isn’t an easy or simple conversation to have seriously.

I believe Sarah Palin is not a critical thinker. I tend to find her opinions narrow minded and offensive. Most of all, I’m frightened by her popularity. If I think that her beliefs lack a diversity, adequate introspection and self doubt, a human depth, what does that say of those that choose to follow her?

I’ve long been afraid that prejudice is only considered wrong insofar as specific acts become social taboo. Racism is generally considered wrong, sexism is getting there, but prejudice based on religion, sexual orientation, and class are alive and well. Not to mention day to day prejudices around transportation and lifestyle.

Usually the fact that I’ve chosen to read books about issues rather than partake of sensationalist news networks, whose job, lets not forget, is to get you to watch their commercials, protects me. My lifestyle tends to keep open-minded thinkers closer than those who are more than happy to tell me how they think I should be living.

I haven’t lived long enough to know if dangerous times are ahead, but I do think they aren’t going to be easy. I’m scared of the desire to make the United States a Christian country, walled off to outsiders, under the belief that everything would be easy if it wasn’t for all the people different than us.

I wouldn’t want Sarah Palin to be President of this nation any more than I would Julian Assange. Perhaps she is representative of a frightful majority and will be. Honestly, the most virtuous Americans I have seen lately have been former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the end, as the chasm between the middle class and the rich continues to grow, and as more and more Americans falsely believe if they just work hard enough they too will be rich, it doesn’t matter. Those with the most to lose, who own all of our television networks, our media conglomerates, who run our newspapers and our magazines will continue to dictate what we talk about in our checkout lines at the grocery stores. We continue to be manipulated by those with the most power, because they yearn to remain these.

I’m home sick today. I just finished watching Dune. Its too bad life isn’t like the movies, there isn’t a prophecy to believe in where someone will lead us to peace, to a brotherhood without suffering.

Update:

Then she called me a closed minded true democrat. This is perhaps the most I’ve ever written at once about my views.

Splitting peoples beliefs into a dichotomy is pretty scary too. I’ve never identified as a Democrat, although I may be registered as one for the sake of the primaries here, as I’ve been somewhat active in bicycle and mass transit advocacy i…n the city.

In general, this is my point. My beliefs are mine and I don’t identify with anyone else’s. Some of these beliefs are strong, and some aren’t. If anyone wants to question them, they’re welcome to anytime. However, I do require people have had thought deeply about their questions. Thought terminating cliches and media talking points aren’t fair or interesting.

I just spent a half hour reading about political parties on wikipedia. It seems like a waste of time trying to find a label that fits my views as of today, when I could spend that time thinking about my views. When I think back, there was a time I would have called myself a libertarian. As I read about that, it sounds like those ideologies fit into both parties (wikipedia lists it under both) which makes the whole party system seem more destructive than helpful to me.

I am a “cold dead hands” type when it comes to gun ownership. I think that is relatively rare for the democratic party and excludes me pretty solidly.

Yet, I am against the general intolerance and prejudice of the republican party toward other sexual orientations, and religions. I would take a gay muslim who has long been introspective about who they are as a friend over a straight christian who hasn’t. Can you have gay muslims? I don’t know. Sure. That’s the point, I don’t believe there is a righteousness around who you should be or are. It sounds like my beliefs about marriage exclude me from the republican party pretty quickly.

Both of these examples sound libertarian, best I can tell. But then I’m a supporter of universal health care. I believe good health should become a basic human right and I worry about how every expanding class roles affect peoples access to health and their upward mobility. People tend to call that big government, or even socialism. Which, sidebar, is absurd and a sensationalist red flag. That’s a long conversation.

And then, I’m an upwardly mobile white male. The only thing missing from a stereotypical mold is a strong religion. I think and worry long about white privilege and the benefits of growing up with a pair of loving middle class parents (despite our tribulations over the years).

I’m solidly upper-middle class by income, but I drive an old rusted out truck thats falling apart and refuse to replace it. But then I ride a bicycle more days that I drive a car.

I grew up in the woods and yet I support sustainable logging. I can’t even begin to summarize my difficulties finding peers in the city when it comes to my heritage from Maine.

So what does that make me? This democrat versus republican class system is an example of exactly what I’m afraid of. I agree with Jon Stewarts views that America is being decisively divided at the hand of media because it is good for them, not because it is good for us. Watching news networks makes me physically ill it is so upsetting. If you want to know what I believe you have to ask me and we have to discuss it.

I really don’t know what to make of your implication that I am closed minded and I’m pretty bothered by it. This thread has entirely been me thinking about my views and trying to state them. Nobody has offered another view and tried to argue for it.

Wiktionary (interestingly merriam-webster doesn’t list the word) defines closed-minded as “unreceptive to new ideas or information.” That’s exactly what I think is missing, the discussion of ideas and information. I think beliefs come hard, and should come a lot harder than it is generally implied that they do.

If you want to accuse me of being closed-minded, you need to provide some new ideas or information and let me reject them first.