What's up?
It's been a while since I posted to LJ other than to comment or do a quick tea-community entry. I guess my time and energy (and health) has been sapped enough by stress that I've retreated a bit into myself. So in an effort to catch up:
(This may be long so feel free to skip it).
I visited my parents, a once-every-couple-of-months kind of thing. I had a birthday gift for my mother and we wanted to hear about their recent trip to China. They were a bit brusk and although the went through the motions of being sociable it was a very cold and unwelcoming trip. I hope part of it was still jet-lag, but this isn't a unique sort of visit. My parents always do the perfectly proper and correct thing, but they're very distant emotionally. I've finally understood that they like the concept of children but are not fond of the reality of their inconvenience and lack of perfectly controlled behavior. It explains a lot about how I was raised, and I why until I met my wife I thought the whole world was going to be one huge gulag when I graduated. I'm so grateful I discovered what real human warmth and connection could be -- a debt I owe L every day.
Work continues to be oppressive and impossibly burdensome. Too much work, too few people, too much uncertainty, too many bad decisions by upper management. A recent bad decision by management is leading to a legal conundrum, and I find as the one expert left in the company on the topic in question I'm being brought in to find a magical solution out of the dead end they've put themselves in. More frustrating still: I was warning management about this very possibility for most of the last 18 months yet it still happened. I'm not confident about the future sustainability with this kind of lack of foresight occurring.
My son came down sick last weekend, and then early this week I followed suit. Unfortunately that coincided with day I was scheduled to go to work in Seattle and then meet VL for an important dinner discussion afterward. I'm feeling much better now, but I still regret not being there for VL for a face-to-face.
She called the other night so we could have the chat anyway, but I wish I could have been in her presence so I could have reassured her that I really was accepting of her decision. In a nutshell: VL needs to do some self-work and to do so needs a blank slate with all of her emotional crutches/retreats removed and her life simplified. This equates to becoming celebate and either ending or putting on semi-permanent hold all of her current romantic relationships.
I understand this need completely; having indulged in near-hermetic withdrawal recently myself it would be hypocritical of me not to. I'm not even sure how much it will change our relationship dynamics, pragmatically speaking, as we've been mostly platonic in recent months anyway. And it doesn't halt my affection and respect for her. As I told her, our relationship now feels very much as if we're both teenagers, she's the pretty red-haired girl next door and I'm the shy loner fanning an ember of an unspoken crush on her, gratefully enjoying the glow of spending time with her yet not pushing for a more formal declaration of a relationship.
I speak to RR every couple of days. I find I very much enjoy his company and talking with him on the phone. I find warmth in knowing him, but I'm still delving deep within myself if this is an indication that I'm ready for a romantic relationship with him. I certainly enjoyed being intimate with him before.
I'm trying to untangle my spaghetti-like-feelings for him. There are pleasant strands: holding hands, kissing, fondling, tasting, talking over dinner, sharing social events, watching him and my wife tease each other. There are also less pleasant strands: my discomfort with his health issues, my uncertainty if I pushed too quickly into an intimate relationship because I knew I liked him and felt I was SUPPOSED to be sexual with him, a nagging feeling that part of the issue is simply a mismatch in our intimate needs/styles, and guilt at hurting him with my withdrawal, particularly at an extremely difficult time in his life. Keeping with the metaphor, all of these strands are being obscured by the clumpy, spicy sauce of everything else happening in our lives around us. And as for the big savory meatballs... well perhaps that's just too obvious a metaphor for a relationship between two men. Regardless of this confused muddle I'm glad I met RR and that he's become part of my life.
This weekend the wife is vending at Sir Eddy's, the one SCA event that she tried to make sure she never misses (but did last year due to late-season snow). In my current hermetic mode and my backlog of work I'm probably staying home. I may be visited by two friends and past lovers, people I haven't seen in quite some time. If so it will be good to catch up and perhaps indulge in some weighty (or perhaps frivolous) discussions over tea. Perhaps I'll even finally finish some conversion mapping documents or some digging for a terraced garden retaining wall.
I also plan to spend more time with my kids, particularly my son. The stress level is high at the school (WASL testing the last few weeks) and the teacher's scoring-angst has percolated to the children to some degree, resulting in strained friendships and bruised feelings. Last night was a good start with E -- I spent a half-hour playing boffers with him outside (sorry about the bruise on your cheek, E! Who knew foam Lego shields could leave a mark?) and then taught him to play the Chinese board game Go. My daughter seems more self-sufficient and spends much time by herself in her newly-private room. I hope this is not a sign of a pre-teen withdrawal from communication with us; I make time to listen to her problems with friends and to share tea with her whenever possible and it doesn't feel that we're losing touch, but I want to keep a close eye on that.
Lots more to put here I'm sure. But that's long enough, don't you think?
(This may be long so feel free to skip it).
I visited my parents, a once-every-couple-of-months kind of thing. I had a birthday gift for my mother and we wanted to hear about their recent trip to China. They were a bit brusk and although the went through the motions of being sociable it was a very cold and unwelcoming trip. I hope part of it was still jet-lag, but this isn't a unique sort of visit. My parents always do the perfectly proper and correct thing, but they're very distant emotionally. I've finally understood that they like the concept of children but are not fond of the reality of their inconvenience and lack of perfectly controlled behavior. It explains a lot about how I was raised, and I why until I met my wife I thought the whole world was going to be one huge gulag when I graduated. I'm so grateful I discovered what real human warmth and connection could be -- a debt I owe L every day.
Work continues to be oppressive and impossibly burdensome. Too much work, too few people, too much uncertainty, too many bad decisions by upper management. A recent bad decision by management is leading to a legal conundrum, and I find as the one expert left in the company on the topic in question I'm being brought in to find a magical solution out of the dead end they've put themselves in. More frustrating still: I was warning management about this very possibility for most of the last 18 months yet it still happened. I'm not confident about the future sustainability with this kind of lack of foresight occurring.
My son came down sick last weekend, and then early this week I followed suit. Unfortunately that coincided with day I was scheduled to go to work in Seattle and then meet VL for an important dinner discussion afterward. I'm feeling much better now, but I still regret not being there for VL for a face-to-face.
She called the other night so we could have the chat anyway, but I wish I could have been in her presence so I could have reassured her that I really was accepting of her decision. In a nutshell: VL needs to do some self-work and to do so needs a blank slate with all of her emotional crutches/retreats removed and her life simplified. This equates to becoming celebate and either ending or putting on semi-permanent hold all of her current romantic relationships.
I understand this need completely; having indulged in near-hermetic withdrawal recently myself it would be hypocritical of me not to. I'm not even sure how much it will change our relationship dynamics, pragmatically speaking, as we've been mostly platonic in recent months anyway. And it doesn't halt my affection and respect for her. As I told her, our relationship now feels very much as if we're both teenagers, she's the pretty red-haired girl next door and I'm the shy loner fanning an ember of an unspoken crush on her, gratefully enjoying the glow of spending time with her yet not pushing for a more formal declaration of a relationship.
I speak to RR every couple of days. I find I very much enjoy his company and talking with him on the phone. I find warmth in knowing him, but I'm still delving deep within myself if this is an indication that I'm ready for a romantic relationship with him. I certainly enjoyed being intimate with him before.
I'm trying to untangle my spaghetti-like-feelings for him. There are pleasant strands: holding hands, kissing, fondling, tasting, talking over dinner, sharing social events, watching him and my wife tease each other. There are also less pleasant strands: my discomfort with his health issues, my uncertainty if I pushed too quickly into an intimate relationship because I knew I liked him and felt I was SUPPOSED to be sexual with him, a nagging feeling that part of the issue is simply a mismatch in our intimate needs/styles, and guilt at hurting him with my withdrawal, particularly at an extremely difficult time in his life. Keeping with the metaphor, all of these strands are being obscured by the clumpy, spicy sauce of everything else happening in our lives around us. And as for the big savory meatballs... well perhaps that's just too obvious a metaphor for a relationship between two men. Regardless of this confused muddle I'm glad I met RR and that he's become part of my life.
This weekend the wife is vending at Sir Eddy's, the one SCA event that she tried to make sure she never misses (but did last year due to late-season snow). In my current hermetic mode and my backlog of work I'm probably staying home. I may be visited by two friends and past lovers, people I haven't seen in quite some time. If so it will be good to catch up and perhaps indulge in some weighty (or perhaps frivolous) discussions over tea. Perhaps I'll even finally finish some conversion mapping documents or some digging for a terraced garden retaining wall.
I also plan to spend more time with my kids, particularly my son. The stress level is high at the school (WASL testing the last few weeks) and the teacher's scoring-angst has percolated to the children to some degree, resulting in strained friendships and bruised feelings. Last night was a good start with E -- I spent a half-hour playing boffers with him outside (sorry about the bruise on your cheek, E! Who knew foam Lego shields could leave a mark?) and then taught him to play the Chinese board game Go. My daughter seems more self-sufficient and spends much time by herself in her newly-private room. I hope this is not a sign of a pre-teen withdrawal from communication with us; I make time to listen to her problems with friends and to share tea with her whenever possible and it doesn't feel that we're losing touch, but I want to keep a close eye on that.
Lots more to put here I'm sure. But that's long enough, don't you think?