Random Wednesday post
It's nearly* the Christmas season again, which means (decorations, holidays, drinking too much spiked eggnog and) time to start thinking about New Year's resolutions again. My project this year worked out really well - I picked 43 things I was going to do, but also made the meta-resolution that if needed, I would scale some goals back until I was able to achieve each one within the time frame of a year. I decided that I would rather (1) have a definite sense of accomplishment and (2) collect solid data about what is reasonable to expect in a year than just set myself up for a sprint and burnout by mid-February like I had in the past. I'm on track to complete the latest revision by mid-December, and this turned out to be a good year for data collection since I was promoted at work and moved; as a non-parent, this is about as much schedule upheaval as I could reasonably expect to see. So I'm now thinking about what I want to do for next year.
Since Thanksgiving and the cat-inspired cuddle session, I've been thinking about whether I want to get involved in dating again. I know I can, if I decide to. I just haven't decided if I want to. It's been really nice the past 10 or so months just sitting around doing what I want, focusing on (mostly) work and (occasionally) my projects - working math problems, keeping up with my philosophy and politics blog-friends, figuring out if the philosophy of religion book collaboration with a handful of other philosophy nerds is going to work out next year, getting back into chess. Only showering every two or three days if I feel like slacking off. I have a good social network for a single person. My housemate is single. My brother and all my cousins are single, and at Thanksgiving we had such a good time snarking at Like Crazy. (The most boring film I've seen in years. I felt like I was reading one of Undisclosed Boss's casefiles. It turns out that contrary to what young people often think, immigration laws do, in fact, also apply to people who happen to be in love, and three-year and ten-year bars to admission are applied across the board for overstays.)
But; always a 'but.' But it's really nice to be intimate with someone special. And as I found out with my cousin's cat-loving friend, as happy as I am with my situation, if I have half a chance to switch over to a different situation, even a brief, non-sexual one, I'll jump at it. If I wanted to, I could probably spend weeks dissecting why this is, but I don't think it's important to know exactly why; it won't change anything. It's just the reality of the choice I would make given the chance.
I don't want to actively try dating again, though. The thing is, I'm not worried about rejection. A bad fit is a bad fit, and the quicker one party or the other recognizes it, the better. It's that I don't like opening up to people and revealing what I want. Not that I'm dishonest. I just don't like facing that part of myself and acknowledging that I might really, deeply want something that doesn't actually exist. I want someone who perfectly understands me, at exactly the same time I am coming to terms with the fact that there are mountains of things I don't know about myself.
I (this is true of everyone really, but we're talking about me here) have to get to know myself by experience the way I would have to take the time to get to know anyone else. I discover so many things about myself by accident, based on what events I respond to. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the absolute limits of what levels of stress I could take until August '08, when I drove a moving truck 500 miles on a sprained right ankle because there was nobody else I could call for help. Didn't expect I would be able to do that, but I did it, then unloaded the truck by myself like a baws. I never would have known that I can handle that much when I'm by myself if I hadn't slipped in the shower in Utah. Most examples are less extreme than that, obviously. But since so much of my self-knowledge is derived from responses to external events, it's likely that there are things I will never come to understand about myself. This isn't (just) about me; pretty sure this is also true for anyone who isn't the second (nth?) coming of Shakyamuni Buddha.
This is a little distressing, but not much in the grand scheme of things. The guy in that link, by the way, is the new masthead for the remake of Cosmos.
Anyway, dating is something that may or may not make it onto my resolution list for next year. I have another 31 days to figure that out. Anything interesting going on your lists?
* I still maintain that every time someone plays Christmas music before December, an angel drowns a baby reindeer.
Since Thanksgiving and the cat-inspired cuddle session, I've been thinking about whether I want to get involved in dating again. I know I can, if I decide to. I just haven't decided if I want to. It's been really nice the past 10 or so months just sitting around doing what I want, focusing on (mostly) work and (occasionally) my projects - working math problems, keeping up with my philosophy and politics blog-friends, figuring out if the philosophy of religion book collaboration with a handful of other philosophy nerds is going to work out next year, getting back into chess. Only showering every two or three days if I feel like slacking off. I have a good social network for a single person. My housemate is single. My brother and all my cousins are single, and at Thanksgiving we had such a good time snarking at Like Crazy. (The most boring film I've seen in years. I felt like I was reading one of Undisclosed Boss's casefiles. It turns out that contrary to what young people often think, immigration laws do, in fact, also apply to people who happen to be in love, and three-year and ten-year bars to admission are applied across the board for overstays.)
But; always a 'but.' But it's really nice to be intimate with someone special. And as I found out with my cousin's cat-loving friend, as happy as I am with my situation, if I have half a chance to switch over to a different situation, even a brief, non-sexual one, I'll jump at it. If I wanted to, I could probably spend weeks dissecting why this is, but I don't think it's important to know exactly why; it won't change anything. It's just the reality of the choice I would make given the chance.
I don't want to actively try dating again, though. The thing is, I'm not worried about rejection. A bad fit is a bad fit, and the quicker one party or the other recognizes it, the better. It's that I don't like opening up to people and revealing what I want. Not that I'm dishonest. I just don't like facing that part of myself and acknowledging that I might really, deeply want something that doesn't actually exist. I want someone who perfectly understands me, at exactly the same time I am coming to terms with the fact that there are mountains of things I don't know about myself.
I (this is true of everyone really, but we're talking about me here) have to get to know myself by experience the way I would have to take the time to get to know anyone else. I discover so many things about myself by accident, based on what events I respond to. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the absolute limits of what levels of stress I could take until August '08, when I drove a moving truck 500 miles on a sprained right ankle because there was nobody else I could call for help. Didn't expect I would be able to do that, but I did it, then unloaded the truck by myself like a baws. I never would have known that I can handle that much when I'm by myself if I hadn't slipped in the shower in Utah. Most examples are less extreme than that, obviously. But since so much of my self-knowledge is derived from responses to external events, it's likely that there are things I will never come to understand about myself. This isn't (just) about me; pretty sure this is also true for anyone who isn't the second (nth?) coming of Shakyamuni Buddha.
This is a little distressing, but not much in the grand scheme of things. The guy in that link, by the way, is the new masthead for the remake of Cosmos.
Anyway, dating is something that may or may not make it onto my resolution list for next year. I have another 31 days to figure that out. Anything interesting going on your lists?
* I still maintain that every time someone plays Christmas music before December, an angel drowns a baby reindeer.