song du jour: Moondance, Van Morrison

mood: brrr

Don't Put Me on a Shelf(?)

In response to some comments and emails I've received on recent posts, it's nice when blogging is sometimes more on the dialog side. So much better than writing only to a bunch of semi-anonymous IP addresses. This from one, uh, friend in reference to my recent book tossing confession, "..glad you decided to be a writer/artist rather than a librarian-your lovers are safer!!" We can ask Jean (who is a writer/artist AND a librarian), but I believe if my life were devoted to promoting and preserving books, I probably would have only rearranged, cataloged, and reshelved them in my outrage. ;-)

On a more serious though not unrelated note, I asked ebuddha what would be the ideal situation for a child to view in terms of the mom's romantic relationships. His response was exactly like the information that divorcing parents in the state of Georgia are given by councilors in the required parenting class. It is VERY good advice. It's also just damned hard because unless you're on an eHarmony commercial, that kind of slow meeting, getting to know each other conventional dating, and possibly moving toward a 'serious' relationship seems to have gone dreadfully out of fashion, and frankly, I kind of miss it. Well, maybe not entirely. (Does one have to go on eHarmony.com to do that? Ugh! Forget it.) 'Serious' still kind of freaks me out.

It's no accident that I'm ok with long distance relationships. I don't seek them out either, but when that's what's happened, I've been fine with it. It's a bit like I found with online grad school. I miss the consistent interaction, but I can write in at 3 in the morning, and still cope with all my other responsibilities. Yes, they are a pain in the ass in some ways, but then, when I've tried to deal with local situations, I usually ended up going crazy that someone could demand so much of my time and energy, and keeping things separate (which in fact really is trying to please and be too much to 2 males at once) is extremely exhausting. I've found that I have nothing left for myself and way too little time to work. Having someone around who will show up for dinner more than once in a blue moon impacts my creativity in a big bad way.

Working at night means that to do anything social whether it's dinner with friends, taking Skyler somewhere that goes on past his bed time, or even talking on the phone means taking a half or whole day off work. How many people can afford to do that once a week??? Of course, I do claim to be an extrovert, so not doing those things often enough negatively impacts my creativity too, so I frequently get in this quandary about whether to spend my precious away from Skyler time doing what I need to do here or engaging in the world and therefore feeling less sorry for myself in my life choice driven isolation. In regard to dating at this point I'm like feed me, show me a good time, and however good a time we have, don't act like a jerk afterwards. That's about it.

Which is partially why...