We humans are, or can be, a miserable lot. The last few abandoned blog posts have all started with complaints about the weather. We had a string of 8 or 9 days where it rained every day – and for a few of those days the temperatures were in the 30s. By contrast, the last few days, have been glorious… and now the complaint is that I’m putting too much pressure on myself to “take advantage” of this opportunity… like if I’m not out enjoying this to the max, I’m disappointed in myself. Scarcity has a funny way of doing that to us. It focuses so much of our attention on what’s missing that we hardly know what to do with it when we have it. I’ve experienced the same thing with scarcity of time. But this isn’t about the weather or time, and is only mildly about scarcity.
I had a strange experience as I tried to write my daily fifty-two this morning. I couldn’t. I struggled to be in any one moment long enough to process it. I stared out the sliding glass door. There was sunlight. Birds chirped. A Squirrel sat on the deck railing and looked at me intensely. But my mind kept going elsewhere. I was feeling a sense of compounded frustration – over everything.
Earlier, before the shower and the the getting ready and the dog walk, I had spent some time thinking about and trying to write about this sense of apprehension I’ve felt about… well that was the thing, I couldn’t pinpoint it. I’m not even sure if it was apprehension. My mind was running itself ragged between how little writing I’ve done; how little time I’ve spent outside (though I did go on a few runs); how few interviews I’ve had; how a brief online encounter ended with the person ghosting me; and how I’m not sure I would do well adjusting to living with someone else. Mixed in with all of that, or because of all of that, were lots of small frustrations about my current obligations.
Writing:
Aside from the daily fifty-two, I’ve done very little of it (writing). I’ve also done very little reading. Instead, I’ve been spending some of my time (an hour or so a day) learning Spanish on Duolingo and some of my time fretting about everything else (job, dog, weather, the future). Basically, the things I feel I’m missing or need to take care of become such an obsession that I end up in a mild state of paralysis. I’m too distracted by these other things I “should” be doing to write, but too overwhelmed by those things to make headway on them. And so I sit down to write. I try to focus, but can’t.
The Brief Encounter:
About a week ago, I was in the middle of a reasonably nice text conversation with a woman who then ghosted me (disappeared from the app and conversation without notice or warning). We had just started talking and my expectations were pretty low (opposite coast and all that). She was traveling to Portland for a week and suggested we’d pick the conversation up when she got back… then poof. Every time something like that happens (ghosting), I try to remind myself nobody owes anybody anything. I’m not owed an explanation, this person doesn’t have to keep conversing. But it seems a little like not using a turn signal or asking someone how they’re doing and walking away before they can answer.
It leaves me more puzzled than anything else. In this case, it sent me wandering down a mental path in which I extrapolated this behavior to larger assumptions about society. It’s all going to hell and we no longer have decency… or something like that. I began to wonder if we, as a society, are becoming less committal, less considerate, and more self-absorbed. Are we getting to a point in which we no longer feel any obligation to other human beings? It would be one thing if our conversation had just fizzled out – that happens all the time, but she actively unmatched in the app – which means there was intention. Those types of experiences are one of the reasons I don’t talk to many people or take the process too seriously. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often, but I could see how more frequent exposure to the superficiality that is online dating could harm a person’s confidence and sense of self-worth. Collectively, we could make online dating more enjoyable by being more considerate… but most people seem to think of it as an inescapable special level of hell in which these behaviors are normalized – and so everyone plays the game and moves on. Meh.
I Live Alone:
Lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, checking my phone, and then putting my phone within arm’s reach on the bed (instead of on the nightstand). It’s a new habit – one I wouldn’t be able to do if I were living with someone else. It got me to thinking about how many little habits and routines, I’ve developed because I live alone and have nobody around to keep me in check. It’s not a habit I care for or wish to keep. In fact it makes me think all of these little things combined might make me impossible to live with. It, coupled with the ghosting, made me realize that I’m not even sure what I want in a relationship, how to pursue it, or how I might adjust to it were I to find it. It made being single seem like the easier option. I can pee with the bathroom door open. I can leave dishes in the sink. I can fart when I want to. I can flop around in my sleep and put my phone on the bed in the middle of the night. I began to think about the life I’ve been living these past few years, and because I couldn’t imagine a different life, I began to wonder if I’d even want to live with someone else again. With the exception of a few months (which I was told were awful), I’ve lived alone for almost seven years. In those seven years, I’ve only liked one other person long enough and deeply enough to want to do the whole live together, this might be forever, thing. I don’t know if I’ve hit a tipping point, but suddenly, the concept of settling in or settling down has become foreign and given way to a sense of resignation.
The Monkey Mind:
This morning, being unable to focus long enough for fifty-two words became frustrating. Being unable to arrange my thoughts in a linear pattern or make sense of them added to that frustration. I began to notice that I was feeling frustrated about a lot of things – as if everything on my to-do list was an imposition. On the morning walk, I walked down the drive and looked at the potholes – as I do every day. I need to order a dump truck’s worth of stone and re-do the road. I think this thought every day twice a day. But I don’t know where to order stone. I don’t know how much stone to order. I don’t know how long it will take for me to spread the stone. I don’t know if I need to prep to the pot holes (fill them with dirt) before putting stone on top. Furthermore, we haven’t had two nice weekend days in a row for me to tackle such a job. It could probably be done in one day, but because we get so few of them, I’m hesitant to give up any nice weekend days (scarcity). This was just one of a several thought maelstroms that I found myself caught in. I have to get a new dishwasher. I should replace the toilets. I need to get rid of the treadmill. I have to figure out where I’m living, and how to move there. I have to do a few things for the dog. I have work obligations. etc. etc. I saw a bill on the table and remembered that the crappy sales person at T-mobile signed me up for a warranty plan that I didn’t want and I have to call to cancel it. My mind was sprinting over all of these things, and despite trying and staring out the window and listening to the birds, I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of it. So instead of trying to force the issue, I leaned in to it and vomited out a mess of a blog post that was more than fifty-two words.