Having arrived in San Francisco yesterday, I felt a strange sense of pride well up inside me. I sat at a park near the water looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge and had this “I made it. I’m here.” sensation. I walked with a little more bounce in my step, and having been here…
Category: Relationships
Thoughts and Readings on Being in a Healthy Relationship
Advice to a Friend (and Also to Myself)
Twice this week, I spoke with a friend who wanted my opinion on a marital issue. I’ve been told I’m good at that stuff: providing sage, honest, and tender relationship advice. I try to remind people that I’m single (as in not very successful in this domain) and maybe not as wise as they think….
In the Company of Others
On this trip around the country, I’ve met up with a few people through dating apps. It’s a good way to meet locals and it can break up the monotony of sitting at bars and staring at screens. Despite trying to live as though I have all of the time in the world (my minor…
Where Joy Has Been Rumored to Appear
The person on Twitter had quoted Vonnegut: “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” Whenever I come across this quote, I’m reminded of Stephen Dunn’s essay on gambling in which he…
Sleepless Diagnostics
It’s 3:30 am on a Monday. I don’t sleep well on Sunday nights. In fact, I don’t do well with Sundays in general. Often, they give me feeling of heaviness. If I’m lucky, I’ll spend part of my Sunday morning reading or slowly drinking my coffee, but quite often, I get into a mood where…
Surrender
Last week I surrendered my dog to the shelter where I adopted him. It was difficult. It was heartbreaking. I changed my mind about it a dozen times on the ten-minute drive over to the shelter. At times, I briefly imagined some future cartoonish jailbreak… One in which I bust in to the shelter armed…
A River of Contemplation and Comparison
For all of my talk about being present, and nonduality, and trying to understand (and practice) the basic concepts of Buddhism… for all of the podcasts that I listen to about mindfulness and acceptance… I can be pretty bad at putting it into practice. In certain aspects of life, I’m pretty bad at remaining unattached….
Smoky Mountain Lemonade
Facebook “memories” reminded me that on this day six years ago, I hiked 15 or 16 miles in the Smoky Mountains. I was down in Tennessee on a long, somewhat spur of the moment road trip that I took to clear my head. I was calling it my blues, brews, and bbq trip. I spent…
How the Thoughts Progress
It’s Sunday and I’ve been up since 5:30 am. I didn’t sleep well. I woke up every hour or two throughout the night. When I get up, I make a pot of coffee. I make two waffles. I watch the sky lighten. I write about watching the sky. I read a poem or two. I…
Commitment, Choice… (part 2: My Greased Flagpole)
There was an undertone in my post “commitment, choice, and obligation” that didn’t come through quite the way I wanted it to. In the abandoned paragraphs left crumpled up on a side-street document were concepts and thoughts that might have belonged in that post but I didn’t know how to work them in. At the…
Commitment, Choice, and Obligation
This past Sunday was Father’s Day. I talked on the phone with my stepdad and my dad and then with my daughter for a bit. While none of the calls felt forced, I don’t know that they would have happened were it not for the day. I talk to my mom once a week. I…
Pheasants May Be Goats
The timing of the online sighting of my ex (the effects of which I chronicled here) got me wondering. Because our brains look for, or at least my brain does, connections and “coincidences” often where none exist, I was curious to see if our profiles matched up on the same day we had matched up…