i'm not sure exactly what i mean by that. i mean, obviously this is a transitory period in my life -- the new job is becoming a constant backdrop instead of a novel occurrence, i've moved 45 miles away into a different feel of a place (suburbia instead of bohemia, though still the same california sky), no roommate, saner hours percipitated by the job, et cetera. but these sorts of things have happened without this so-called recrafting of myself.
the weird thing is that i feel myself becomging different, but i still like the same sort of person. i think this is part of the problem with my adjusting ever since college (an ongoing process) -- fundamentally, the things i value and the people i like are basically the same, but i'm not. it's a weird disconnect; i don't think i'm qualitatively different, and i'm still the old me much of the time, but the changes are there.
in my world, which may be rationalization, it still all stems from the minneapolis escapade. i guess a lot of that comes from the fact that this is the only real unambiguous failure in my life. there are the relationships not working out, but you'd be hard pressed to say that any of them didn't work out because of personal inadequacies. i have to admit that every time someone has broken up with me, it was for legitimate reasons that really had to do with my personality, or for circumstantial reasons that i had no control over. i'm a difficult match, and in my more sanguine moments (i.e. now) i admit the reality of that instead of whining about how unlucky i've been.
but anyway, the relationships can be explained away without resorting to deep personal failings. minneapolis can't. i moved there for six months, and i proved myself completely unable to deal with the situation of being somewhere with no strong pre-existing ties. i couldn't hold myself up; i wasn't nearly able to keep myself focused or happy or sane in that situation. maybe it's a crutch to keep citing this years after the fact as an enduring force in my life today, but i do think it's true. i went through something like four months having meaningful face to face social interaction with something on the order of 2 or 3 people, and by meaningful i don't even meen deep; i just mean having actual conversations with them and regarding them as friends or even colleagues. i'm counting my coworkers who i eat lunch with in this group today for instance; we never have anything resembling emotional conversations, just banter about various topics, but that sort of thing keeps one sane.
this is hard, mind you. moving to a new place, etc.. but many people succeed at it all the time, and many people have the sort of personality where they'd just as soon not deal with these things, or at least where they are content to read or craft or worship or whatnot. i don't. i need people, and being the wolf-boy with minimal social contact for several months broke me in some way.
it's asymptoting to zero, but the breakdowns that have happened since the mammoth one that minneapolis built to are all aftershocks of that. each one brings the realization that i need to recraft. that i'm changing whether i like it or not, and i need to figure out how to control that change, how to funnel it constructively into happiness. and how to graduate it. i guess the metaphor here is the earthquake, where tension builds up until it rumbles destructively. scientists are trying to figure out how to do things like liquefy faults so that they slide past each other gradually, and i need to do the same thing with my change.
i'm not sure if any of this sounds true. i don't feel like my breakdowns are precipitated by an untenability in the fundamental structure of my life; they seem more like randomly triggered events which are able to occur in my brain because of a lack of appropriate structure, more like lightning strikes (which occur randomly given appropriate circumstances) than earthquakes (which are in some sense inevitable.) i mean, i don't think they release anything; i think i'm just as likely to crash (in the computer sense) a week after a crash as i am several months later. i don't think this is all inevitable either; at some point i will fall into a structure i like (i think the job is helping already), and that'll be fine. i don't think i'm doomed.
i don't think i've said anything in this entire blog entry. perhaps her space holiday can help:
i don't care where you move
i don't care if it's far
all that i ask is that i know where you are
in
case our timing is right
in case you need more from me
than a bit of advice
or a tongue full of sympathy
it occurs to me that i've been bracing myself for something for a while now. maybe it will happen and i can move on with my life. maybe it... i should just shut up. i'm babbling. i've been playing bridge for 2 days straight and i'm mentally exhausted. and tomorrow, more of the same. i feel like i've degenerated to no-sleep-in-51-hours state. the words just appear on the screen. i need a vacation but i don't know how to take one. i don't know how to relax. i don't know how to stop my brain from optimizing, or trying anyway. i don't know how to catalyze something. i don't know how to build a time machine. i don't know how to stop typing. i don't know why i am not deleting this post.
there are an astonishing number of people whose existence makes me really happy on some deep level. unique people i guess. i think these people are underrated by the world and generally get the shaft. wait, that's not right. they're rated appropriately. i should list them. i'm too tired.
i'm sorry for those of you who expected literature and instead got a brain dump. i don't protest because i'm like this occasionally, and i'm not worried that anyone will find me vapid (not with my pedigree, ha, ha), but again i don't understand why i'm not deleting this. it feels very out of character. the word choice is hardly effervescent, including "effervescent" (what on earth could have caused me to type that?).
i wonder how people i'm dating feel when they read my blog archives and see ramblings about various people i've declared to be the love of my life in the past. it's probably game-theoretically optimal to not talk about that. i do try to stay aaway from mentioning more-than-friends or people who i wish to elevate to that elite status by name. somehow it doesn't seem ethical, to do so without their permission. even though i'd be thrilled if anyone mentioned me by name as a crush in their blog. i'm not holding my breath, and i also read literally two people's blogs, both of whom are in happy relationships and unlikely to make such declarations anyway, so even if it did happen i probably wouldn't know about it. but in the abstract? thrilled.
i'm, in my mind, really really interested in two people right now. i'm torn though. the recrafting in particular. right now i'm not at my best, which mostly means physically but also mentally. it's grindy. mentally, honestly, it's actually pretty good -- 65th percentile or so by my standards. (although amazingly, my 99th percentile complex, which i'm sure i've talked about, extends even to this -- i always expect to be at 99th percentile by my standards!) i'm sparkling quite a bit and a complete downer infrequently, today excepted. i'm worn out but hardly chronically depressed. physically, i don't know. point being i'm so hesitant to clarify or catalyze when i'm not at my best. so i try to temporize, which is tremendously easy to do when one of these people i never see at all (literally) and one of them i see quite infrequently. of course, it's not like i'm making physical strides.
i guess everyone ends up with a stable personality at some point, and i'm waiting to see what mine is. there's that word recrafting again. somehow it doesn't seem fair to engage someone (no pun intended) right now. not that i can stop the flirting. i mean, the one i do see, wow, she's amazing, and we do have some chemistry, and i better stop before she becomes deducible to even a not-very-omniscient third party, or even a second party. not that i can ever imagine anyone in any universe ever being confident enough that i was talking about them to confront me about it. well, maybe cathy o'neil or a cathy-type, but i'm not talking about her, obviously. although, come to think of it, i do never see her. but i'm DEFINITELY not talking about her.