23 September 2009

Randomings

I can't think of a main topic that I want to talk about, so I'm just going to ramble here and see what comes of it. I find that things are in a somewhat strange place at the moment. I'm not happy nor unhappy. I'm not overly active or overly bored. Everything seems to be in some sort of stasis. I feel as though things are quiet. Though they are not necessarily quiet at all, it's the overwhelming sense that I have of my life at the moment.

A good part of things right now is about waiting. Or maybe it's about endings. Or perhaps new beginnings. Or all of the above. I have been working back at my old office on an hourly basis for what amounts to about four days of work per week. This has been really good in terms of my solvency as well as being busy. But it's a bit strange all the time, to feel a bit like a ghost in a place I once was and place I no longer 100% belong to anymore. After all, I'm not a real employee, I don't have the same issues as other people. I could also be asked to leave on a moments notice. There's certainly no security, though we are busy, so I'm not really afraid it will end tomorrow, it's more the feeling that comes with the possibility more than anything else.

And of course, while this feels in many ways like something that could just be indefinite, it is in fact, not indefinite at all, because in January, I have another plan and another direction that should be starting. I was offered a PhD studentship at Cambridge. But the issue is, I was offered it through the department that secured the funding, but I haven't been officially made an offer by the university yet. In order for that to happen I had to apply, formally, which meant I had to get transcripts and references and I have only been able to complete that this week. It's all moving forward now, and there is no reason whatsoever that I should not be given a proper place, but there's this nagging doubt that it could all still go wrong as long as I don't have anything in writing. So I've been rather reluctant to talk about this too much. Still, it will mean a massive change in my whole way of life. In what I do every day, in how I think about who I am and what I'm doing, about what becomes important to me, about how I structure things. I can't begin to wrap my head around it yet, I feel I need to approach it one step at a time. So perhaps this also part of the reason I am not dwelling on things too much. First, let me get accepted and I'll take it from there.

Things with Heathrow are perhaps dwindling. Or perhaps not. It still doesn't stress me out. It's difficult to always be away every weekend. Sometimes I have things I need to do and I simply can't be away. And he doesn't come to mine and so that means I just don't see him. He came around last weekend because I made a dinner for a group of kinky friends, and that was cool. But he didn't spend the night, so while I saw him, we didn't get any intimate time together. It seems this upcoming weekend something similar will happen in that I will likely see him on Sunday at a kinky party I've been invited to, but Saturday night I've got plans in the city and he won't come to that probably, so again, the weekend passes and we don't get any alone time together. So then it's the following weekend I guess. Who knows? Part of me is sad that he doesn't seem to have the drive to want to see me more. Part of me isn't that bothered because if he isn't willing to join in my things, I simply have other things I have to do. Heathrow will always be a friend of mine. I just don't know how much longer he'll be an intimate friend of mine. Though until anything else comes along (another thing to think about when starting up at Cambridge and all the opportunities that might present) I'm satisfied with how things are. In fact, more than that, I truly am thankful for the experiences that Heathrow has brought to my life.

Friend-wise, I perhaps feel a little bit alone. Between friends moving away and friends having crisis and friends finding partners and friends going mental, I feel isolated from my usual group of social connections or maybe just distanced is a better word. The problem is, even when I have contact with my friends I find that I have to make an effort to find things to talk about. My life to me at the moment seems alternately self indulgent and incredibly boring. I don't feel like I have much to offer my friends just now which tends to make me withdraw. Given that for many reasons different friends are withdrawing anyway, this isn't the best approach. Or maybe it's just an example of the parroting I talked about in the last post. Very hard to tell.

Okay. Enough maudlin for now. Maybe I've gotten enough of my chest for the moment that I can actually return to posting about more amusing things. I promise, there are actually amusing things in my life, I just haven't felt motivated to write about them. Maybe for the next post, I'll start with the whip.

21 September 2009

Of Time and Parrots

It's been a while, huh?

Lots of stuff going on. As usual. Life is sort of like that you know. Good stuff, bad stuff, mundane stuff. All being lost to the relentless pressing of time. It's okay though. I have a wealth of things now that I could talk about and record. But as it stands, what I really want to talk about is parrots.

This weekend I had a revelation, which was not entirely new to me, but refreshed rather, that I am in many ways a parrot towards people I interact with.

I relate this to the golden rule. I don't know why but the golden rule is the foundation of my interactions. I use someone else's behavior as a method of judging my own response or reaction towards that person. If you show up late to my house without a good reason or excuse? Then I feel validated in showing up late to your house without a good reason or excuse. If you bring wine or a gift to my house, then I will bring wine or a gift to your house. If you show up to my stuff, I'll show up to your stuff. You get the idea.

The thing is, and was pointed out to me over the weekend, this way of interacting has a tendency to predetermine my actions without me perhaps considering what I want my actions to be instead. In fact, what I want is very hard to pinpoint. My actions frequently seem to me to be already decided based on what someone else did first.

And maybe this isn't so great.

It all makes sense really. I remember talking to the therapist about how it's hard for me to verbalize or acknowledge sometimes things that I want. Things I want seem to end up being consequences of other actions, not generated from my own place of independence.

I feel like this is something I need to work on, though I'm not one hundred percent sure about how to go about it. It's really second nature to me, this parroting thing. It's not like I think about it, it's not something present in my mind. It's more like, when I sit down to actually describe my rationale for behaving a certain way, it often comes down to parroting and not grounded in what I desire or want. Not that what I want or desire is necessarily anything different, but I'm not even sure I can discern the difference at this point.

Weird.