2004-07-25 - 12:31 a.m.

SRSV

I've never really managed to picture my life beyond the point at which it stopped being difficult and bothersome, so this is a new kind of drifting for me. I'm hardly writing at all, but don't particularly feel the need to -- most of my creative energies, for the time being, are taken up in finding new ways to boost business and deciding how best to frame those successes to the people higher up.

I don't think I can really complain about the results. Of all the things I've put my time into, an evil money-grubbing people-eating corporation turned out to be one of the only ones that's ever given anything of substance back. Assuming you consider money to be significant, that is -- it's really the only compensation a corporation per se can offer. Going looking for anything more than that from a job is asking to be perpetually dissatisfied, since you're looking for a cause (de celebre), not a means of support.

I lived with this girl once for a few months. She came from far away to be with me, and it was going to be magical -- which, it turns out, is what started all the problems: the expectation that this wasn't subject to normal rules of engagement. That played into a lot of our early clashes, misunderstandings fueled to higher temperatures by the disappointment that, despite everything, the partner we'd ended up with was human.

After she left we had some unpleasant conversations online. She said I used her and was a shallow con artist. It was her way to make accusations based on her feelings, and to take feelings as truth instead of biochemical statements of opinion; I still don't hold any of that against her. What I hold against her after substantial thought, months removed from the emotional intensity that surrounded the weeks and months after she left, is that she settled into a role so traditional and time-worn after hoping for something better -- made better money than I did for quite awhile and never helped on rent, utilities, or anything else.

I guess to my way of thinking, if the magic's gone and all you have left are the mechanics of a relationship, shouldn't you pay attention to the nuts and bolts?

I can't really say that I'll hold it too harshly. I've been there -- when the dream dies, nothing else seems to matter, and you tend to forget the mundane things. Like people.

I'm dealing with a person right now who is, in a lot of ways, a near diametric emotional opposite -- she assumes that emotional agitation automatically invalidates whatever her natural response would have been, and absolves everyone around her of responsibility for causing those reactions. You could punch her out of the blue, and she'd find a reason for it to be her fault. We're working on that; I think it's the same lack of self-esteem that makes it seem physically painful for her to admit when something's wrong, or to open up at all about her life or thoughts.

It's a new kind of waiting for me, too. I'm certain that, eventually, she'll open up and let me in -- I'm also certain that it won't be anywhere near as sudden as "opening up and letting me in", and that being allowed inside will be something I may only notice months after the fact. I fully expect to be around, still pursuing this interest, years from now. I expect it to only get better.

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