Responsibility

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today. Two all-nighters and little progress will suck the morale from a person, and I've reserved the next few hours of this day for a little rest and recuperation. Relaxation will hopefully follow.

Right now, at this moment, I'm wondering if it's possible for a person to think too much. I heard a bit of advice (directed at myself): feel more, think less, work harder. Is that good advice? Possibly. Hard to dissect it without thinking.

Bad joke.

Throughout my adult life and as I've grappled with an occasionally debilitating fear of commitment, I've had only three stable expectations for my career: my work must be useful, thought-oriented, and I must be able to write. That fear of commitment, though, it's not a light fear. It's one that has embedded itself so fully into my personality as to have become not simply a pattern, but a serious rut, one that I have a hard time climbing out of (assuming that's how you get out of ruts, by climbing). There are so many interesting possibilities in this world, how do you know you've found the right one? Is there even a right one? Do soul mates manifest themselves in careers?

Probably not. But then, neither do people. Or so I'm told.

Had a conversation with Tim. First, the back-story: I was so intent on being free of my previous relationship that I expected the first thing I would do, once I was free, was date, or at least sleep around like a teenager, or something. Neither of which I've done, and my unwillingness baffled me until I realized that... I'm kind of a prude.

What an awful word, "prude." Sounds kind of like "prune," but with an even more unpleasant phoneme at the end.

I could probably go on at length about why, exactly, this is the case, but I'll restrain myself and you'll just have to believe me when I say it's true. At any rate, Tim and I were having this conversation, and he came to the conclusion that I'm not looking for a person - a real, live human being, in other words - I'm looking for "the perfect pack of cigarettes." Which, frankly, is a strange metaphor that breaks down in so many ways (so many ways!) but what struck me as completely odd is that even though I understood his point, I wasn't slightest bit phased. Sure, I said. Maybe so.

This blog is remarkably narcissistic.

In reality, I know there is no such thing as a perfect person. The reason this doesn't bother me is because, in love, I'm remarkably forgiving. It's not a lack of character flaws or strange idiosyncratic behavior that makes someone imperfect (I don't even want to accuse anyone of being perfect OR imperfect, those simply aren't words that can ever apply to human beings). But what I want, whatever it is, in a person - I just haven't found it yet. I can list a few random ideas of the top of my head, sure, whatever that means. Ideas aren't an apt comparison to real people, either.

What I'm trying to say is that I suppose this is where feelings come in. There are practicalities to every relationship, but mostly... mostly I just want to like someone. I want to like someone a lot. I want to like someone so much that there isn't even a "but" to the equation. Is that too much to ask?

I don't think so.