My Tent on The Beach

I love my friends.  I suppose we could argue about which way to draw the causal arrow; I love these people because they’re my friends…These people are my friends because I love them.  Either way, I need them, they give me joy, they help me to plug along when plugging is necessary, they share my greatest triumphs.  I always aim to do the same.  It’s one touchy, feely love fest when it comes to me and my friends.

Except when friends are asses…and then…not so touchy, feely.

I think I’ve always held an “outside of the box” understanding of friends.  I’ll admit I pay very little attention to the “rules and categories” of friends (in sociology, we’d call these normative constructions…god I am a nerd).  So, I approach people first and then consider what’s going on in their lives.  This explains how I’m friends with very few people who are actually like me (single, female, grad student, etc) and I have more people around me who are just plain interesting first.  This bodes well for them (you); if I’m your friend, it means I’m really invested in you as a person…it’s not a friendship of convenience because our “categories” seem to match up.  I think that’s the difference between friends and acquaintances…acquaintances are convenient and pretty transitory as the “categories” of your life shift, sometimes rapidly.  Changing jobs, moving, graduating…acquaintances won’t follow you through those.  Friends, however, will.  This is Katie P.’s friend/acquaintance ratio.
Admittedly, it’s intense.  It makes friends an investment…which can be work…but usually doesn’t seem that way…or shouldn’t.

But I’ll tell ya, when friends are asses by upsetting the friend/acquaintance ratio, it does not feel good.  Part of the problem with my ratio is that not many naturally buy into it; most people do not approach friendships in this “to hell with categories” kind of way.  I think because most normal people don’t live 95% in their heads–as I do.  They don’t analyze their friends…they’re just friends.

Anyway, I have a friend who’s freaking out right now.  He’s in a bad place.  And yesterday, I think maybe out of fear or frustration…or stroke…basically explained to me that I’m just a friend of convenience–when in fact, I know this to be completely untrue. It’s a special day when someone you’ve really come to know as a really good friend looks you in the eye and tells you that when the time should come that you’re not in close proximity, you just can’t, or worse won’t,  be friends.  There is nothing more frustrating–because of it’s degree of ridiculousness–than this idea.

I could go on for hours about this.  I’ve worried about it enough and come to the conclusion that it’s just simply not true. My arm chair psychologist inside tells me this is an existential freakout of his not mine and has really very little actually to do with me. But, you know, above anything else I think friendship is an agreement between two people, implicit or sometimes explicit, to choose the other.  It’s one of the more tenuous kinds of agreements too–friends don’t take vows (unless you count pinkie swears), or “commit” to anything.  It’s all assumed agreements and searches for setting up good and secure boundaries.  It’s shady work sometimes.  This is why I think trusting friends can be very hard…it’s an enormous leap of faith that can be changed tomorrow based on a lot of factors.  So…this conversation…so out of character and far away from my understanding of the situation…it’s annoying. And disrupting.  And stupid.

What an ass.

This will surely sound completely impolitic.  No doubt I will be accosted by a zealous feminist and given a good piece of her mind.  But…

…there are days when I just need a man around here to do a couple things. Things like but not limited to:

1. Taking out the garbage. I’ve asked guys before if they consider this sexist and, actually, many just seem to consider it something they do.

2. Snaking the drain in the tub. Actually, plumbing of any sort.

3. Hooking up anything computer related. Not only do I somewhat suck at this job but I don’t have the spirit of interest many guys I know do when it comes to this department.

4. Reaching the high shelves. Of course, this assumes said man is taller than me…generally, that’s pretty likely.

5. Watching sports on tv that I can be only vaguely aware of. I love watching ESPN for mere moments on the hour.  I have zero impetus to turn it on and watch sports on my own.  But if there’s a game on and someone I can ask asinine questions…well, I just find that comforting.

6. Generally using tools of most sorts. I am scraping by here.  I have an excellent new tool kit that I’ve used…but I’d rather not.

7. Car related junk. Oil changes, gasket whatevers, filters, blah, blah, blah.

I think these are all things that men in my family do and that now, because I no longer live with them, I’m forced to pick up the slack on.  I would just as soon not do that.  In fair exchange I will gladly cook, bake,  and even do laundry (I’m willing to negotiate on cleaning but will make no promises here). I can also cross-stitch.

But really, if I could just get someone willing to deal with taking out the garbage and, in a related vein, deal with recycling…my life would be immediately qualitatively better.  I just know it.

Note to sociologists: Back off.  Is this a normative post? Yes.  Did I still put it up? Yes.  Get over it.

I have such an interesting relationship with the word “intuitive.”

I think it’s kinda mysterious and here’s why: I was thinking about the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory the other day.  Intuitive is one of the categories a person can end up with in describing how they “know” the world.  Opposite of sensate (which I think is similar to “clues gathering” or highly observational but in a sensate way), intuitive is more a “feeling” that something is happening or things are the way they are.  It is true that I don’t have to observe something to know that a change is coming or that someone’s feeling particular way.  I sense it.  I’m fairly blown away that everybody does not know the world in this way.  I like that I can’t explain how I know things…I just do.

But there’s a downside to this way of knowing the world.  It can be torturous sometimes.  Because very often I can know things are going on despite people trying to play it cool.  Often weeks in advance of an announcement I just have a sense that something’s up…the last great example I have is that one of my committee members called me to her office to tell me she’s leaving the university.  I knew she was leaving the university and, more interestingly, I knew the minute she called that this meeting–which she told me was about something else–was, in fact, to address this issue.  There was no process in moving from not knowing to knowing.  One day I just knew.

What I hate about it is that this intuitivity (my word I just made up) which I lovingly call “my gut” (as do most people) is very rarely wrong. Thus, when my gut speaks, I really am forced to listen…and accept.  Which is particularly hard when my gut is sending me a message I’m not wanting to hear.  This creates so much anxiety; in the end, it is just a gut reaction and my gut has been known to be wrong at times (afterall, I’m not a psychic).  But it’s rare…and it gets rarer with age.

And I’ll tell ya…my gut and I are just not seeing eye to eye at the moment.  I wish my gut would just get it together.

“Everything you’re seeing now is happening…now.”
“what happened to then?”
“We passed it.”
“When?”
“just now.“
“When is then now?”
“Soon.”

Spaceballs: The Movie…what an endless treasure trove of insight.  (C’mon…”comb the desert.”) I could quote it in most life situations. But this one I think is apt for the moment.  Yes, this moment.

There are days when I wonder how much of a sucker I really am.  Today I feel like a big sucker…because I’m stuck in the future and I don’t know how to get out.  And I’ve been thoroughly taught to think that way.  And I’ve learned it. Well.

I’ve been staying up nights with a crazy kind of anxiety…I’ll lie awake for hours, my brain spinning (needlessly) about things about to happen.  That’s right, it’s my imagination spinning away…about a time to come…sometime.  From this point today, that time always looks scary–grey, gloomy, cloudy, lonely.  I never really smell the future but I imagine if I could it would smell like sulfur. (Ironically, this also describes Cleveland on most days, so maybe it’s the comfort of home I see before me).  It’s also never going to come at least in the way I envision it.  Someone said to me today, “The future is an illusion.”  He was right.  And I’ve become enamored with an illusion…that doesn’t even really look all that great.

We are at now now.  I can’t will time to move any faster, nor should I.  There’s a lot of moments between then and “soon” that should probably be paid some attention.  I don’t really know why…then again, I think I’m the wrong person to ask…I live in then.  But I’d like to live in now.  It seems more colorful, more present, more immediate, more real.  I like all of those things.

So why is living now now so hard?

I guess I’ll find out…probably “soon.”

[hmpf.]

Every so often I realize that my life is built in cycles.  As time moves forward I can see the rise and fall of patterns: similar, comfortable, repetitive, cyclical.  Like the seasons, I can predict with a sharpness that whatever seems good now will wither in particular ways.  I call them cycles.

They’re actually habits.

One that’s commanded my recent attention is that of “settling.”  This is the time of year that I get all uppity to move somewhere.  Until right now I thought that was a function of living in places that were less than good; the search was always on to find better.  Last year when I moved to an apartment deemed by myself and others as “the awesomest apartment I’ll ever find for that price” I thought my itch to move would dissipate.  Nope.  I’m ready to move come June 1.  And yet, I know I’m not.

I have a problem with settling.  I’ve just never done it. Why settle for a B when an A is always possible? Why settle for mediocre when excellent stands enticingly around the corner? Why stay in a place that makes me somewhat happy when a place that makes me joyously happy could be beckoning to me from afar?  Why ever settle when not settling is an option?

I think I’m starting to understand why settling might be a good option.  In part, I’ve been approaching this whole thing with a complete hard-headedness.  I’ve always viewed settling as an implicit quitting–giving up the fight for “better.” This is a crazy competitive tendency perhaps born of my love of sports or anything that can declare a “winner” at the end.  [Sigh.] Even to me this sounds misguided.

More pressingly, though, settling down scares me.  I immediately think “stagnant, boring, prescribed, without options, boxed in.”  I suppose I’ve observed those enough to equate one with the other.  But, the more I really think about it, I do think I’m interested maybe not in settling down but settling into. Just changing that one word makes me think “becoming familiar, making a choice, trying it on and adjusting along the way, working it into something workable.”

Settling down for me will always seem like a destination.  Settling into, on the other hand, might just be the process I need to think about not constantly hitting the road whenever something feels uncomfortable.  If I can work with it for awhile, get to know it, consider it as the means and not the end…I might just be able to stay in this apartment for another year.

Maybe.

I wrote this a year ago and I still love it.

Usually on this blog I’m ranting about something.  Or complaining. Or whining.  I woeing.  Looking back at some of the archives, I come across as being really amazingly…well, frumpy.  But today I have a new kind of problem.  It’s actually interesting that I even remotely find it a problem.  It’s just that…well, I have this friend who just makes my life a little more worth living and I’m not sure what to do with it.

My friend, as so many do, just came out of nowhere.  Through the most random series of events, I found this person.  Actually, maybe this person found me.  I can never be sure exactly how to mark the beginning of a friendship.  Do you go back to the moment you met?  Was it that time you had that first conversation that, upon leaving, made you think, “Oh…I’ve got to get to know this person better.”  Is it that first time that you weather a fight with each other together, that moment of return when you can feel that even though everything will not be the same ever again that what is to come will be just as good.  No, probably better?  I guess it doesn’t really matter; I can trace the linear path of this friendship but I think that’s a stupid game.  Life is not linear and neither are relationships.

So anyway, over time this friend has made quite an impression, as so many friends do.  But not just the normal kind of impression.  It’s an indentation, really.  There now exists a space that was not there before, that I usually do not recognize and have no idea how to tend.  Sometimes it’s the most wonderful, beautiful indentation a girl could have.  Other times, it hurts, aches even, and I loathe it.  This space that once was solely mine now has an indentation that I’ve come to learn will exist as it will.  I only have so much control. And it will always be there now.  If something heads south, it will become a scar all shiny and leathery looking.  But it’s there for good now.  And I love that.  And it scares me.

And maybe that’s where “my problem” comes in.  I worry about this indentation.  I worry that it might take up too much room, that I’ve become too accustomed to it, that time will only warp it.  I’m not going to lie; it’s a nicely appointed indentation.  I want to protect it, keep in tidy, maybe drape some nice plastic on it to avoid spillage and staining.  If I had a curio cabinet, it might be nice there.  That’s how I feel.  But I know that won’t ever work.  I have to let this space be what it will and know that there’s only so much I can do to control it.  The rest is up to my friend who form-fitted it. Who I allowed to form fit it. And who really gave me no choice in the matter. And I love that.  And that scares me too.

So there’s my problem.  At this moment, I feel too loved, too lucky, too unworthy.  I can feel the other shoe just hanging precariously somewhere,  It’ll drop. And I fear that moment.  The one in which this will all end and I’m left with a shiny, leather scar of an indentation that will be empty and tinny sounding in there.  But I have to let this space be what it will.  And maybe, just maybe, it’ll always ring clearly and sweetly. And that’s what I hope for.  And I love that.

So who’s the friend?
Probably you.

I’ve been majorly avoiding this blog, probably because I know how it looks.  Every month or so I put up a post about how crazy things have been and how I’m starting over.  I try to make it quippy and funny.  Then 4 weeks later I’m still doing the same thing, only after another chasm has somehow changed everything forever.

This life is a challenge.

I remember when I was teaching at Walsh and worried that if I stayed there the next 25 years would look exactly the same and I wasn’t happy with that. So instead I chose a life that requires every February – May to be a scramble to figure out how I’m going to support myself, keep inspired, stay healthy, not go totally nuts with worry. And now I find myself looking back at the Walsh days with a fond nostalgia toward its consistency.  Everything there is pretty much the same.

So, this, maybe is the lesson I’m supposed to learn in graduate school, the one I didn’t know I was paying for: that life goes on, opportunities come and go, people come and go, and my life and that which ultimately stays important is where I am.

These last months have been hard, presenting me with challenges I’ve never even thought about facing…mostly involving taking action on plans of which I cannot envision an exact, finite end point.  It’s truly been about making moves with the resources I have now and hoping that it works out in the end and at the same time learning how to adjust expectations and re-frame the way things work out when they’re beyond my control.  I’m learning one step at a time to “go with the flow.” It’s been backbreaking some days.

But I should learn to be careful what to wish for.  For the last several years I’ve bemoaned a lack of constancy in my life.  I’ve hoped for some kind of foundation to ground me.  I think I’ve found my constant and it’s name is change.

It’s not the constant I expected.  But it sure is always there.

I have a problem.

It’s motivation to work out.  I have none.  I currently have a fully functional gym membership, all the time in the world, and I live three blocks away and I cannot force myself to go.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I view it as “the worst thing I’ll do all day” (even though once I get there, I actively disagree with myself).  Maybe it’s because my gym clothes suck (but I love them…).  I don’t know–I just cannot force myself to get there.

So, here’s what I need.  All 3 of you who read this…I need to know how you motivate yourselves to go.  Respond in your inner monologue, using the exact phrasing you use to tell yourself the gym is a good thing and you must go.  Maybe I just need an inner monologue update.

Until then, I think I’ve talked myself into yoga as a workout again.  Yoga’s wonderful…but it’s not making my jeans any looser, if ya know what I mean…

Today was a great day.  Better than a lot I’ve had recently.  Why? Let me break it down for ya…

1. I was not writing.  That is NEVER a bad thing. EVER.

2. I was spending time with friends who are more like family.  When there is something effortless about people who you find worthwhile, it’s always rewarding. These people are special gifts in life.

3. My apartment “got” painted.  I’ll tell you what the best moment of my day was.  It was finding out that the tiny little space between the sink and the wall in the bathroom was painted.  I didn’t know how I was going to do it.  And the next thing I know…it’s done. This, I think is an interesting function of single life.  I’m so used to having to figure everything out for myself that when something that poses a huge conundrum for me ends up accomplished, I feel especially warm and fuzzy inside.  These don’t have to be “rocket science” things and, in fact, they’re often the opposite.  I still think the greatest thing Andras has ever done for me was take out the trash.  83% of me is not kidding. The one thing I will say to all of my paired-off friends is this: Never, EVER take for granted the fact that there’s someone else around to get your back.  They might bring with them a host of other annoying attributes but remember…that’s garbage you don’t have to take out and tiny slivers of wall between the sink and the wall that you don’t have to figure how to get to. That’s just incredible to me.

4. My apartment got painted.  Holy Crap.  That’s a major project in a whirlwind…done.  Amazing.

5. I laughed.  When in solitary confinement, writing, laughter can be hard to come by.  This was nice.

6. Pizza. And Beer. Need I say more?

That’s enough.  How much more does a day need to be great.  I’ve got a “stunning” week ahead…in that I’m going to be tired and anxiety-ridden and in need of everything that today was.

Sometimes the universe just knows what you need.

It’s coming around to that time of year again: gift-giving season.  And I’ve got a real conundrum this year, not just in gift-giving but also gift-receiving.  If your “people” are anything like mine, a requisite Thanksgiving Day discussion involves rattling off a list of things I want to family members who want to buy me things for Christmas.  Here’s the problem: my life conditions make it such that my list of “needs” far outweighs my list of “wants” to the point that talking about “wants” is almost moot.

I’m actually okay with that reality.  The conundrum is that people don’t want to hear it.  So this year, when my mom asked (because she’s the Grand High Mediator of Pacyna-family Gift Giving, acting like an info clearinghouse for me and my brothers) what I wanted and I told her “money so I can pay my bills,” she had a rough time accepting it.  “Really?” she asked quizzically and, frankly, piteously.  “You don’t want anything that we could, like, wrap and put under the tree?”  Of course, the answer to that is yes.  But it begs other important related question-based binaries like, “Do I want a DVD or to pay for my car?”  “Do I want a snazzy new scarf or to pay my cable bill?” “Do I want a new book or to eat breakfast two weeks from Tuesday?”

The issue here has nothing to do with want or need but actually the confounding of them.  I’m at a point that my wants are trivial because my needs are primary–and they’re big ones.  I’m one good pair of jeans away from financial ruination; I don’t expect it will always be that way, but that’s the state of things today.

So, here’s the question: Is it possible not to conflate the two? How do I generously receive “little thingies” which are meant for good when they do nothing to solve the issue of my totally cracked peace of mind?  I don’t want to be ungrateful and I’m not.  But my practicality on this, I think, might be alarming to my family.

Ah, the holidays.