new year

I found myself reluctant to write this year end but, force of habit. I'm feeling mildly cynical, which is a difficult trap to avoid falling into when you see quite so much repetition of behavior, particularly my own. Still, I think I agree with my standing definition of cynicism in that it is a lazy pattern of thinking. Change is possible, and thinking it isn't is just an excuse not to enact it. The practicality really doesn't help though. My energy reserves are narrowly limited and I have to really want something to make it happen, want it from a rational, means to an end, point of view. It has to make sense, there needs to be a goal. In this case, like with writing, and a degree of autonomy, I may still be insufficiently motivated. Part of me just wants to do it but I'm noticing that part of me isn't particularly disciplined. I hope that's not the bit of me that's responsible for weight loss, because at the tender age of thirty something I've already hit that, just need to lose ten pounds phase. bah!
I will say it has been a nice year. I finished going to school, I did not get my Master's but I am not especially broken up about it. I toy with the idea of formalizing it but am not sure it's currently in me. I also think about going back better prepared for a somewhat more practical masters program. I do like learning, and I like to be held to a regiment of sorts. It's satisfying.
As I get older it is easier and easier to lose track of time, and I become more and more preoccupied with its loss. I hate lying awake at night wondering about the end of my life and obsessing about it. I find it frustrating to believe that nothing is going to exist for me after I die and battling with the idea that humans, that all life is more significant than that and that something ought to happen to my consciousness after I cease occupying this mortal coil. I know that wanting does not make it so and during the day I suppose I am reconciled after a fashion, but at night it keeps me awake and it is increasingly common. I hope that I can find a way to make that stop because it is a thing which is currently inevitable and I would certainly be more comfortable if I didn't have to think about it at least.
For now my life is mostly happy. I am torn sometimes between T and Jake because my life here is a comfortable one with a man I can communicate with and feel safe with but feel no particular challenge from or chemistry with. Jake by contrast is something of a bull ride. He is exhilerating, and often an adrenaline rush. There is always attraction, common interest, scintillating conversation, but with an edge of uncertainty that he is as unfamiliar with what he wants as I am with what I want. I just wish I had access to both worlds without compromise, but that is not the way this particular path is laid out and if I choose to tread it those are the drawbacks I will deal with.
I know I should be more specific about the year because a decade from now I will not be so familiar with these events as I currently am. There weren't really any highlights this year though. There has been a theme that's been playing itself out for a while, and the one thing that 'happened' was school ending. I mentioned it, and that is that. For the rest, perhaps I'll cover things more specifically for my birthday. For now that is all. Goodbye 2009.

'Tis the season

I think every non cheapskate company on the planet had their holiday party this past Friday. Here we had a luncheon, so perhaps some of the cheapskate companies had parties that day too. As has been the trend, T's company didn't have a real party either this year, but Jake's did, and I got to go. It was even more fun this year than it was last year. I finally got to wear the dress that I picked up last year, and it was universally approved of. It fit me a little more comfortably than I would have liked. I'm getting downright large, if only by my own standards. Extreme measure are in the process of being taken. But yeah, I had a great time. I just hate leaving at the end of the night.
It's funny feeling responsible for Jake's situation. I cast myself in the role of enabler sometimes and I'm not sure how justified that is. I'm not going to do anything about it for right now so I might just as well stop being preoccupied with it.
Jake is off work all week this week so I'm hoping to spend some afternoon's with him watching The Mentalist and going jogging. I also want to go see Avatar, I think in 3D. The glasses are appallingly uncomfortable but the movie looks fantastic. I suggested sneaking booze into the theater with us as it's a very very long movie and it might help me cope with the numb buttocks I know I'm going to wind up with.
I'm surprised I didn't manage to go see it over the weekend. I was a little disorganized. I generated enough enthusiasm though to persuade Jake to go get the Christmas tree he wanted, and I got to decorate it. It turned out beautifully and I have some nice stab wounds to commemorate the occasion. Spruce trees are notoriously unforgiving.
I have had fun with this season honestly. There hasn't been a lot of pressure and knowing most of the immediate family is going to be out of town has been liberating. I do need to brace myself for the possibility of things getting foisted on me last minute because T will feel obliged to perform functions he refused to prepare for. I will hope for the best and brace for the typical. I don't need to get unduly irked by petty inconvenience. Dammit, I will have fun. And on to the new year, which increasingly I suspect will be much like the old.

Writing it out

Jake invited me to his company Christmas party again this year, which surprised me mildly because I know at least one of his coworkers knows the situation with me, plus he knows them all well enough now to not require any moral support. Still, he invited me and I accepted and I have been looking forward to it mildly. Particularly as he mentioned he and some of his friends have been practicing a dance routine that sounds like it will be entertaining to watch. I was talking to him this morning about said event and was talking about how fun it will be to see especially as I have a video function on my phone. I was joking about uploading it to youtube. At some point my sallies made him rather uncomfortable and he excused himself from the conversation. Jake is notoriously self conscious and the nature of my teasing had obviously tapped a nerve. After the conversation I texted him an apology for causing him the discomfort, and he proceeded to ignore me....all day.
After a few bland notes I sent to him at random to see if it was my imagination, I asked him point blank if he was in fact ignoring me, to which he replied in the affirmative. So yeah, ouch. I basically told him I thought it was an unfair escalation on his part and that I was hurt. I got a text from him saying 'nice try'. Now, I have an only slightly sub nuclear emotional response to being accused of guilt tripping. I hate it, particularly as I sort of feel like his accusation was the pot calling the kettle black. I mean, what exactly was he trying to accomplish by snubbing me all day after I apologized to him? What's that, guilt trip you say? Yeah, anyway. He chose to elaborate on that point and attack the way I handled the situation, so I wrote back to him to try to outline my point of view. I don't know if I succeeded or failed at this point and knowing Jake I may well have failed spectacularly. I let him know I resented the accusation that I was trying to make him feel guilty, but I ended the missive with an affirmation of the sincerity of my apology.
I would rather not see this relationship crash and burn over such a trivial incident. My normal strategy has been to just take the blame and I was probably more pugilistic this time because I get tired of taking the blame when I don't feel like it all belongs to me. It has been good for me in that it has been so much more important for me to keep Jake in my life than it has been to be right or even partly right that I've developed a slightly better ability to self review and see how utterly caustic I can be, but I feel like I've gotten to the point where I want just a little more equality.
Maybe I'm fucked and this time we're going our separate ways. I can't decide if I should ask him today if he wants his key back, or wait on it. He's notably absent from messenger, and that is certainly deliberate. Guess I'll hold off on getting him a Christmas gift.

Intermission

We have contractors working on our home right now due to some drywall damage. They came over the other day to set up some equipment and cut some holes. I had to be there when they arrived to let them in etc. One of them was all kinds of entertained that I was playing Dragon Age on my XBox. Anyway, they seemed nice enough that I left them there to their own devices while I went to drop off some leftover turkey at Jake's place. He was home with a nasty head cold that I probably gave him. I didn't stay long but it had been long enough for both of us that we had a nice quicky on the couch. It felt amusingly illicit to have left my house and the workers to go have a little interlude with my lover. I know, silly of me, but that's what endorphins will do I suppose. Anyway, they'd nearly finished working when I returned so I ran a quick Heroic Daily on my paladin and went back over to Jake's place for the rest of the afternoon and evening. T had plans to watch a game so I was free for a while. We watched the rest of an interesting movie called The Nines, with Ryan Reynolds. We also fooled around some more upstairs after a pleasant dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches. I kinda like the Sam Adams Double Bock, good stuff.
I keep meaning to dive into the holiday season like I mean it. There is quite a bit to do and I just haven't been able to muster the focus. And honesty, Thanksgiving wasn't that hard to pull off. I wasn't worried about it to begin with and the actual execution was even easier than I'd anticipated. Even the MIL was reasonably well behaved and all the food turned out very well. Everyone stuck around for longer than I could have wished but that's just me being an introvert and I was not tortured in any way really. I'm still not sure what we're doing for Christmas. These people tend to plan everything at the last possible minute.
We're thinking tentatively about going back home to visit for New Year's but I don't think that's going to happen. At least I've taken some time off just in case, and it will be fun to have a vacation. I may forget how to work. Speaking of work, the classifieds are still pretty slim pickings. It will be amusing if it takes me an entire year after school is out to find a new job. I am getting too accustomed to such ease and free time. I still worry a little about what more financial self reliance is going to do to my relationship. I am hard on T and my atheism disturbs him more because I make an issue of it than for any other reason. Oh well.
I could say more but honestly I'm tired of details. I know I keep writing this in part because I'm disturbed by the swift and constant passage of time and I feel like writing it down at least gives me a somewhat better grip on where my life has gone and is going.