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Thursday and Friday last week were big hard bush days: roughly 7km/day with sme significant elevation change walking through slashy cutblock, bracketed by more-or-less six hours of driving per day (or sitting in the truck while the other guy drove and I did of-the-cuff GIS using UTMs and math to drop a grid on a block, to be completely honest). Just picture an uneven-stair-height program on a stairmaster for three hours with a lot of enforced sitting on either side. Think salt stains on clothes.
There will be two more bush days like that to finish the block. Then I have my solo block, a block at elevation, and the 2km long monster Inzana block left to do. So basically, there's a lot of field work this fall. Plus there's a bunch of training etc.
And... hard physical work is good for my brain. I feel clear, balanced, happy. I have no idea how much of what's been happening in my mind is just not getting enough exercise. So, I signed up for yoga -- these are very small classes of 2-4 people, "most folks vaccinated" and I have my shots. I guess this is where I'll spend my covid risk.
Tucker has been proactive and clear in communicating about relationship stuff. We're slowly making progress on the big question of "are we trying to end up in the same physical location or not?" with Adrian and Ellen. Meanwhile I'm doing some internal work on holding my boundaries around properties with A&E -- they're drifting towards smaller properties -- and figuring out how to handle partners' absences (both physical and emotional).
I've realized that I can't effectively screen for partners that never do depressive bouts. My previous work around this was to look for folks who had a handle on their depression, who did things about it. That... mostly works, but sometimes there will just be Things That Happen. How do I take care of myself through that, be compassionate towards both my need for connection and a partner's absence/loss of themselves during that time? Plus it's not realistic to have someone available to me actually every day, which I knew, but what do I really need in practice around that? I'd been managing it by feeding anxiety-brain lots of planning information to try to control things. Is that a reasonable way to do things? Are there other ways to control things? Are there other ways to feel safe?
And then Tucker and I are digging into our emotional communication. I'm still feeling this out but basically the dynamic is that he experiences my curiosity or interest as unsafe and he retreats. I experience his lack of communication as emotional withdrawal and lack of interest and alternate between reaching out (feels unsafe to him) or withdrawing. We both have some legacy stuff around this: he generally has experienced people knowing about him as unsafe, and I have tended to use information as a way to predictability and thus self-soothing around things I'm anxious about rather than just being present in the awareness for its own sake. So there's room for this pattern to be eased by self-awareness and being very deliberate in our communication and we're exploring that.
It's certainly been my experience that folks love my curiosity about them at first and then as NRE fades they can begin to experience it as invasive. That pattern can use a look-over, no matter what else comes out of this.
Tucker has been proactively looking up resources for us, which feels amazing. It feels like he's engaged in this process with me. We'll definitely need to move towards a more autonomous model than we have had, but I'm hopeful we can come up with something that might also feel more caring and supportive.
Meantime we've dodged several close calls with frost. I haven't yet brought my green tomatoes in yet and it's a gamble that's served me so far, but it can't hold forever. I am so pleased with this variety trial.
And now it's a very, very busy work week ahead. I need a solid excel course involving pivot tables honestly. And we will see what happens with the job I applied for last week; it's more portable but no field work, so it would allow for a smoother transition to the Island if/when that happens.
There will be two more bush days like that to finish the block. Then I have my solo block, a block at elevation, and the 2km long monster Inzana block left to do. So basically, there's a lot of field work this fall. Plus there's a bunch of training etc.
And... hard physical work is good for my brain. I feel clear, balanced, happy. I have no idea how much of what's been happening in my mind is just not getting enough exercise. So, I signed up for yoga -- these are very small classes of 2-4 people, "most folks vaccinated" and I have my shots. I guess this is where I'll spend my covid risk.
Tucker has been proactive and clear in communicating about relationship stuff. We're slowly making progress on the big question of "are we trying to end up in the same physical location or not?" with Adrian and Ellen. Meanwhile I'm doing some internal work on holding my boundaries around properties with A&E -- they're drifting towards smaller properties -- and figuring out how to handle partners' absences (both physical and emotional).
I've realized that I can't effectively screen for partners that never do depressive bouts. My previous work around this was to look for folks who had a handle on their depression, who did things about it. That... mostly works, but sometimes there will just be Things That Happen. How do I take care of myself through that, be compassionate towards both my need for connection and a partner's absence/loss of themselves during that time? Plus it's not realistic to have someone available to me actually every day, which I knew, but what do I really need in practice around that? I'd been managing it by feeding anxiety-brain lots of planning information to try to control things. Is that a reasonable way to do things? Are there other ways to control things? Are there other ways to feel safe?
And then Tucker and I are digging into our emotional communication. I'm still feeling this out but basically the dynamic is that he experiences my curiosity or interest as unsafe and he retreats. I experience his lack of communication as emotional withdrawal and lack of interest and alternate between reaching out (feels unsafe to him) or withdrawing. We both have some legacy stuff around this: he generally has experienced people knowing about him as unsafe, and I have tended to use information as a way to predictability and thus self-soothing around things I'm anxious about rather than just being present in the awareness for its own sake. So there's room for this pattern to be eased by self-awareness and being very deliberate in our communication and we're exploring that.
It's certainly been my experience that folks love my curiosity about them at first and then as NRE fades they can begin to experience it as invasive. That pattern can use a look-over, no matter what else comes out of this.
Tucker has been proactively looking up resources for us, which feels amazing. It feels like he's engaged in this process with me. We'll definitely need to move towards a more autonomous model than we have had, but I'm hopeful we can come up with something that might also feel more caring and supportive.
Meantime we've dodged several close calls with frost. I haven't yet brought my green tomatoes in yet and it's a gamble that's served me so far, but it can't hold forever. I am so pleased with this variety trial.
And now it's a very, very busy work week ahead. I need a solid excel course involving pivot tables honestly. And we will see what happens with the job I applied for last week; it's more portable but no field work, so it would allow for a smoother transition to the Island if/when that happens.
