Aftermath

[greenstorm]

Sometimes on Twitter I use the word 'aftermath' just so I get retweeted by the @aftermathbot. That thing is probably the best example of found poetry anywhere.

So I took a vacation on the weekend. I moved my stat from last week to this week, when Angus was out of town, and the intention was to hang out with the Writer and watch West Wing and feel cocooned and serene.

Some of it worked out. We got through a fair chunk of West Wing, got some snuggling in, and by Monday night I was actually feeling peaceful. Not peaceful like there was nothing to do, but peaceful like I had stopped vibrating, thrumming, running, shooting, darting, straining: I was just there in that place with that person.

It took me all weekend to get there. I've been so busy that all my attention has been on the things I'm doing; I'd stopped paying attention to how I felt about it, to where the *I* was when I did something. I had become accomplishment-focused instead of journey-focused. None of this made for an easy weekend. It started raining and rained the whole time, and I'll admit I had trouble getting out of bed a couple of days-- not luxurious here-I-am-in-a-pocket-of-warmth-and-someone's-arms trouble, but the-world-doesn't-have-anything-I-want trouble.

I'm not sure I've fully clearly realised how particularly controlling I am around time before; I want everything to be predictable, to be revealed to me. I think of my time as a valuable currency I offer to people, not exactly like a gift, but perhaps like some shared thing, a meal or a bottle of wine or a performance of some kind. It's certainly valuable to me, and thinking of it that way helps me to avoid overbooking, but-- I lose my ability to be comfortably spontaneous. When something is planned or scheduled and changes it feels like a car accident, slamming into something and skidding off into treacherous territory. It's funny because I'm happy to have unscheduled time and just let things happen, but switching that time back and forth is not an easy process. The difficulty I have there is ridiculous and doesn't help my life in any way.

Dinner is ready. More later.

Comments

[andi-sunrider.livejournal.com]

i really like what you've written about time. I feel like some people think that I'm neurotic about things going according to plan -- but i feel like I've put aside x time for x, and when it takes Y because someone else didn't bother to consider that I was putting in X and that it was hard to budget that time, i get really really frustrated. Hmmmm. Thinking.