The Book of Five Rings - Book 3 - Ka

[Kyellan]

Be like water indeed. What a day. We flow where we must, and sometimes that's easier than others.

 

Man, it is never easy to find things to say that aren't trite or hollow. I'm glad for the good things, and gritting my teeth with you on the not as great.

[Kishi]

4 hours ago, Kyellan said:

Be like water indeed. What a day. We flow where we must, and sometimes that's easier than others.

 

Man, it is never easy to find things to say that aren't trite or hollow. I'm glad for the good things, and gritting my teeth with you on the not as great.

 

Thanks. I can respect the difficulty of showing it as someone's who's not done a good job in the past. I really appreciate it.

 

There's a part of me that's distant and clinical and says this probably should have happened sooner. My Dad had mentioned that there were some COVID cases at the distribution center that feeds into his store, and at that time there was concern that it would slip in. But two weeks passed and nada, so it seemed he was in the clear.

 

Truthfully, though, I don't think I have any business being surprised. NC in particular isn't exactly managing this well and we're neighbors with states that are doing a shit job keeping this contained, so even if we were doing a good job we'd only hold out but so long against interstate commerce. As to us, the state government is going back and forth on opening things and shutting them down, and what orders are in place aren't really being enforced. Going to my local grocery, I've seen at least one person not wearing a mask every day I've gone, and gyms have begun to flout the orders and open themselves up anyway.

 

Of course, I don't know how to blame them as it's not like we're getting any kind of material support from the government anyway - we aren't getting paid to stay home or being given access to healthcare. Since access to subsistence is tied to our capacity for generating a surplus value for our employers, we can't really stay home anyway; the choice is effectively to chance death with the virus or to starve/go insane.

 

2.) 20/24

 

3.) 19/24

 

4.) 10/24

 

So, yeah, didn't get much done yesterday. Not a whole lot to report about it, and no excuses either for that matter. Did do my strength work and my mobility work, so that was that at least.

 

Today is today. I'm feeling the urge to S&S which is a good auto-regulatory sign, so I'll make a point of getting that done. And... yeah.

[Kishi]

So, gotta catch this up to yesterday, so that means...

 

2.) 22/26

 

3.) 21/26

 

4.) 12/26

 

So Friday carried off about like I figured it would. I got up, worked, did S&S, etc. It was one of those days where I didn't feel like doing anything, which is possibly me just reacting and processing the news from my folks. I distinctly remember begrudging being at work until 8. Oh well.

 

Saturday was notable for a livestreamed wedding that I watched; it wasn't the same as going to a wedding, but it was good to be a part of that. I probably could have stood to work some extra hours instead of burning leave, but I was tired, and I slept in, and I wasn't able to accomplish anything, and that's okay with me.

 

Most of my brainpower on Friday and Saturday went toward my writing, as I realized that my character was a little too smart for the conflict I'd set as the main driver of this story. So I had to go back and work that out a little bit; it's going to require some re-writing but the core of the work remains and it's solid. The other main problem is that I'm having a hard time showing magic in the setting, which is important because it's kind of a fantasy riff on solarpunk and I'm worried that if I don't tip my hand on that immediately that it'll read poorly. That's a very small edit to make, though, and it shouldn't be any trouble.

 

Today so far's been pretty chill. I've been focused mostly on getting my dishes back under control, which has taken some doing but seems to be happening. I got tagged into one of those "25 push ups for 25 days to raise awareness" things on Facebook and had the first day of that today. Shoulder managed it just fine. Kind of nice to have push ups back.  The hard part's gonna be finding 25 people that can do 25 push ups, I think.

[Mistr]

Interesting to hear you say that taking breaks during the day helps you get work done as well as chores. I take it you are still working from home?

 

You would think we all would have figured it out by now, but I'm still finding it hard to keep a balance. I am looking forward to hearing how your plan plays out.

 

I hope that your dad stays healthy. Any job with lots of customers is risky these days. I'm sure he is taking precautions as much as possible. I'm afraid this is a situation where the people who believe in facts and numbers are going to have to stay away from the people who want to believe that COVID-19 is a hoax and everything is fine.

[Kishi]

13 hours ago, Mistr said:

Interesting to hear you say that taking breaks during the day helps you get work done as well as chores. I take it you are still working from home?

 

Yup! Some of us have elected to go back to the office but agency-wide consensus is that we prefer to work from home, and a lot of the longer-term planning we have going right now involves increased electronics for distance work. We may be getting our towers replaced with laptops at some point, maybe. Dunno. Everything's fluid in a way we tend to dislike right now.

 

13 hours ago, Mistr said:

You would think we all would have figured it out by now, but I'm still finding it hard to keep a balance. I am looking forward to hearing how your plan plays out.

 

Well, for me at least, having a set time before I get up to do another thing for a set time kind of forces me to focus on a task because I have the sense of a time limit as opposed to the day. I don't know necessarily that I'm more productive, but I'm not less so.

 

13 hours ago, Mistr said:

I hope that your dad stays healthy. Any job with lots of customers is risky these days. I'm sure he is taking precautions as much as possible. I'm afraid this is a situation where the people who believe in facts and numbers are going to have to stay away from the people who want to believe that COVID-19 is a hoax and everything is fine.

 

Yeah, well. It's ugly of me to say, but it'd be one thing if people's stupidity was just on them. But it's not. I've told my mom on our phone calls, people won't take this seriously until their favorite hairdresser dies or their favorite server can't show up. My dad is some shopper's favorite grocer; if they kill him with their negligence, then perhaps they will learn and they won't hurt other people, but I really don't want my dad to die so that some Karen can learn a Very Special Lesson.

 

*

 

2.) 23/27

 

3.) 22/27

 

4.) 13/27

 

Sunday was a productive day, really. I did my push ups and my writing and shadowboxed, and that was pretty much it. I found myself kind of on the fence about S&S and I ultimately came out against it for no particular reason save that rest just felt like the right play.

 

I haven't added my Monday scores yet just because it's not my habit to do so. Um, car's fixed. Tires are new and balanced, and I like these folk better than the last folk I worked with for no particular reason, so I'll probably go back to them for the oil change I'm due. Did my shadow work. No writing today, although the story is very much on my mind. I made the edits I needed to yesterday and now all that's left is to write the words. I did my mobility and strength work today as well; the program added a round and shortened the rest times. It was vigorous, but I managed to hit the numbers as I needed to.

 

Need to take those breaks during the day like I keep telling myself I will. That's the key to doing all this without getting overwhelmed.

[WhiteGhost]

On 7/20/2020 at 10:17 AM, Kishi said:

The hard part's gonna be finding 25 people that can do 25 push ups, I think.

I suspect there are probably some folks here who could do that, if you are looking

[Kishi]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

I suspect there are probably some folks here who could do that, if you are looking

 

Well, the problem is, it's a Facebook thing, so it's using that platform's means of spreading and such. I know @RisenPhoenix, @Mistr, @Tanktimus the Encourager, @RedStone, @Teirin, @starsapart, @The Shogun, @BlackTezca on there, and some others there whose names here escape me so I can't really tag them in.

 

Of course, you're supposed to tag back the person who started it - or that's how it worked when I got it - and the really ornery thing is that even when I've tagged people whom I'm relatively confident could do it, they aren't tagging me back and I don't see them doing anything. Hopefully they're donating to relevant causes and keeping it on the downlow. The alternative is that I'm being ignored. Which is annoying.

 

*

 

2.) 25/29

 

3.) 24/29

 

4.) 14/29

 

So, I changed my mind and decided to catch my numbers up to today. Because, man. I live on the edge. I'm crazy. Never know what you're gonna get with me.

 

I actually had the gumption to go ahead and do S&S tonight, but that plan backfired because I went to take a drive to the Whole Foods aaaaand my battery was dead. Which was strange; I thought I'd been driving enough for to forestall something like that. Apparently not! Fortunately, my next door neighbor is this really cool guy and he helped me jump the car. I was paranoid and I was also wanting to catch up on some audio media, so I got on the Beltline and just drove around Raleigh a couple times. It was... relaxing, actually. Kind of nice to just go, you know? Freedom of movement without a necessary destination, no rush hour traffic. Just me and the road and the things I was listening to.

 

Something I realized I've managed to let go of is the need to be working out all the time. Don't get me wrong; if things were normal, I'd be out on the mats all the time, but that doesn't feel like the same thing to me. Like, that's my fun time. You show up, you practice a skill, and then you get to play with people, and while there's a whole host of factors that determine whether or not it's any good or any fun, for me, it was fun. But even after that, I'd be coming home, maybe eating some fruit or downing some protein, and then I'd hit up whatever extra training I wanted to do that day. And if I'm honest about it, it was only somewhat for the sake of trying to get better at martial arts. A lot of it was me being sold on the utility of various things by people who had a certain bodily look about them and had feats to back it up. And so I'd throw their shit on top of mine because I wanted to be better - better artist, better me.

 

And it never worked! That's honestly how I wound up where I am now and to be frank, it blows my mind that I'm doing so much better for myself in terms of my goals with so much less work, relatively speaking. I shadow throughout the day, I go for walks, I try to manage about 7 hours or so of sleep a night, and I eat relatively well most of the time. I don't really chase numbers or feats like I used to; these days I tend to focus on just showing up when I can and letting that be enough. Moreover, I'm confident that when things open back up again that I can arrange things the way I need to so that I accomplish what I want to accomplish, really with almost no effort at all.

 

The biggest thing to figure out now is time management, especially since I'm working from home and I'm not monitored so closely as to not be able to get away with stuff. (and also because I don't abuse that trust). I hope the next book has something to do with that, although I have a hunch I can extrapolate and make it do what I want.

[Mistr]

That's awesome that you are making more progress towards your goals with less work. Lots of exciting things you can do as you take advantage of leveling up.  

[RisenPhoenix]

On 7/22/2020 at 1:58 AM, Kishi said:

Something I realized I've managed to let go of is the need to be working out all the time. Don't get me wrong; if things were normal, I'd be out on the mats all the time, but that doesn't feel like the same thing to me. Like, that's my fun time. You show up, you practice a skill, and then you get to play with people, and while there's a whole host of factors that determine whether or not it's any good or any fun, for me, it was fun. But even after that, I'd be coming home, maybe eating some fruit or downing some protein, and then I'd hit up whatever extra training I wanted to do that day. And if I'm honest about it, it was only somewhat for the sake of trying to get better at martial arts. A lot of it was me being sold on the utility of various things by people who had a certain bodily look about them and had feats to back it up. And so I'd throw their shit on top of mine because I wanted to be better - better artist, better me.

 

And it never worked! That's honestly how I wound up where I am now and to be frank, it blows my mind that I'm doing so much better for myself in terms of my goals with so much less work, relatively speaking. I shadow throughout the day, I go for walks, I try to manage about 7 hours or so of sleep a night, and I eat relatively well most of the time. I don't really chase numbers or feats like I used to; these days I tend to focus on just showing up when I can and letting that be enough. Moreover, I'm confident that when things open back up again that I can arrange things the way I need to so that I accomplish what I want to accomplish, really with almost no effort at all.

 

This is something I'm STILL working on.  Not being training every night and every morning has felt weird in many places, but also in some ways has been a relief.  I have time that is mine, and just mine.  Not fitness, not adulting, not work.  Just true and solidly mine to do with.  Granted, I've done a lot of TV and videgame playing with said time, but it's also a bit of a novelty for me since I've essentially spent the last 7 years NOT doing that.  And as aikido starts doing some socially distant meet ups, I'm more and more feeling like I won't return to the 5-7+ hours a week I did in the past.  It's not worth the complete time loss. (And honestly, being on the Board means I need some nights to do Board work.)

 

But yea, I can appreciate running around less and still feeling like you're hitting your marks.

 

[RisenPhoenix]

Oh, also, I actually did get tagged in the pushup thing a while back, by an NP person.  I....totally ignored it.  It's a perfectly valid point and I support it, but honestly my energy on that front is going to other things right now and I don't have the bandwidth.  And really any propagation challenge I see I just won't do.  Ever.

[Kishi]

3 minutes ago, RisenPhoenix said:

But yea, I can appreciate running around less and still feeling like you're hitting your marks.

 

 

It's a good feeling! Although I have to admit, it's kind of weird to get used to. There's this ongoing sense that I'm forgetting something.

 

2 minutes ago, RisenPhoenix said:

Oh, also, I actually did get tagged in the pushup thing a while back, by an NP person.  I....totally ignored it.  It's a perfectly valid point and I support it, but honestly my energy on that front is going to other things right now and I don't have the bandwidth.  And really any propagation challenge I see I just won't do.  Ever.

 

No problem! I get it. Truthfully, I honestly don't know that I'd do it, but the guy who tagged me in is kind of new to fitness and I was worried that I might demoralize him or dissuade him somehow if I didn't tag along.

 

*

 

Oh man, what a crazy past few days, and really what an end to the challenge.

 

So remember when I said I was having some battery troubles? They persisted. But that's too simple, so let me explain:

 

Wednesday I had enough charge to get out to see the CA friend at the coffeehouse. We wound up talking a lot rather than writing, which was okay. The CA friend is really big on personality typing - Myers Briggs testing, things like that. She likes them because she feels like they help her understand herself better and like they help her to write more. I personally tend to consider these things to be corporate horoscopes for the most part; they present themselves as explanatory models for how you behave and it's my opinion that they lend themselves toward the kind of fixed mindset that can be very destructive if not properly challenged.

 

Her latest pet horoscope is the Gallup Strengths Assessment, which attempts to map your personality to 34 different attributes and determine which strengths work for you and which ones work against you. This is probably the first one that I'd consider taking seriously, if for no other reason than that it attempts to be comprehensive rather than reducing your personality down to a series of 2-4 binaries that interconnect to make you who you are. It's kind of like when I discovered Ask vs Guess culture - I wouldn't say it explains everything, but it's a useful language for certain tendencies that a person might have. I certainly identified with a lot of the descriptors that were attached to my strengths, and it was a useful way for the CA friend and I to talk things over and even to frame a discussion for certain points of friction between us. I certainly enjoyed the time spent.

 

Had enough charge to follow her back to her place afterward and to see her roommate who is also a friend of mine and whom I haven't seen in a long time. This has been out of concern more than anything, as her mom's dealing with cancer and she's wanting to minimize vectors and I respect that. She's also one of the two friends whom I've had some beef with in the past (tl;dr, CA friend was gone on contract, we all drifted a bit, she came back for a wedding, then had to be the one to reach out because they were worried about me, and I took umbrage because it read to me like they weren't investing in the friendship to the degree that I thought I was, and I pretty much just kind of peaced out. We're trying to fix things now). And... it was good to see her again. I missed her, and I was surprised at how much I had. Wound up getting invited to dinner on Friday night.

 

Hung out until it was time to leave and my battery died again. Got a jump, which was enough to get me to the sci-fi friend. We made pirogi from scratch, which was amazing and made me feel very much my Polish ancestry. No real sci-fi to speak as the process wound up going late (but still totally worth it). Afterward, asked the visiting sci-fi friend to stay behind and help me jump the car in case it was necessary. It was necessary, but after 5 jumps we had no choice but to conclude that the battery was very, very dead. I got a ride back to my place and that was that.

 

Thursday was mostly concerned with getting my car back up and running. We'd managed to figure out that the problem wasn't the alternator but was in fact the battery, so I managed to get a ride to a place where I picked up a new battery and then replaced it myself. It'd been a while since the last time I did it, but fortunately the process isn't that complicated. Managed to finish just in time for the skies to open up in thunder and rain. Talk about timing.

 

Friday was finally a normal day, or at least it started out that way. I was at least able to get to work on time and work a normal shift. Afterward, made it out to dinner with the friends. And you know, they really did a lot to accommodate me. I let them know about the Hashimoto's and they happened to come across a cookbook with a lot of Paleo/Autoimmune-friendly recipes that they happened to like. They decided to use my visiting them as an excuse to try out some more recipes, and it was good. It was really good. They also got into mixing cocktails while I was gone and we found our way to a lot of different drinks. For the record, the sugar in most cocktails makes them kind of iffy for me, but they were trying so hard and I told them that if we managed to avoid 2/3 triggers for the disease, I'd call it a win.

 

So we ate and we talked and we drank and I kind of found myself just drifting on the ambience as a sort of audience member to their lives. Which is normal for me, because I generally consider people to be interesting and the more people there are the more interesting stories I have to follow. They tried for philosophically deep discussion as it related to their corporate horoscopes. It was kind of adorable; I had a lot to say but I approach stuff like that from such a radically different perspective that I couldn't figure out how to bridge my understanding to theirs. That is a me problem. Also, I have a real tone problem; it turns out they actually can't tell when I'm being sarcastic or not, and I was actually kind of touched that they were paying enough attention to note that. It's something to work on, I think.

 

One other thing that came out of this was that on a substantive level, one of the friends - I'mma call her the Fixer - is really not terribly invested in doing the work of this friendship. She said that she felt she'd done enough as far as posting open invitations to things at her place and that it was on me to show up. I told her that I had never got the message that there was an open invitation to anything or that this was an ongoing state of affairs. She said - prettily enough, but - that she felt like doing the work of constantly inviting people and coordinating that felt too close to her old day jobs and she didn't want to have to perform a work-like task to let me know that things were open.

 

This is an interesting sentiment coming from this woman because the reason she's the Fixer is that she gravitates toward broken people and she tries to fix them. She derives great pleasure from the idea of manipulating people toward what she considers to be healthier lives. Which, okay, whatever. I put a cynical spin on it, but it's not necessarily a bad thing to want to help people. I just think it's interesting that she chooses to devote her energy to people in varying states of toxicity at the cost of being with people who are already working on their shit.

 

Afterward, we went to go play Settlers of Catan, which I lost but didn't mind. The game was enlivened by an add-on called "Consequences," which is this sort of add-on deck of funny/humiliating things to do to liven up games. Basically, you and the other players of the game decide on certain faux pas and when these are committed, you're given a card with an action you have to commit. So I wound up doing things like a set of 20 push ups, getting dressed up in a homemade dunce cap, speaking in accents, being muted and having to speak by note, weird stuff like that. It was really a lot of fun.

 

Anyway, the game went late and the roomie friend had to go to bed. CA friend and the Fixer stayed up to clean up the game and to make further attempts at deep conversation based on their corporate horoscopes and religion and a person whose toxicity drove me away from the friend group in the first place.

 

Then things took a turn for the dramatic. Spoilers, there was a weird and happy ending, although it's also got me thoughtful.

 

Spoiler

So, the Fixer is... hm, how to describe her. The Fixer is this wildly enthusiastic, passionate person. She loves psychology - has a degree - and ever since she got out of school she's been trying to find ways to make a career for herself. She's really struggled with it, because in addition to what is an admittedly vague specialization for her, she has a real problem fitting in to corporate culture in general. She can get jobs and stay working for a year or two but she never quite manages to gel; she either winds up not vibing well with coworkers and supervisors or she doesn't accomplish enough to justify her continued employment, because either she or her employers have failed to figure out how to leverage her unique characteristics in a mutually beneficial way. Specifically she's really good at high concept and detailed work, but there's a middle ground between getting the high concept boiled down to its detailed parts, and it's not something she's very good at. Since she's' not able to bridge this gap, it's caused her a lot of problems.

 

Also, you remember what I was saying earlier about corporate horoscopes and how they lend themselves to fixed mindsets? Well, the Fixer is a big believer in these horoscopes and she just takes as many of them as she can. Her latest job interview has put her through a lot of tests because... well, if I'm uncharitable about it, it's because they want to figure out where to put her so that she's the most productive for the amount of money they're willing to pay, but she thinks of it as them trying to find a place for her to belong.

 

Like I said, I have a way different frame of reference than these ladies do.

 

One other thing that I need to mention about the Fixer is that she's also a struggling creative. She's a good DM, for instance, but she also has a lot of internalized ideas about what constitutes creativity and she doesn't do that very well. She's not a writer or an artist or a musician or a dancer or anything like that. She's an ideas person, and like I said, she's good at ideas, and she's good at details, but she can't seem to bridge the gap between those things. So, like, she can worldbuild like crazy, and she can roleplay characters in those worlds, but she's never been able to construct stories on her own as she lacks any particular combination of skills and inclinations that makes that possible for people.

 

SO, with all that scaffolding: the discussion had kind of got on religion for a bit, with the CA friend (who's witchy) talking about some run-ins with some harmful Christian dude earlier in the day and the Fixer got on a rant and like. It was one of those things where I'm sure it felt very deep to her but it honestly was just word vomit masquerading as exegesis and theology, but it somehow got back to her horoscopes (I honestly don't know how it happened). And it came out that one of her tests "confirmed" for her that she didn't have the capacity to be creative, and she broke down over the stories that she's convinced she's never going to be able to tell. And she was really distressed and distraught over how she's never been able to stick to a job long enough to make a career of it, and she felt like she didn't really provide any value anywhere she'd ever worked, and it seemed like this was something she'd really gone out of her way to avoid examining and working over.

 

CA friend did most of the lifting on this, mostly because I really struggled to step in and say anything - again, see my distant frame of reference - and a lot of things kind of came pouring out. The Fixer's been having a lot of trouble managing the quarantine. She lives with her parents, they're both very vulnerable, and her husband works in a gas station so he's kind of a vector just by default. Her mom has some emotional problems and she's not medicated and can't seem to get before a therapist when she's decompensated, so she can't get medicated, and also beyond the emotional problems she's just plain nuts. Like, she's smart, but she doesn't connect to people very well, and while she's religious, she's not so in a conventional way which has made any kind of community very difficult for her. That's led to a crisis of faith for her and she's wandered waaaaay off the deep end. I mean we're talking contemplation of the joy that trees must feel when they get sunlight, like that's apparently what's normal for her now.

 

As you can imagine, the Fixer is kinda struggling with the emotional work that the relationship represents right now. She seems to feel really alienated from everything right now, which was something I was able to articulate to her at some point but. Anyway, long story short, we wound up on the CA friend's back deck, burning sage and praying for each other and talking until the sun came up.

 

They articulated at the end of it that this was a good thing, and that they feel close to me. And I do take their good feelings toward me, and knowing what all's going on in the Fixer's life goes a long way towards explaining why she doesn't do a lot of work on our friendship. She's got a lot of shit going on. A lot more than I thought, actually. I mean, if I was in her position, I don't know that I'd do a lot of work either, and Lord knows I haven't been.

 

But OTOH, I haven't been for my own reasons? TBF, I'm a very different person than I was when I first met her and I really don't know how willing I am to invest in a person who's verbalized a disinterest in a similar investment. That's probably not very fair of me, but it is how I feel. Also, I'm just... kind of impatient with her, really. I don't think I'm smarter than her, I think I'm a lot smarter than her, and she's not terribly interested in trying to understand things the way I do. Just in general, I mean.

 

Bottom line is, I walked away with a lot to think about, and instead of going home and going to bed, I went home, showered, and then hopped on the work PC. I've been working since 07:00. I'm very tired.

 

And the day still isn't done because I gotta go see my folks and get mail-in ballots taken care of since I don't have a printer at home and the libraries are closed. At least it'll be good food and good company.

 

Anyway, I've done what I could with my challenge here at the end but it's kind of been hectic back here. I've got enough of what I came for to feel good about it. That's really all I want. Now to read the next book and figure out what I'm doing.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Spoiler

Quote

But OTOH, I haven't been for my own reasons? TBF, I'm a very different person than I was when I first met her and I really don't know how willing I am to invest in a person who's verbalized a disinterest in a similar investment. That's probably not very fair of me, but it is how I feel. Also, I'm just... kind of impatient with her, really. I don't think I'm smarter than her, I think I'm a lot smarter than her, and she's not terribly interested in trying to understand things the way I do. Just in general, I mean.

It is, in fact, very fair and indicative of how much you've grown and learned to set boundaries. She has a lot going on, and is probably trying to farm out some givers so she can take from them (you) in order to have the energy to deal with the people who take from her. She's not your responsibility, and has essentially said she wants things from you and is not willing to put work into the relationship. I don't know if she is toxic or not, but the expectation she stated certainly is a toxic one. If you even have to think about relationships in terms of it being an investment, it's probably likely you won't get much return on that investment. Again, this is not you being unfair, it's you setting boundaries to keep yourself sane.

 

[Kishi]

4 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

  Reveal hidden contents

It is, in fact, very fair and indicative of how much you've grown and learned to set boundaries. She has a lot going on, and is probably trying to farm out some givers so she can take from them (you) in order to have the energy to deal with the people who take from her. She's not your responsibility, and has essentially said she wants things from you and is not willing to put work into the relationship. I don't know if she is toxic or not, but the expectation she stated certainly is a toxic one. If you even have to think about relationships in terms of it being an investment, it's probably likely you won't get much return on that investment. Again, this is not you being unfair, it's you setting boundaries to keep yourself sane.

 

 

Spoiler

I mean, she's not toxic. She's just a person. Some parts are easy to deal with and some parts aren't. I'm not sure the parts that aren't easy are worth the parts that are, that's all.

 

And anyway, I use the language of investment and value because I don't really have another way to articulate the concept I'm trying to get at. Most relationships, I suspect, can be understood in terms of reciprocal investment, in terms of time, energy, emotion, etc. ATM, it doesn't seem like she's willing to reciprocate in a way that I value in particular, and it seems like it'll be more work on my end than I'm particularly willing to do. Of course, I'm unwilling because I don't think she's willing... and I guess I'm less bothered about that than I might have been a while ago.

 

[Kyellan]

Spoiler

 Interpersonal relationships are hard. I totally understand where you're coming from on the reciprocal investment thing. I spent much of my childhood with friends and hangers-on taking advantage of my mother's and my family's goodwill in order to soak what they needed, and so the lesson I took from all that is I'm quicker to drop people than, say, my wife is. It's easy for me to decide to be done reaching out to someone if I've tried a few times and gotten nothing back.

 

 All this to say; I feel ya, and I don't really see your perspective as unhealthy there... but maybe I'm not the best person to ask  

 

[Mistr]

Interesting reflections on your friends and what you appreciate (and don't) about those relationships.

 

One of the opportunities we are getting from a plague year is stepping back from our normal interactions. I'm with you on missing mat time. While I care about my dojo friends a lot, I don't find that video classes work for me. You are figuring out who you miss enough to figure out how to get together while taking precautions. It sounds like you are keeping up an active social life. Now is a good time to see how you want your friends to fit into your new balance of time.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Spoiler

16 hours ago, Kishi said:

Of course, I'm unwilling because I don't think she's willing... and I guess I'm less bothered about that than I might have been a while ago.

My main point was it's a sign your boundaries and sense of self worth are getting stronger, and I think the sentence I quoted shows that quite nicely.

 

[Kishi]

4 hours ago, Kyellan said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 Interpersonal relationships are hard. I totally understand where you're coming from on the reciprocal investment thing. I spent much of my childhood with friends and hangers-on taking advantage of my mother's and my family's goodwill in order to soak what they needed, and so the lesson I took from all that is I'm quicker to drop people than, say, my wife is. It's easy for me to decide to be done reaching out to someone if I've tried a few times and gotten nothing back.

 

 All this to say; I feel ya, and I don't really see your perspective as unhealthy there... but maybe I'm not the best person to ask  

 

 

Spoiler

Nah, man, I can get that. And you may be more apt in making the comparison than you know. The Fixer is a friend with another girl whose toxicities proved to be too much for me and was kind of a catalyst for me nope-ing out of relationship with these folks for a while. And the thing was, at that time, I felt so much better, but looking back at it I couldn't have explained why. That was some emotional work on myself that I'd been avoiding out of a fixed sense of myself, and it wasn't until the CA friend tried to reach out to me that I really began to do any kind of emotional work on myself at all.

 

4 hours ago, Mistr said:

Interesting reflections on your friends and what you appreciate (and don't) about those relationships.

 

One of the opportunities we are getting from a plague year is stepping back from our normal interactions. I'm with you on missing mat time. While I care about my dojo friends a lot, I don't find that video classes work for me. You are figuring out who you miss enough to figure out how to get together while taking precautions. It sounds like you are keeping up an active social life. Now is a good time to see how you want your friends to fit into your new balance of time.

 

Well, also, writing on no sleep and while everything was fresh on my mind.

 

But yeah. You're right, this is a real opportunity to explore and figure out what works. This is... something I need to be cautious with.

 

4 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

  Reveal hidden contents

My main point was it's a sign your boundaries and sense of self worth are getting stronger, and I think the sentence I quoted shows that quite nicely.

 

 

Spoiler

Aah, gotcha. Thanks! If it weren't for the work of you and others I wouldn't have got here. It's a better place than it used to be.

 

*

 

So the weekend ended nice and quiet. I went home to visit my folks and the food turned out great. My dad was also good enough to help me get some sap off the car that had accumulated over the course of about a year or so, and now I have the tools to do something about it should it happen again.

 

The challenge is done, and I have to admit, I don't have much to say about it. A lot changed toward the end and really I'm very pleased with how it all turned out. The only thing that went off the rails was the writing, but even that wasn't as bad as it could have been. I want to attack that problem again next challenge, although I'm not really sure what a constructive attack looks like just yet. A notable thing about it is that even doing relatively little, I wound up generating about as much content as I would have in prior iterations where the goal was just to write one page a day, so I think it's a step in the right direction. Just need to take and hold it.

 

The other thing was the cleaning, which went in a lot of new and exciting directions but ultimately didn't accomplish what it needed to. OTOH, I am cleaning up or fixing at least one thing a day, and that's certainly not a bad thing.

 

I'm reading the Wind book now and it looks like it's going to be about basically dunking on Musashi's contemporaries. It's a fun read so far, although even then, in showing off their weaknesses, contrasted approaches are presented which may be useful to extrapolate from. Dunno yet. It's something to think about, and at least I've got a week this time as opposed to cramming at the last minute.