Marie visited a couple weeks ago -- well, it was for about a week at the end of July and wrapping around to the beginning of August. We fucked. We talked. We did a little hiking, and some cooking. And we just hung out. On the whole it was a good visit.
A couple of our conversations orbited around the topics that I discussed with you-all here and here. Marie said that yes, she had indeed interpreted my unwillingness to marry-or-quasi-marry her as a reflection on her, that she wasn't good enough. I think she understood my reply that no, it's because I'm not going to trust anyone that much again. She was sad, but she understood.
We spent part of the time talking about my job-hunt. Mostly I have gotten pretty sluggish about this since discovering that I might not need to get a job at all. But of course that's not settled. At one point I dragged out some of the personality tests that I took back in April; of course I conceded that she might not be interested, but she said sure, she'd love to see them. My next remark was that I had whipped through the questions pretty quickly, so that maybe the answers weren't really accurate. Really? Let me see what they say about you. Then she paged through the results and seconded every single thing they said. So I guess I don't need to waste time re-taking those personality tests, huh?
There is one job opportunity that I'm still in the running for, and that interests me. It's a position at a small local company, in some ways kind of like a start-up (though not literally so), and right now they have nothing at all in place like what I do. But they've decided they need it. So I would have the chance to build an entire system from the ground up. And while I have spent plenty of time in earlier posts complaining about my line of work, this prospect is actually pretty exciting. Anyway, Marie and I talked about it, and about some of the questions the interviewers would be likely to ask me. One evening, in fact, we sat down to go through the job posting line-by-line, to make sure that I could speak to every single point in it. As we talked, I kept getting ideas for things I wanted to say in the professional blog I'm writing; so I'd hop up and write myself a note for later, then come back and we'd go on to the next point.
One thing I realized while watching myself do this is how much I actually enjoy the professional work I've been doing all these years, and how proud I am of the mastery that I've acquired with so many years of experience. It's a tiny little corner of the business world, but I do it well and I like that. Also I've had time to develop a lot of really strong opinions about how the work should be done; and as you know too well by now, I also enjoy having strong opinions. So don't take any of my complaints about my work too seriously, because they are a long way from the whole story.
The other thing I noticed is that at a certain point Marie suddenly got very quiet. This looked like a danger sign; I took it to mean that this part of the discussion had gone on too long, and I was getting too self-absorbed. So I wrapped up our review of the job posting and we went on to something else. Probably we went to bed. And in the morning, I asked her about it. What was wrong? Was there something going on with you that I was ignoring, or failing to pick up on?
No, she said. But as we had that animated conversation going over your job posting, I realized it was exactly the way I had always fantasized our interactions would be whenever I imagined us working together on something. That part was really great, but the flip side is I realized it's only going to happen very rarely because we're never going to be together that often.
Yes and no, I answered. The only part I've clearly said "No" to is living together as if married. We won't have that. But the way we talked last night wasn't based on living together. We can still collaborate on things, build them together, build on each other's contributions. We can still do all of that. And once we come to a long-term agreement about how to pay for travel, we can set up some kind of regular schedule for seeing each other. So don't despair.
I'm not sure if I was able to convince her not to despair -- sometimes I think that's asking a lot for Marie -- but she did cheer up after that. Baby steps.
There's probably not much to say about the hiking or cooking we did. And the sex deserves a post of its own.
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