You can just do things!

A long-expected party

The Ecosophian community is an informal collection of people who follow the books and blogs of John Michael Greer. There is no formal organization; nobody collects dues, or organizes formal events, or publishes meeting minutes. But if you check out either of his blogs—Ecosophia, or Toward Ecosophy—you'll find many of the same people commenting over and over. And of course there are plenty of people (I'm one of them) who rarely comment or post, but who read the materials regularly.

For a few years now, there has been a social gathering of ecosophians in Providence, Rhode Island, on or around the summer solstice.In the past, this gathering generally took the form of a big potluck. I remember seeing the announcements and thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't that be fun!" Of course I never went, because I don't live anywhere near to Providence. There was no simple or easy way to pop over and bring a contribution to the feast, so I didn't think about it beyond that.

You can just do things.

Last year, Greer traveled to Glastonbury, England, in early June. He announced his plans the previous November, and in the end his visit turned into a kind of impromptu convention. People gave talks and workshops. There were (by all accounts) good food, good beer, and good conversation. Of course it sounded like a delightful time in the run-up before it happened; and it sounded even better afterwards. But I'm an American, after all. Glastonbury is a long ways away. I toyed with the idea of going there, but I didn't take it very seriously. So in the end I stayed home, and read about it after the fact.

You can just do things.

Then after the 2025 potluck, the man who regularly organizes the events in Providence proposed that "next year" (meaning 2026) he wanted to change it up a bit. Why not hold a convention in Providence, just like the one in Glastonbury? Surely we have people on this continent who would like to give talks on some ecosophian-related topic? Or workshops? It can't be that hard. So he put out an announcement in July of 2025, for the following year, to get people's attention and start them thinking.

You can just do things.

So controlling, part 3

Yes, the first two posts by this name were more than ten years ago, here and here. Deal with it.

I wrote recently about the many little ways Debbie and I got in each other's way in the days leading up to the retreat. Well, they didn't end there. They peaked, if you want to call it that, while we were driving home. We had stopped to recharge her EV,* and on the way out of the parking lot I was giving her instructions at the same time that the GPS did. She asked me very pointedly if I thought that was helpful. I admitted that of course it wasn't, and added lamely that I wasn't aware I was doing it. For the rest of the day I was painfully aware of every syllable that escaped the barrier of my teeth. I was pretty aware of it the next day too.

Then this morning, as she was making breakfast,** Debbie was setting out some ingredients and said, "You can start on this, and I'll eat that." I asked, "Is that something you want me to do now, or do you mean when everything is ready?" Debbie admitted she wasn't aware she had said anything.

And suddenly the penny dropped. Some people vocalize tasks they are doing, while they are doing it. Some people imagine themselves doing a task when they see someone else doing it. So it stands to reason that some few people just start reciting instructions for things that other people are doing.Most of the time we probably contain the impulse, so that strangers don't see us standing alone talking to ourselves. But in certain kinds of liminal situations it can be unclear—even to the speaker, to say nothing of the hearer!—whether we are talking to ourselves or to others.

This, I think, must be another of the roots of Wife's insistence that I was "so controlling": a habit of talking through what someone else is doing, while she is doing it. Of course I don't do it all the time. If the task is one I don't understand, I keep quiet. And if the other person clearly has it covered, we are likely talking about something else. But especially when I am with someone who doesn't seem confident about a task that I would be confident of—or who seems to be doing it the wrong way around—I probably vocalize the task at hand. This leaves the other person the option of asking me to stop (as Debbie did), of ignoring me, or of complaining later (when there is no longer anything I can do about it) that I am "so controlling." Debbie took the first option. Wife, famously, took the last.

_____

* We had bad luck finding charging stations on the way home, with the result that we drove several miles out of our way—at least twice. The exercise convinced me that the EV-charging industry is a lenocracy, in John Michael Greer's felicitous coinage. Debbie is still convinced that electric cars are the wave of a bright, new future, and that experiences like ours are just growing pains. I look at the same data, the same experiences, and think of Greer's mordant observation, "If you want to see that the decline of a great civilization looks like, look out the window." 

** Debbie and I no longer cook together in the same kitchen. During this visit, she cooked and I washed dishes, except for the time we were at the retreat (when the retreat staff did both). 

This development has been slow but steady in coming. You remember that when I first visited her in her new state, eight years ago, we cooked together and washed dishes together. At the time I commented, "Who needs sex to be intimate, when you can work together in the same kitchen, picking up and handing off tasks smoothly and conveniently?" Two years later we were still cooking together. But by 2020, I was starting to notice slippages:

"... we didn't work together in the kitchen as smoothly and effortlessly as we have in the past, which made me realize we have gotten out of practice. Nothing serious, but we had to pay more attention not to bump into each other, and I didn't always know right away what to do next. Little things."

I don't remember how we handled cooking last year, and I can't find anywhere in this blog that I wrote it down. Not that it matters, I suppose. The Buddha teaches that all things are impermanent, after all. Right? So it should be no surprise that our ability to cook together smoothly in the same kitchen is impermanent as well.       

Talking about vacation

Memo to the reader: I thought about titling this piece "On vacation," in the same way that one might title a treatise, "On the Gods," or "On human nature." But I realized that most people would assume it just meant, "I'm going to be away from my computer and not writing for a while." In this case that's not what I mean. Hence the slightly clunkier title.

It's late at night. I've drunk too much. And I need to do things in the morning. Why am I not in bed asleep?

Well, I almost was—at the end of another highly unproductive and useless day. (I keep hoping my days will be productive. But that would require that I actually had the will to accomplish something, and that will is often missing.) But then I thought of an interesting pattern. I wanted to record it before I forgot it, and so here we are.

It's just this. You've heard me complain about being stuck, dead in the water, accomplishing nothing. I've blamed it on booze and on Twitter, both of which are indeed serious contributors to my time-wasting. But both of them are enablers, not root causes. The reality is, This is something I do.

So for example:

Hosea's island

"There is a bittersweet loneliness in the life of an exile that exerts a romantic appeal to many people. They see themselves as a mysterious figure on a Mediterranean island, seen by all, known to few, living a life of intense privacy in full view. The problem with such a life is that it cannot sustain trust; the very essence of exile is the belief that one can only really count on oneself."*

Was Roger Ebert writing about me? He might have been. I'm not sure how "romantic" my life is (and of course I don't live on a Mediterranean island) but the rest of it fits: intense privacy, known to few. And a lack of trust, for sure.

But "exile"? Maybe, in a sense. When I was very little, my parents were graduate students and they rented houses from professors on sabbatical. That meant we moved every year. Then my dad got a teaching job clear across the country (so we moved) … which he hated (so he looked for another job right away and we moved again). When I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, we moved abroad, to another country. There I met a girlfriend (but then we moved) … and then finally we landed in a house where we stayed for five years. A neighborhood where I could ride my bicycle for hours and learn all the streets. A place where I could begin to put down roots. Not that I was ever fully rooted there—already I kept to myself the knowledge that we were Americans, because Americans weren't always popular in this new country. Also my parents sometimes smoked pot, which in those days was illegal both in that country and back home. So I had to be careful how much I told my friends about my family. I had to draw lines, and compartmentalize my world. But on the whole I felt like I belonged there.

Nothing ever lasts. When I was a few months shy of my twelfth birthday we moved back to the United States. At the time I believed the move was only temporary: I no longer remember if my parents said that explicitly, or if I just chose to believe it. But this time they bought a house, instead of just renting it. It's the same house Mother still lives in today. So no, the move wasn't temporary.

So it was another exile. Another layer. And then my eccentric interests and bookishness added more layers on top of that. You've heard all this before. (I realized after starting this post that I've said it all before here and here. Maybe elsewhere too, but those will do for a start.)   

But I did want to capture that quote from Roger Ebert.

__________

* From Roger Ebert's review of "Pascali's Island," August 12, 1988, reprinted on RegerEbert.com. 

Why write?

I think I've told you that back during the COVID-19 lockdowns I wrote a book about the stuff that I used to do in my professional life, back before I more-or-less retired. And then I've never done anything with it because I'm paralyzed by trying to find the next step. The writing was the easy part, but what then? I talked to someone who was supposed to be an expert on marketing self-published books (this was about two years ago), and her first question was: What outcome do you want from this book? What do you want to achieve? The marketing strategy will be fundamentally different, depending on your answer.

And I froze. I had no idea how to answer the question.

She even made it easy by telling me there are only two choices for the answer: Money or Fame. (To be clear, she then explained that in practice saying you want Fame means that you want the book to advertise your consulting business. I read a great book by This Guy, and now we have to hire him to help us transform our company!) But I still couldn't answer. Neither of those options sounded right to me.

So there it sat. For two years.

Recently I realized I'd made no progress at all on publishing this book, even though it's something I need to do. So a couple of days ago I tried to think through the question, What do I want from this book? The results were inconclusive. Then this weekend I went on a meditation retreat. And today at lunch I suddenly saw the last step in the (hitherto-unfinished) chain of reasoning. So let me write it out for you here.

What do I want from this book: Money or Fame? Let's consider them one at a time.

Am I become Death?

Back on New Year's Day, I did a Tarot reading for myself for the year. Much of what it told me was unexceptional. My immediate situation was pegged as waiting (8 Wands reversed), exacerbated by indecision (2 Swords). The basis of my situation is that I'm acting like a scholar (Page of Pentacles) by thinking and writing, both here and in my professional blog under my real name. And so on.

Now my Self card was Death. At the time, I read this as advice that I would see major changes in my Self this year, because I have always read that card as "major change." But I wonder if there might not be more going on?

Over on the Patio I just finished a pair of articles which propose that humans thrive best under conditions of adversity, scarcity, and conflict—not peace and plenty. (You can find the first one here, and the second one here.) And last night, after I finished writing and posting the second article, I started to think about it with respect to my own situation. I have enough to eat and drink, and a roof over my head, all without working. I live alone, so I don't have to fight with anyone over the breakfast table. For the most part, except for some writing once or twice a week, there's nothing special that I need to do.

When John B. Calhoun subjected a population of rats to those exact same conditions, the rats died.

And so I began to wonder, Does the Death card have a double meaning for me right now? Yes, of course it generally means "major change." And of course anyone learning the Tarot is always warned not to read it as death simply and straight-up, because that will terrify the person you are reading for. But I start to think that maybe it means something a little more complex, something like this:

Freedom is overrated

Freedom is overrated.

I guess I've talked about this before, not always in those words. I find only two places where I have said literally this: here in 2010, and here in 2023. But my post here, arguing that freedom is failure, comes pretty close to saying the same thing.

I first figured it out by watching Father. Back when he owned our family business he had a terrible time of it: I talk about that some here and here, and probably in other places too. At the time, I thought he was being imprisoned by the business; and it was plainly killing him. When he finally sold it, I thought, Now at last he'll be able to do all those things he has wanted to do for so long!

But he didn't. He'd start one project, and then he'd start another, and then he'd email crazy conspiracy theories with his old Army buddies, and then he'd stay up to watch the Late Show, and then … on and on and on. [I have no idea how far he got on any of these projects, but Mother would like me to find out.] But he never got anything actually Done, because he didn't Have To. He was free—as free as anyone I've ever known.

It didn't make him happy. Not having to go out and see people on a regular basis just made him sour and solitary. (He died in 2015, but compare also this post, just for example.)

I worried that could happen to me when my job ended, if I didn't get a regular full-time job to replace it. And, … well, you know, … it's hard to say I was wrong. Just in the last year I talk about that here (after coming home from Scotland) and here (after coming home from France and then Thanksgiving).

Ironically, there's even an argument that this is true of political freedom as well. A few days ago, I posted this over on the Patio, explaining the argument that the best regimes in the world are places like Niger, Uganda, and Angola—none of them "free countries" by any normal metric. 

It's funny. We feel a natural irritation when someone tells us what to do. Who do they think they are? I'll decide what I want to do! But when we have that freedom—well, for some of us, at any rate, it doesn't make us happy. I bet that's true for many of us. It's probably true of me, not that I'm about to surrender my freedom. It's easier to surrender my happiness.

Freedom is overrated.   

          

Interview with a Cobra: the good

Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson posted on Twitter a two-and-a-half hour interview with Andrew Tate. (Here is the link.) Somehow despite all the time I waste on the Internet, I knew almost nothing about Andrew Tate before listening to this interview. I had heard the name, and I'd seen people allude to him as somehow a generically Bad Guy, but I couldn't have told you anything concrete about him. So I learned a lot by watching it.

Tate talked about his recent arrest on the charge of human trafficking, and insisted that he has never done any such thing. He added that there is no evidence of him having ever done any such thing (because he didn't do it), and therefore that he hopes the case will be dismissed when a judge finally looks over the evidence. Then he concluded that if he is somehow convicted anyway, he will accept the result as a test sent by God, and will take consequences with his head held high.

But after describing the formal accusation, Tate went on to explain (like Socrates in the Apology) that he has a large number of informal accusers* in the society at large, and that he believes it was their hostility towards him that precipitated his recent arrest. To explain this contention, he began to explain the message that he tries to teach his followers. And it was at this point that the interview became very interesting.**

Becalmed, 3

I also think I'm drinking too much.

My cough has certainly made this easier to do. If I sit up late writing a blog post (like I'm doing right now) my cough will start to ramp up. And it's so easy to pour myself something to soothe my throat. In this post a couple weeks ago, I called that an excuse, but that overstates the case. Swallowing anything will temporarily dispel the urge to cough, and thick liquids work better than thin ones. (This means spirits work better than water, since I'm not going to sit here sipping maple syrup.) Also, while the alcohol doesn't prevent me from coughing, its anesthetic properties certainly make my throat feel better afterwards. If only I could metabolize away all the booze ten minutes after I swallowed it, then it would be a great solution. Too bad it doesn't work that way.

But I started tracking how much I drink each night, a little over two years ago. And, taken as a whole, the six weeks since I got back from Scotland have been heavier than any comparable period since I started keeping the records. I can't speak to the years before that, but still.

I have not gotten to the point where it interferes with any of my regular obligations. But of course, as I pointed out before, I don't have a lot of those right now. 

Maybe I should just go to bed. Night-night.   

          

Becalmed, 2

Tuesday evening, the UU Sangha that I join was reading from Thich Nhat Hanh's posthumous Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet for our dharma study. (Yes, we were reading the same book six months ago. Good catch. We usually read pretty slowly.) And as we read it, I began to feel like the book was echoing themes from my earlier post of this name, but treating them differently. I began to feel like I should re-read the passage and think about it or meditate on it, because it might help me.

Of course I didn't actually do that. After Sangha was over I spent the rest of the evening far less productively. But my scribbled note to myself is still sitting on my desk, scowling at me. Maybe I should give it a try.

Becalmed

I got back from Scotland over three weeks ago.

When I got back, I learned that the owner of the company where I have been consulting had just sold the company the day before. The new owners saw no value in keeping me around. My last day there was about two weeks ago.

My cough is back. Again.

Last weekend I drove down to Big City to spend a couple of days visiting Mother. I briefly mention the story here.

I have kept posting once a week on the professional blog I keep under my real name.

I have a phone call once a week with Marie, and another (on a different day) with Debbie. I join a Zoom call for Sangha once a week, as well.

But for the most part I have no obligations to anyone, and nothing that I especially need to do. Let me say that again, for clarity.

There.  Is.  Nothing.  I.  Need.  To.  Do.

The technical term for this condition is freedom. Nobody ever bothers to tell you that it sucks.

Learning the lessons of freedom

A year ago—or gosh, it's been longer than that—I wrote a post about how numerology calculates your "birth number." According to John Michael Greer (magician, occultist, and former archdruid), this number "represents the fixed framework of your personality and your life, and it sums up the things about you that won’t change no matter what. It defines the lesson you have come into this incarnation to learn." 

At the time I explained that Brother has a birth number of 4 ("the challenge you face in this incarnation is to learn self-discipline and build solid foundations") and I have 22 (basically the same as 4 but with a rich inner life).

Wife and Marie are both 8's ("the challenge this incarnation sets before you is that of worldly accomplishment"). Son 1 and Son 2 are both 6's ("the challenge you face in this incarnation is learning how to accept responsibility for others").

But I wasn't quite sure what to make of Mother. Her birth number comes out to 5, an unstable number about which Greer says "you are impatient with routine …. you do unexpected things and are constantly heading for new places, and when you get into trouble – which happens fairly often! – you are good at finding a way out." But when I look at her today (in her 80's, admittedly) she is a respected professional in a field that demands a certain level of routine; her recent travel has all been to visit her siblings and their families; and when Father was acting so fecklessly as a businessman, she kept things grounded and running. Somehow none of this fits well with the almost-chaotic temperament I just described.

Doing nothing

NOTE: I'm writing this on June 1, but I'm posting it on May 1, just after the West Highland Way narratives. These are some notes that I originally jotted during one of the long delays in my travel as described here.

In my post about flying to Scotland, at one point I talk about getting to the airport and "do[ing] Airport things." What are "Airport things?" What is the experience of air travel?

"Are you going to live alone the rest of your life?"

When I talked with Debbie a couple of days ago, one thing she asked me was what plans I had made for how to live when I get really old? I told her I've made no plans. Intellectually, looking at Father's decline over a number of years and at Mother's state today, I recognize that the options are basically two: either I drop dead unexpectedly, or I will in time get feeble and need help. But I've given no thought and no planning to the topic. (After all, I'm only 60. And it's not like my friends or classmates have started dying yet!)

Of course her question was because Debbie herself has started thinking about moving into a retirement home or care facility, if not now then later. But then she asked "Are you going to live alone the rest of your life?" And she speculated that the answer might be Yes.

"The ball's in my court"

I just got off of a very awkward Skype call with Marie, one which ended with her saying, "So the ball's in my court," and I agreed. She's trying to figure out what she wants to do with our relationship. I am content to let her.

It so happens that this conversation relates to the Tarot reading that I did for her just two weeks ago today. Not that the Tarot reading, all by itself, caused her to question our relationship. But it helped her clarify some things in her mind, I guess. Maybe I'd better start over, and try a little harder to make this make sense.

Παλλὰς ὁρμάστειρα

In the Orphic Hymn to Athena, the grey-eyed Lady is called "ὁρμάστειρα" [pronounced "hormá-steira"]. One translator renders this word as "impetuous"; another, as "advocate." How could it possibly mean both?

Technically this is Liberty and not Athena, but the
difference is subtle. Either way, anyone who tries
to make a pass at her is going to die quickly. 
Eugène Delacroix, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Of course really it means neither. It comes from the verb ὁρμάω, which means "to set in motion, urge, push on; to stir up; to rush headlong at," and so forth. So to call Her ὁρμάστειρα is to say She's the one to set people or events in motion, to stir people up and urge them forwards. She's the one to rally the troops, to sound the alarm, to whisper through the barracks or the squad in the field, warming hearts, quickening pulses, putting eyes and ears on alert for the signal to leap into action. This is far more than the work of any "advocate." But it's not "impetuous" either. You are impetuous when your stirred-up energy overrules your reason, and I assume that Athena never once makes a rash or heedless decision. But it can also be the part of rational prudence to understand that deliberation by itself doesn't win battles. Sometimes the most prudent thing you can do is to stir up the kind of passion that allows you to smite the enemy. "Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry." I think that's what the hymn is really saying about Her.

And if She sets armies in motion, maybe it's not crazy if I hope for the same thing for me.

Hair, part 4

I think I just saw a connection between two themes I've written about at different times.

One of them is hair. You know I have written that I don't like the shaving of body hair, for either men or women. It's not that I insist the hair has to be heavy -- for some people, it just isn't. It's shaving it off that bothers me. I've discussed this here, here, here, here, and here, for starters.

The other is monasticism, which I discuss in my posts "Contra monachismum," "Pro monachismo," and "De monachismo." (I list these three by title, because I'm likely to search on one of those titles when looking for related posts in the future and I want to find this one too.)

And the linkage? That comes from a couple of discussions between John Michael Greer and the commentariat who contribute to his blogs: briefly here, and at greater length here. The gist of these discussions is summarized in one remark as follows: "Religions that grow the hair and cover the head don't tend to favor celibacy and are comfortable with emotional and intuitive experiences, while religions that shave the top of the head tend to expect serious practitioners to be celibate and to focus on clarity and self-control."

Really? Who are these traditions?

Some of the traditions that shave or tonsure the head include:

• Christian monasticism
• Buddhist monasticism
• Jain monasticism
• ISKCON (Krishna Consciousness) monasticism

Do you see a pattern in that list?

By contrast, some groups that grow the hair include:

• Orthodox Jews
• Sikhs
• Hindu sadhus
• Rastafarians
• Ancient Greeks
• Cherokees and some other indigenous American peoples 

These groups don't have a lot in common. But one thing they do have in common is that none of them are monks, and all of them somehow accept the world rather than rejecting it. Even the sadhus, who -- yes -- are indeed renunciates, reach that point only at the fourth stage of life, after having led a full life as a student, and then a householder, and then a retired elder. They are not fleeing from life in the world, so much as consummating it.

And ultimately this is where I find myself too. In my "De monachismo" post I quote George Orwell on the irreconcilable difference between those who choose this world and those who choose the next. And one way or another, I choose this one. I see a lot that's beautiful in certain kinds of Christian life, and in certain kinds of Buddhist life -- just as I see a lot that's attractive in the secluded life of scholarship. But I still choose this world over the next. Who knew that this choice was connected to my opinions on shaving?

     

Wait, you mean someone agrees with me?

This morning I was browsing the Internet instead of getting any work done, and I stumbled on an article on something called Jante's Law. It's something sociologists talk about when discussing the Scandinavian countries, and it refers to a strong social pressure towards being average, and fitting in; or, to say the same thing in other terms, a strong rejection of the idea that there's anything at all special about you personally.

To exaggerate only slightly, it's a fundamental social presumption that you don't count, leveled against everyone.

And as soon as I read the article, I thought back to this post of mine that I wrote ... wow, more than ten years ago. Long enough that I couldn't find it at first, because I didn't remember any useful keywords. So I had to page through a lot of other posts about other stuff until I came across it. 

But there it is, plain as day: "Parents should teach their children that what they want doesn’t count. So they will have easier and happier lives." And now I find that there are whole societies out there that agree with me. Not that I should brag about my own insight on this point, of course ... at least, not if I'm to be consistent.

So, ... is this a good thing?

      

New Year's meditation and ritual

Last night -- New Year's Eve -- Debbie hosted a meditation and ritual over Zoom. Besides Debbie herself there were three members of her current Sangha in attendance, plus me. And much of the event was classic retreat practice in the Plum Village tradition (that is, the tradition taught by Thich Nhat Hanh). Debbie led us in a guided meditation, then we spent some minutes in walking meditation, and then we meditated silently. So far, so normal.

Then, after a short break, Debbie asked us to get some paper and write down things that we were grateful for in 2021. I found I had a few, of which perhaps the most unexpected was that I was grateful for having been laid off work in the spring, under circumstances where I didn't have to be afraid about where my next meal is coming from. I was also grateful for my friends and family, of course -- in particular for Debbie and Marie, though I didn't think it was exactly the right time to say so that explicitly. Anyway, we all shared our gratitudes.

Then Debbie added that Buddhism is about achieving freedom, and in particular about the freedom that comes when we let go of things we have been clinging to. So she asked us to think of things that we were willing to let go of as we moved into the coming year. We were to write them down on slips of paper ... and then burn them. 

I didn't share my whole list. But there were four things I put on it, that I would be willing to let go of:

• Distraction: this means compulsively browsing the Internet, and it also means drinking too much.
  
• Delay and indecision over what to do with myself. (See also this post earlier today.)
• Related to that, fear that I absolutely have to get a job.
• And finally, after my discussions over Christmas with Son 2, bad or unhelpful trigger-reactions to Wife. 

I don't really know how to let go of these things. But I suppose intention matters. Sometimes ritual can help make things happen, as well. I guess we'll see.

Visit from Marie

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.