The breakup at the beginning of the year was inevitable and I knew that going into the new year. When it happened, it wasn't how or when I had foreseen it. The timing was close to right, but how it went down was a huge shock - I was trying to make it amicable and calm, knowing it was the right thing to do and I had left nothing on the table as far as ways to repair the decade-long relationship, but he wouldn't have it. No, he went off like a crazy person, bringing up ancient history that I'm not even convinced wasn't entirely made up in his attempt to prove he was a victim, blaming me for everything, of course, and projecting his guilt onto me via ill-founded and inaccurate accusations of cheating. Nevertheless trying to find the silver lining in all things, I end that story always with the conclusion that it makes it very easy not to second guess the breakup or try to get back together. I do think it's a little bananas that after spending nearly every day with him for 10 years, he and I have no exchanged a word, a text, a comment, nothing. It's done-zo and that's obviously a good thing.
Except it means I'm alone. I have this great big house which I love, and a pool and a hot tub I frequent, and all these big plans to go here and do that. But I'm so alone. I've never been good at being a friend or keeping friends so I don't have many, and I haven't done much in the way of making new friends locally. All of the people I could even call my friend here are colleagues, employees of mine or former colleagues. In fact, even people I consider friends "back home" in Arizona are mostly former colleagues. And, I mean, I guess that's ok, right? We spend so much time at work it's good to have friends there and it makes sense when strong relationships are forged there. But even my closest of friends aren't, like, best friends or besties. I almost never talk to my childhood friends, when we do it's usually just exchanged comments on facebook.
My sister loves being single, or at least that's what she'd have everyone believe, but her being single and me being single are so different - she was married, she had someone to whom she said, "I do," and she got a son of it and she's the best at keeping old friends and making new ones. On top of that, she is at least somewhat introverted in that she loves her "me time" whereas I could have zero of that and be the happiest person alive. She is a good person for me to talk to about these things, and she encourages me to go to the movies or dinner by myself, but I don't think she appreciates how much more lonely I am without a committed relationship. I love being around people, well at least people I enjoy and whom I can stand, and I can be judgey which is why I'm not a big life long friender. That is also why I vowed to connect more and connect more deeply this year - I knew I'd need friends and I know I need to be a better one.
Oh and a new job. Boy, people really show you their true colors when they have nothing to lose, right? My old boss held nothing back once I told him I was leaving. Just like my breakup, he has made it very clear I made the right choice. My new boss seems great, my local team is great, I might have some work to do on some of my other new employees but that's ok. Getting away from a diminishing manager was an important thing to do for myself, and while my old team was pretty heartbroken over me leaving, as was I, they understood, perhaps more than me at times, why I had to make the change.
I always like to do one or two life list things per year, and the last few years have been really hard with the COVID pandemic, so I feel like I should be trying to make up for that lost time this year. But alas, many of the items remaining on my life list are either quite difficult or require travel, and I'm just not up for doing a ton of travel alone.
Post-breakup I dove in pretty quickly to the dating scene, had a few homeruns but lost each game. I am just about over dating, and yet I still am unhappy with being alone, so I'm definitely in a funk in a big, bad way. Not dangerous or anything, just out of it. The dark thoughts do creep in, even knowing what I know now about my ex- and how he viewed our relationship, I still sometimes voyage into the land of, "What if I just pretended that none of that happened and had him come back and just idlily stayed around to make plans with and stuff?" It's stupid, and I know logically that nothing good could come from that line of thinking. And yet, there it is. These jerks on the dating app all claim not to be like the rest and they all end up ghosting me, gaslighting me or, most kindly, deciding to go separate ways. Yet I feel like I'm lowering my standards to date them, and they are the ones largely doing to leaving/ghosting. I don't get it. I don't get how guys can be so cruel, and I don't get what the fucking point is in dating someone, saying you want to meet up, and then not showing. Like, isn't the point of dating to meet people and go on dates and see what happens? It's just so… I don't know, depressing? Disparaging? Disappointing. Consistently and thoroughly disappointing.
So I started going swing dancing again. It's a weird "again" because when I used to go swing dancing, it was in Arizona. After years of dancing there, I had a number of friendly faces and regular dance partners. But also, my main dance partner was, alas, my now ex-. So going dancing "again" isn't like I'm returning to something I know well. I know how to dance, at least the basics, I've gotten a bit rusty on my Lindy Hop and have no idea if I could follow Balboa right now. But I don't know the people, I don't have a consistent partner, and the structure of the dance is a bit weird, too.
Like, at Kat's Korner in Arizona, we always did a celebration dance for people with birthdays or celebrating something else special, or visiting from out of town. Then we'd do the snowball, in which a few couples start and every few moments or so the announcer would call for them to find a new partner who isn't dancing yet, until everyone is dancing ideally. We'd also do the Shim Sham, a semi-choreographed mostly solo dance that everyone could join in and do, a little like the Electric Slide but, you know, not that. Sometimes we'd do other similarly somewhat familiar choreographed dances, such as Tranky Doo or the Big Apple. I really want to do one of those again. But alas, at this place in Pasadena, they don't do the celebration dance and they don't do any of the choreographed dances. Instead, they do what they call a "disco" in which they play a (non-disco) pop song and just follow along as someone semi-makes up dance moves, kinda like doing a jazzercise workout video or something. They do the snowball after that, so there's that at least, although even that they do a little weird and I don't like it. It's fine. It's fine.
The bigger thing, I think, is just the not knowing people. The second time I went, some of the leads recognized me and the familiarity started to blossom into me getting asked to dance more, which was great. I went this past weekend, though, and there were less familiar faces as such I got asked to dance less, and didn't even have the courage for whatever reason to ask some of the dancers I wanted to dance with. It certainly didn't help, this past weekend, that a guy I had been talking to for a week or so was planning on meeting me there for our first date - and despite saying he was almost home and lived 5 minutes away around 8 pm, he never showed, and I never heard from him after that. So, yeah, even going back to swing dancing has been, not a complete disappointment, but definitely sort of rough. It's also over an hour away which means it's a big commitment for me to go. There's another venue in Pasadena on Thursday nights and that just seems almost impossible after working a 10+ hour day on Thursday, but I hear that's a better venue and I want to go, in theory.
A month or two ago, I visited Arizona primarily to support a charity walk which I've done for years with my friend and former colleague, Allison. During my visit, I also made a point to go swing dancing on my home turf, albeit a different venue (tear) than what I had known for the prior 12 years. The familiar faces and welcoming recognition more than made up for the unfamiliar new-to-me venue, and I had a blast, truly. A few of the leads I danced with also strongly encouraged me to go to Camp Hollywood this year, an event I have never attended except for participating in the virtual event a few years ago during the worst of COVID. I was super hesitant and nervous about it, still am, but the encouragement from them and the reminder for myself that this is the kind of thing I want to do more of left me little choice but to register and make plans to attend. I'm also now considering if I should go back to Arizona for some of the events like Swingdependance and a new event in Tucson right around my Dad's birthday weekend.
I'm definitely in a funk, but in reviewing what I set out to do in 2023 at the start of the year, I am finding a little bit of encouragement and comfort knowing that I have completed many of those things already. Let's take a quick inventory.
Life: Be an active participant
• Buy my land - Done!
• Increase discipline in health routines - eh, kinda?
• Have a mindfulness weekend retreat - planned and then skipped, wah wah
• Do that regularly
• Have a blog-a-thon to write about topics already started
• Book/plan vacation - Done, at least mostly - Hawaii for Christmas, plus some other smaller trips are in the works too! Planning trips is therapy for me.
• Complete >1 from room renovation - Done, at least mostly. Did some finishing touches on the downstairs full bath, and mostly finished wallpapering and putting new fixtures in the downstairs half bath. Really it just needs some pictures on the walls or something, otherwise it's done. Master water closet's next!
Nature: Go deeper into outer space
• Listen to Planetary Radio podcast when available - Listened at least once, not sure where I lost track of this one, will have to check.
• Watch All Space Considered monthly - I do watch this regularly now, and want to go in person sometime soon.
• Visit the Griffith Observatory - Done! Went to a weird show called Above with a date, it was interesting, not sure I'd do that again necessarily, but maybe for some other event or show.
As a bonus, not related to space but related to nature, I volunteered at the local Poppy Reserve and did several trail watch hikes out there, and learned a lot about local wild flowers. Getting out into nature was great for me, and I should probably keep that up.
Celebration: Re-build the lost connections
• Start daily journal even if 3-sentence recap - I tried, but I tend to not write for a while and then play catch up and try to write something. I'll keep trying.
• Plan for and stay on top of sending birthday, anniversary, holiday cards
• Seek advice and ask curious questions of people in my life
Empowerment: Create (and use) the tools to get out of my own way
• Auto-add/update calendar with activities of interest - Partially done, got it add ISS passes to my calendar.
• Utilize AI and scripting to hone trends and market gaps
• 3D print some useful items - I tried, 3d printers hate me, I swear! My filament got jammed and I gave up.
• Invest in architecture software and education, and design home of the future
• Influence recruiting at work via communications team
• Develop better graphics and display for my Show Mode
Well, one of my trips I'm planning is intended to help me reconnect with some old friends, and based on what I've done a lot of and not done enough of, it seems like the connecting thing is one of the areas I need to focus in on more.
As far as accomplishing some things from my Life List, here are some ideas I think are doable still this year:
10 Ride a penny-farthing bicycle
12 Ride a recumbent bicycle
20 Watch a fire-dancing show at Burning Man
30 Catch a fish
52 Press grapes into wine with my bare feet
81 Be an extra in a movie
98 Send in a postsecret
103 Drive a race car around a real track
114 Eat at a Shenanigans
119 Learn to use a slide rule
147 Time Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park
I feel like, rather than blessings, I need to count my activities or achievements to remind myself that this year has not been a total bust. Here it goes:
• I hiked around Vasquez Rocks with my colleague Josh - getting him out of the house was a freaking achievement in and of itself! We did about 1.86 miles.
• I volunteered for 5 shifts of trail watch duty and the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserves, totaling over 24 miles of hiking, plus took my friend Andrew and a love interest also named Andrew for one hike there, as well as some of my employees another time.
• I volunteered for the second year in a row to be a mentor for the Aerospace Robotics Competition sponsored by my company, working with high school students to build, fly and program a drone. My team failed for the second year in a row, but I still helped quite a bit at the competition, and recruited some of my employees to help out, and that always feels good.
• I've gone swing dancing four times (thrice in Pasadena and once in Arizona) and did a charity walk in Arizona.
• I went to see Six the Musical with my friend Andrew (although it was supposed to be with a guy I was seeing - Justin - but he started getting flakey so I guess I told him off(?)).
• I got a new job and subsequent pay raise.
• I did some wallpapering and home reno stuff to improve my home.
• I upgraded my pool system so I can heat my pool, and have loved swimming in 86 degree water - especially when walking/running has been hard on my body lately so swimming is a great exercise alternative.
• I bought land in Mojave, CA and camped out there to pursue the green meteor earlier this year.
Considering everything, that's a pretty healthy list of achievements. I guess I'm not as much in a rut as I thought I was. But, now I'm even more enthuse'd about the upcoming things.
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