How It's Going: Almost June 2023

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.

It's May!

Once upon a time, I started this blog after a relationship break-up, and in part, to catalog the quirky adventures of dating. I had given up on love at that time, to be honest, which was both sort of sad and a little liberating. No longer did I have to go on dates and wonder if he could be the one, nor did I see weird yellow flags as setting a precedent that I should address. I went with whatever, so long as it didn't cross a hard line for me, and let the ridiculousness unfold. It was funny the bizarre things my dates would subject me to, and I considered it my duty to share it with the world, or at least document it for my future amusement, on this blog.

Then, the unexpected happened. I found a guy who wasn't ridiculous or bizarre. We had an instant mutual attraction and neither of us wasted a second dancing around our feelings towards one another. He seemed to be nearly perfect by my definition - tall, liked musicals, football, basketball and swing dancing - a rare combination. He often seemed to read my mind - mentioning his desire to go to massage school, for example - I had told my roommate I would love to find a guy who wanted to study massage, I'd pay for his schooling if it meant massages for life. I had some hesitations about him - I mean, I just recently given up on love - and I was worried he might fall harder for me than I for him, and I'd break his heart. But I rationalized that I had hesitated too often before, and the window of opportunity seemed to have passed, and I didn’t want to repeat that mistake. So we dove headfirst into a nearly 10 year relationship.

We had a very long, happy "honeymoon" phase - we rarely fought and we loved doing everything together all the time. We had amazing adventures and were the envy of our friends on facebook. As I met his family, they would always comment that they felt they knew me already from facebook. And the rest is history…

Fast forward to around 2021 - 2022. The relationship had soured. He said some things I could not get passed. I was frustrated with him. We still did fun things, but we were fighting a lot. It felt to me that he had become spoiled by my supporting him financially as he supported me in other ways through a number of geographic moves for my job. While I stand by my decision to do so, I think it changed our dynamic in his mind, and he became a different person. We tried addressing things, and he claimed to be committed to fixing what was broken, but now I see he was already too gone. A few specific incidents made it very apparent that we were not working, and I knew we had to end things.

With such a long time put into our relationship, I felt I owed it to him to end things amicably. That was I tried to do. To my surprise, 10 years of hate and bizarre accusations spewed out of him until I didn't ever want to see his face again. Cheating, really? He thought this was about me seeing someone else. But like Ingrid Andress' song, "I Think You're Seeing Someone Else", actually I was seeing someone else. I was holding onto the instant love and perfect chemistry of years ago. He had become someone different without my realizing it. Not better, like in the song. No, I had become more financially stable and more grounded, he seemed to have diverted and gone backwards. He was blaming me for him not finishing college or having a career, villainizing me with this made up affair he thought I had been having for 10 years, even bringing up my last boyfriend and accusing me of cheating on him, acting like I didn't make every geographic move with his concurrence, and on and on. I didn't know what to make of it at the time. Later, when I found his OnlyFans subscriptions, things started to click that he was projecting his guilt onto me and hoping I was cheating. Then I did what should have been a bad idea - looked through old videos and photos of us when we were happy early on - and it ended up being quite therapeutic because he was unrecognizable in those photos and videos. It made me realize I had not been dating the same guy for the last 9+ years. I was dating a great love, and more recently, I was dating a self-righteous fixed mindset monster. The man I fell in love with had died years ago, I'm not sure when, but he was no longer there.

That was in January, and as you can imagine, it's taken a minute to process all of this. I didn't process it all well, either. Shortly before Valentine's I read about a zoo that would, for a charitable donation, name a cockroach or a rat after your ex- and then feed it to the animals. I splurged for the video package and wrote a script that cut to the core of the idiocy that was the end of our relationship. Hey, it was for charity, right?

That's not to say I've been wallowing in sorrow since January. I've just not sat myself down and done a lot of self-reflecting. Instead, I've kept myself crazy busy. I volunteered at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve as a docent and did regular trail watch to keep people off the poppies and educate them on the different types of flowers and wildlife (which I had to learn about myself). It was a great way to get my butt out of the house and hike many miles. I also volunteered for the Aerospace
Robotics Competition as a mentor to a high school team again. I started swing dancing again, practicing at home and going to Pasadena for the dances. I've been doing some home renovation stuff. And traveling - I went to Arizona for the Purple Stride and swing danced out there on my home turf. I cut and donated my hair. And seeking, interviewing for, and securing a new job (still at the same company). Yep, I've kept myself busy, but that’s not all I've been up to…

Dating - so many dates. I wasn't going to do the dating app thing, I was going to find comfort in doing my own thing and allow for the potential for something spontaneous to happen. But one weak moment one lonely evening and I had a full profile, and then the guys started pouring in.

And so, my blog is nearly ready to return to its original glory, talking about all the craziness of dating life. But it's already May!! I have so much to catch up on.

I was first excited about Nick - an Aussie who loved D&D. I wasn't so sure I'd be attracted to him based on his profile pictures, but when I met him, instant attraction. Not to mention we had had great conversation for weeks leading up to the first date. He broke it off a few days after, to my great disappointment. I know it was short and I shouldn’t have been upset, but I really liked him.

Then there was Cole, we talked a ton on the phone and texted a lot and then he ghosted me for a while. We never met but still message from time to time. Weird, right?

Jimmy - the jerk - stood me up. We chatted and then made arrangements for a date and he texted me about it that day, and that he was on his way, and all the way to the point of, "I'm in the parking lot," and then never showed. Why are people so cruel? I ate a disappointing dinner by myself that night.

Francisco works at Virgin Galactic (one of the common themes dating in this area is lots of engineers in my field, gotta be careful, I've found coworkers and stuff already)… He claimed he didn't want a hook up but he ghosted me after our first date so I'm going to go ahead and call him a big fat liar.

Then there was Dani, who used the sweetest words in his texts to me, calling me Queen and the like. The texting made more sense when I met him and realized he was not an native English speaker. We went on a few dates and I learned he was Iranian but trying to make it as an engineer in my field - and struggling because he is unable to give up his Iranian citizenship but that is preventing him from getting certain accesses. One night we had a discussion that felt too much like I was dating one of my (bad) employees and I decided it wasn't for me so I called it off. 

Dreamy Jay as I called him seemed very hook-up oriented but he was so good looking in his pictures I was willing to risk it. We talked for weeks and made tentative plans several times that never worked out, and it just sort of drifted off until he created a new profile and came up in my recommendations, but he had changed his name and used different pics so I wasn't sure - I liked him and then he confirmed he was the same guy. Goof. 

There was a doctor named Nick who I met once, and without either of us saying anything, we mutually stopped talking after that. The chemistry was just not there. 

I met KoiGoi against my better judgment, and was instantly happily surprised by how attracted I was when he walked in, but the conversation was terrible and I ended things after. But because I was attracted to his height, I temporarily started filtering on height to find other tall guys.

My tall filter caught 6'4" Aaron. He was so weirdly bad at communicating, I tried so hard with him and I don’t know why. I guess I was attracted to him and he wasn't in my industry so there's that. We went on a few dates and then he disappeared for several weeks and acted like it wasn't a big deal when he did start responding again. I may have acted out to cause a little drama and he freaked out and ended things, which was a huge overreaction in my opinion but probably good to fail fast in that case.

Then there was 6'5" Brandon, super sweet via text but horribly awkward in person. It was not going to work with him, but I went on a couple dates to try and he disappeared, probably for the better also. 

My filter also got me 6'8" Jesse, with whom I've tried to connect in person several times and it keeps not working out. He's a fitness trainer but works like four other jobs and is just too busy probably to date someone like me. But I'd still like to meet him in person, because, I mean, 6'8"! 

While seeing those rando's throughout and talking to several others that never really went anywhere, there have been four guys - yes, four - who I've seen more consistently and hopefully. Two of them are named Kevin, just to make things confusing, so I call them Kevin 1 and Kevin 2, and then there's Andrew who also can be confusing as he shares the name of my best local friend, and then there's Justin from Hollywood.

My first date with Kevin 1 was fun and cute - we went to a taco food truck - his idea, and he ordered for us in Spanish which I found weirdly attractive. As we were eating, the spice was obviously getting to him and he looked over to me and asked, "You're pretty good with spice, huh?" And I had to think for a moment to even register that the tacos had a kick to them. Meanwhile he was drenched in sweat and his nose was running. I thought that was funny. My  friend Andrew and I were supposed to go to a show at the Griffith Observatory, and at the last minute he realized he had made plans with a woman he was seeing. I told him I'd see if I could get Kevin 1 to go with me and he agreed. I liked that he was willing to be a little spontaneous and do something completely out of the norm for him. He was the perfect date, we took selfies and fun pictures and he was just sweet and all about me the whole time. I loved how he touched me in public, not too sensual but enough for me to feel like I was his. There was a lot of promise early on, but then he had a lot of drama in his personal life and I didn't get to see him for 6+ weeks, and we got angry with each other. We reconciled a couple weeks later, and have gone out a few times since. Of all the guys I'm seeing right now, he's the one I have the most feelings for and most hope for, but there's that lingering drama that threatens it. We're planning a weekend getaway to Las Vegas in June. I may or may not have bought a $1000 bottle of tequila he wanted. What is wrong with me?

Dating Kevin 2 is wild. I thought he was pretty innocent and over-achiever, goody-two-shoes type, but once he let down his guard I found a very emo, anti-establishment, anti-everything, party animal. It first came out on St Patrick's Day with Andrew and his woman friend, and got really ugly the next day at the zoo when he said all these animals should kill themselves rather than be locked up for people to look at them. I told him that day that I was never going to take him out anywhere again, and he apologized, but I've held true to that. I still spend time with him in private, but I don't really see it going anywhere. He's great to cuddle up for a movie though.

Andrew just completed his third marathon, has a cute dog and a busted truck. He works for his grandma as an accountant. He's usually down for anything I suggest, but his personal life drama prevents him sometimes. I think early on he was intimidated by my profession and was trying to impress me, and since then he's calmed down and our conversations flow really well.

If anyone accused me of having a type, Justin would break that mold. He's the epitome of Hollywood, but we have a great time when we're together even though we have almost nothing in common. He calls me "boo" and we just really click. The distance makes it hard to see each other regularly, but we make it work from time to time.

So I think that kind of catches us up. I still can't believe it's May already. I start my new job in a couple weeks, although truth be told my new manager is sucking me in as fast as he can. I'm so completely sad to be leaving my team. I wasn't going to accept the job because of them. It was a surprise to me, when I tried to write my decline letter, I talked myself into accepting because the new manager has done so much to make me feel valued, and my current manager and director were so luke warm about losing me. I didn't think being valued mattered that much to me, until it was clear.

Besides my very busy dating life, I've mostly been trying to live up to my four principles for 2023, which I've summed up on my letterboard as: live intentionally, (re-)connect deeply, get outdoors and 'into' space, and create ease. It's been an adjustment to be single again, but I know its for the best - he made it very easy to not have second thoughts - and I'm just figuring out how to find myself again.