Intellectual Persuits

I pulled back from my posse this year. It was necessary but it turns out the “Rona” was just the catalyst for something that had to change. Sometimes I miss them terribly but I don’t miss them enough to cause my aging friends to become potentially terminally ill. That brought a couple of things to light.

First, I am the instigator and coordinator of all our adventures. I can live with that.

2nd, the one who I have known longest is so emotionally stunted and needy that I’m done, just done putting out the effort. This is a person who will always default to inappropriate behavior in mixed social settings. That was actually kind of cute in the beginning. It built a sort of empathy and tolerance for her as being refreshingly open. That hasn’t aged well. Now she invites you out and after the order is placed will announce that she hasn’t got any money. The last time she was supposed to meet me for coffee she “forgot” and there I was waiting for someone who has instigated the whole thing and then just gone off and done something else. It’s uncomfortable because we have history and there are things about her I truly value but she doesn’t see those things in herself and prefers to do stuff like disappear into the trees for her wake and bake when everyone else is doing work that got her wherever we might be at the time. I’ve always been pretty fair-minded about these quirks, some of which are very oppositional to my personal rules of the road (rules for me, not for others) but the current state of the world has driven home just how much energy it takes to get up every day and go out into the world. It’s a weight I can’t carry for other people anymore. I’m not someone who gives up on people easily but walking away really seems to be the best option.

3rd, then the LAST person in the group I ever thought would trash me did it last year and I guess I’m not over it. Now they keep contacting me to do more of what we used to do but it got to be this cycle of her asking and then when I responded she’d come up with a reason why we couldn’t. Finally, I just quit responding. I don’t understand this thing of seeking me out to set something up just to make excuses and not do it. That takes emotional energy too.

Now I bring this up because both of them seem to be running on the “it’s just the flu” attitude and I wonder if that isn’t what is wrong with a good portion of people on the planet who don’t get it right now. Both of these people also suffer from a myriad of lifestyle-induced illnesses and will regale you with tales of how their health crisis nearly killed them. I think there is just a breed of person who has lived on this planet in a state of outward ineptitude and cultivated helplessness and used it as trade goods for getting the things they think they want. My new weakness is I just don’t have the energy to put up with that right now.

So, there’s the set dressing for what comes next, I reached out to other people, strangers who are also hunkering down and have met some pretty interesting and insightful folks. My anxiety about this is it will all end when everybody is “cured” and life snaps back into whatever it was supposed to be before all hell broke loose. I’ll risk that if it gets us all through the stuff right now. I think the idea of going back to school for a Master’s is pretty much dead in the water until 2022 and so I’ll settle for just trying to be a thoughtful human being reaching out to other thoughtful human beings for as long as it lasts.

So here was an odd response from one person (another who actually sought me out) for these “mental vacations” and then got bored when (I’m guessing) it took a little effort. They sent me a Christmas card and told me I deserved better than they could offer. Weird message, strange format. I read “you are awfully nice so piss off because I really don’t have time for that.” Now that is not what they said but it sure sounded like a sugar-coated version of the same. “Merry Christmas, happy new year GTFO.” I’m not actually mad or hurt at this response just puzzled. Human beings can just be so damn weird. My brothers behave like this too and I think it has more to do with their misadventures with their mother than anything I have ever done. I just need some intelligent interaction and my standards aren’t particularly high but I’m not tuned into the trailing ends of what some people mean when they say they want to discuss “X”. “X” could be anything from “I really like to talk about myself and my fascination with widgets” to ” I had a transient good idea and thought I’d get somebody else involved but now I’ve forgotten what it was.”

I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about something that needs to be shoved into the paper shredder. I really love my effin paper shredder. If it could fetch a ball I think we’d go for long walks together.