the point

i tried sweet mustard the other day. twice. and horseradish sauce too. and other foods (like indian) / things that i "know" i already don't like. as well as new new things, or revisiting things i haven't done in years. like an irish boxty, an old fashioned, k1 racing, whiskey sours, karaoke, a ton of new restaurants, barley coffee, salsa and bachata dancing, etc. t made a comment about the sweet mustard, cause i was with her at the time. and quite easily i said "that was the whole point of breaking up." as if sampling condiments had anything at all to do with my relationship status.

but maybe it does. i mean, that *was* the point, no? i wanted something new and different and now i'm pushing myself into new territories. i'm obviously the same person but i do feel different. i think i'm more deliberate now. trying to actively remember things, enjoy things, be happy. i have a journal that i sort of write in every few weeks, hahah. but i do it with the intention of coming back to it years later and being able to remember that day.

i feel that a lot of my time with rip was wasted or lost. maybe it's how my memory works, but i don't remember the exact color of his eyes, his scent, or the sound of his voice, the lifts and elongations. i must have, when we first started out, lingered on his details but they're all lost to me now. that makes me incredibly sad. i know i would recognize him, immediately, subconsciously, but i can't now actively describe much beyond the generalizations. that's the problem too, i guess, with a "sudden" breakup. that you don't know *this* will be your last kiss, your last touch, your last gaze. we're still friends, thankfully, so i guess i could go about re-memorizing the little things about him. but it's different now. and it's fucked up to try to recreate those tender warm moments of being in love when you're no longer there.

game plans

if you could only ask one question to a fortune teller, what would it be?

j: what's her name?
me: what will be my greatest regret?

lol, boy did we go in opposite directions with our questions! j's is actually really really good and i'm pretty sure i'd include it my first 10 questions, if allowed that many. but our different approaches are interesting. he wants to know the future to be sure he doesn't miss it; i want to be able to avoid it. also, his is specific; mine is general.

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the other night, well after the museum of ice cream, we walked by pershing square and played on the jungle gym a bit. j observed that there are three types of people: the kind that climbs around it (as he did), the kind that goes thru it, and the kind that climbs to the top (me, duh). it's funny cause i didn't even think of what else to do; i saw something climbable and tall so i immediately went up. (i joked that maybe it's cause i'm short that i always like to get to the highest point.) j saw a challenge and took the longest path around it. and the kids that go thru, i dunno, they're the most efficient and maybe the least fun. it's "dangerous" to extrapolate about personality based on a single thing, but still, he had a pretty interesting observation.

half light

ignorance is bliss. curiosity killed the cat.  you hear these two all the time. but are they really true? and whether or not they are, does anyone care?

the weird thing about starting to date new people is that i had to decide what and how much i want to know. how many exes, people they've slept with, how many times they've been in love, are they still *in* love, what's their biggest self-identified weakness, when were they happiest, saddest, maddest, etc. with rip it was easy. i knew most everything about him. much of our history was the same since we had started dating so young and for so long. it felt good to be many of each other's firsts. you were secure in the knowledge that no matter if things ever became better with someone else, at the very least, you were there first. why that matters, i have no idea. but there's a lot to be said for security. and posterity, ha.

personally, with new people, i prefer not to know very much. it doesn't matter. i did ask how many, like, serious relationships. and if there was a theme to his breakups. i think that's probably a good question. i would want to know most if most of your breakups were because of cheating. especially if you've consistently been the cheater. o.0

but even new activities are a little weird. you could drive yourself crazy thinking too hard about if they've done with someone else what you guys are doing now. i've never really worried before about not measuring up to past significant others. i mean, sure, rip had alisa, but she was only one, and we moved passed that pretty quickly. anyway. new relationships, new territory. it's weird. feeling this stuff out for the first time in my life. navigating what most people had dealt with years and years ago.

bread crumbs

recently had someone online stalk me. she knew my instagram account and traced it back to my twitter. i wonder if she also found my fb. or even this blog?! anyway. weird stuff. for some reason i didn't feel terribly violated. i just accepted that, yeah, of course people can find me. it's all public. i don't privatize any of my accounts and i don't intend to either.

since then i haven't changed any of my posting habits. but i probably should, right? i mean, it is a little scary. i'm sure i've "accidentally" posted all kinds of info i shouldn't have. tho i guess the real question is, *what* kinds of info shouldn't you be posting? it's probably best not to post anything at all...

one thing i will be more careful of tho, is posting friends' names. i used to use first initials only and in the last few years have switched to first names. i won't be doing that anymore.

ps. i googled myself and found my old flickr account!!

non-fiction reasons why

omg this article: Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

honestly, i should OMGWTFBBQ this article spoke that much to me. you know that in the last couple years i've had more than a couple people tell me that i'm a robot. yes, they're joking. yes, i compute that. but still. it's true. i'm less emotional than before. not that that really bothers me (obviously). but *why* have i become less emotional?

i thought it was from some of the relationship stuff i went thru. protecting myself. and sure, that may still well be the case. but i totally think that me now exclusively reading non-fiction has totally contributed to me being more emotionally flat.

up thru high school, i read exclusively fiction. in college sometime i started discovered memoirs, notably katherine graham's personal history and queen noor al-hussein's leap of faith: memoirs of an unexpected life. after that i got into travel memoirs (bill bryson played a huge roll in that) and found the best american series by houghton mifflin harcourt, which turned me onto science reading.

about 5 years ago i switched to reading exclusively non-fiction. the last work of fiction i read was in september 2014 when i re-read the giver, because i had watched the movie and wanted to compare the two. before that it was august 2012 when i finished dave eggars' a heartbreaking work of a staggering genius, and started reading david foster wallace's infinite jest, which i never finished.

i don't feel like ive gone thru a transformation. and maybe it's not as dramatic as i make it sound. i dunno. i'll have to remember to ask rip one of these days. but anyway. recently i was thinking i should go back to reading fiction. not exclusively, but adding it in. the language in fiction writing strikes a chord in me non-fiction does not. reader, you'll have to let me know if you notice a difference. :)