The other I had partially written in my head was to a friend I've been on complicated terms with for a few weeks. Every couple of days, I get the sense that I should e-mail her, and, while I'm not around a computer, I start to piece it together in my mind. But when I start to write it, I feel overwhelmed with this moody misanthopy that's been pervading my life lately, and I don't feel like spilling my guts about all the thoughts that have been on my mind lately-- when I examine it closely, I suppose that I'm bitter and hurt over everything that has been happening between us, how I've been left second-guessing the importance of our friendship, how there have been walls built in terms of our communication. I don't know if I'm currently "allowed" to see her, and, what bothers me most, I don't know if our relationship will ever be back to normal. Even the decisions she's made which I logically respect I can't help but be bitter and insecure over-- by their very nature, they leave me unable to know what the likelihood of things being normal in our future is.
It's bothersome that I have to be cryptic about these things, but, as I said earlier, I've matured a bit. I'm sick of the backlash this blog brings. That's why I haven't written. But I realized tonight, gradually, that this is what I needed. Needed to write out my thoughts-- those of them that can be shared-- but not to someone who won't respond or to someone who can't return my degree of openness. Just to the world. Just for myself. For the sake of being a writer, or because I am.
Things with another friend have compounded my insecurities relating to the first. (Second, I suppose, if you count the guy who wouldn't have e-mailed me back.) I'm sick of the confusion here, and I think I can safely say that this one is Jeremey. Jeremey's always been a core person to me. He's always been one of the people that I love, and that I know I always will love and, with whom, I feel like my relationship is non-negotiable. (The other core people, in terms of friends, are Elorza, Jeff, and Emily, to be clear.) I get the sense, however, that Jeremey isn't really in on the mutuality of this the way the others are-- Elorza, Jeff and Emily, I feel like they know that this is the status of things whether or not we're talking regularly, whether or not I've seen them, whether or not we are, in any given month, a vital part of that person's "right now" life. They don't require a lot of upkeep, and they know that they can find me when they need me, or want me-- I expect that they understand that things between us are fairly unconditional, in the long run. But I don't get that sense with Jeremey. I feel like Jeremey sees me as a coming and going friend, more or less-- he has referred to me as one of his oldest friends, so I get that he gets the sense of continuity, but I feel like, in the days and weeks and months that we go without being a day-to-day part of each other's lives, I'm just not that important to him, and I expect he assumes that, in those times, he's not that important to me.
He hasn't said anything to that effect recently, but he has in the past. It leaves me insecure and wondering.
Earlier, when I was at work, I was thinking that I needed to make a list of my goals, and then devise a system to make sure that I work on them all, a little bit at a time, on a weekly basis. My idea was evolving from the earliest point of making a list of, I dunno, five or so activities with corresponding timeframes of anywhere between 10-30 minutes, and then charting to make sure I did at least three of them a day, at least five days a week. The early idea was that those things should be exercise, meditation, french practice, art, and then something else...maybe writing, maybe music, something like that. But as I thought about it, the system became more and more complicated. It came to involve things that i should do but not necessarily on the same vein of personal enrichment-- cleaning, budgeting-- and then there's this whole question of sex-- is it on the list? Do I mandate how many times a week it happens, or should I be mandating how many times a week I'm working towards better sex in some way? Then there was the question of whether I should be tallying these things per day, as I first mentioned, or if there should be, instead, a minimum amount of time spent on each activity per week. (The thing about that last arrangement that I don't like is that it hypothetically allows me to do things like write, exercise and practice french only once a week for a long period of time, which is not particularly conducive to progress, nor does it lend itself to habit-forming.)
Then I started to think about categories, perhaps. Maybe "Creative", "Exercise", "Obligatory" and "Sexual", and I have to do a minimum of two hours per week on each, or something along those lines? Maybe Sex and Exercise should be combined into one category called "Body"...or maybe creative should be divided down into "Music", "Writing" and "Art." Maybe from there it becomes a matter of subcategories, and I can't totally avoid any one subcategory for more than two weeks....
See, I'm desperately over-thinking what was supposed to be a fairly simple system for spending more time doing self-improving things, as opposed to sitting around in boredom, hating myself for al the things that I did not accomplish that day. One thing is for sure-- I need to break down my aspirations into achievable little chunks, so that, even if I am not in the mood to exercise, learn a language or fine-tune my drawing skills, I feel like it's possible to just "get it over with" so that I can go back to wasting my life. Whether or not I go back wasting my life after I start one of these activities is entirely the business of my future self.
On with it.
