A bit of advice I got from the female half of this pair, as we talked for some time about love and relationships and such: If you find somebody who can actually put up with your bullshit, hang on for dear life.

Could be the answer's that simple after all, huh?

Well, CG and I are still learning to put up with one another's bullshit. After we spent Wednesday night together, we had a bit of a spat Thursday morning as I was leaving, which kind of resulted in my not calling that night when I'd said that I would. I also didn't answer my own phone when she called later that night, after having gone out with friends. The missing component in all of this is that I did and still do have many things to do, many other things that require my rapt attention other than her. Anyway, when we saw each other Friday she'd decided that we should step our relationship down a notch, take it somewhat less seriously before we blew it altogether. Made sense to me.

Since then, in short, we've been dealing with my slackass attempts to organize my time so that I can actually accomplish all the work that's hanging over my head waiting to squish me, and her apparently feeling like my time is only seperated into want to see her/don't want to see her categories. I did point out to her, as she was losing her temper yet again yesterday because I was saying I had to get some things done, that these things really were not about her. She didn't seem to dig that at the time, but she did call back to apologize a bit later. And if you wonder why she's apologizing, that would be because she yells at me like I'm an 8 year old when I'm trying my hardest to reason with her. Different communication styles, yes.

Also, if you wonder how I saw my friends when I didn't have time to see her, it's because they called at about 11 p.m. when frankly I'd gotten tired after all day of nose-to-grindstone, and I was actually very happy to get the chance to see them without having to arrange permission with someone first. I mean, part of where I hadn't seen them in so long is that I've typically had an extremely flexible schedule, so I was easily available if I wanted to be whenever they found themselves with free time. Now, as I say, my "free time" is carved out of why don't you want to see me? time.

So, if I have not already made my point painstakingly enough clear, I will reiterate: People in relationships are boring. Why? Apparently because the bulk of their energy and attention goes into the relationship. We see it reflected in online diaries, do we not? There's single people who can have a million things going on in their lives, even a million things stressing them out, and they will still find time and thought to post regularly. Those same people find a SO, and soyonara to reflective time to write about whatever springs to mind for no other reason than because they want to.

It certainly has occurred to me that, should CG and I move in together as we've discussed doing, I won't be updating anywhere as frequently as my own sad present record shows. After all, despite the fact that I have apparently been anonymous enough overall to have no correlation between those who know me here and those who know me in "real life", I'm pretty sure CG would throw a hissyfit and kill me, then herself, should she ever discover that I've an online journal. Well actually, I think the real killer would be what I've said, regardless of whether it's online or not. Which, you know, to me just means she doesn't need to read it. But of course, if she knew it existed, she'd have to expend every energy to finding it and analyzing the hell out of it...

So in the interests of remaining anonymous, Kim, I'm going to go ahead and continue to play vague with the age I'll be hitting this week, as well. Not too vague, because it's not really like I'm trying to hide it: If we say I'm in my "early thirties" this birthday, we can also say I've maybe only one or two more birthdays before I should say "mid thirties" ... well, something like that. Anyway, I've somehow gotten the impression my current city/state location would be the biggest clues as to how someone who knows me offline might stumble upon my diay online ... I certainly talk about both enough. So, I figure a couple of big hints are enough, right?

Anyhow whatever, I'm old to young people and still relatively young to old people, so I guess I'm at the perfect time to say age is just a number. I'm not gray or wrinkled yet, so I guess good enough...

And my one bit of advice, from the lofty height of my advanced age and wisdom? We're all more interesting as single people than as half of a couple. It's kind of like that idea that people let themselves go physically when they're in a relationship, except that it's letting themselves go personally.