Boy, scheduling a simple get together with friends as an adult sure is stressful. Getting easier, though, and I’d say that’s progress. And progress will be today’s check-in theme.
Okay, where am I at today? I talked in recent posts about having some fitness progress (check this out, I’m linking! – 1, 2, 3), and I’m very happy about that.
I’ve also made some progress on my schooling, though I don’t yet have anything to really show for it. Not having anything to show for it is starting to drag on me a bit, but conversations with friends, family, and former colleagues have bolstered my resolve. All of the classes I’m taking now are self-paced, which is great, but I don’t know how long I should be taking to complete a class. I did do a check on my progress against the benchmarks of those conversations and it seems both that I’m doing just fine and also like it hasn’t been as long as I’ve thought, especially given that I’ve ended up restarting some of them. My CS50x progress is by far the furthest behind, but for some reason, I’m not at all bothered by that. For that class specifically, I don’t care if it takes me the whole rest of the year to finish. That being said, we are about halfway through October now, and I am starting to feel a little nervous that I won’t make even that extremely lax goal. Is it extremely lax? I guess not terribly, it is supposed to be a very challenging class even for the smartypants folks at an Ivy League school, and I’m a 40-something dumbdumb, so I think that’s fine.
I have turned in a first attempt on the second essay in my English Comp class. I don’t remember if I mentioned that already or not, sorry if I have. It came out as a B, which if all I wanted was to speed through this class and grab a win, I think I’d be happy with that. I’m really starting to feel like I should have taken this one as an in person class, though. I’m increasingly interested in writing as a hobby and also feel stronger about its importance in all of my potential professional futures, so I think I really need a strong foundation to build on. That being said, I’m not changing classes now. Instead, I’m going to try and get the absolute most that I possibly can out of the class that I’m taking. To do that, I’m going to revise my first attempt and try to turn that into an A on the second. The feedback I got on the paper feels pretty useful, and I’m sure by just paying attention and applying it, an A will be well within my grasp. The process of revision is feeling less and less difficult already, so you know, that seems good.
Stats still feels like I’m going too slowly, but after some review, it actually seems like I’m going at a pretty good pace. I may even be going pretty quickly, which is kinda nuts. Everything else including both Econ’s are kinda on pause for the time being, which makes me a little anxious, but otherwise feels perfectly fine. I think that’s actually the right move for now.
Some of my current set of hobbies got a little pushed aside, but only just a little. Due to some logistics, my workbench is a bit of a clutter right now, which has slowed down my work on the bass kit I started a few weeks ago. Did I mention that? I don’t think I did. I should probably make a post about that. My sketching slowed, but didn’t stop, and I’ve started sketching for a little future paint practice, which should be fun. My solo-journaling RPG adventure isn’t going as planned, but it is continuing to inch forward. I’m also extremely close to finishing Anna Karenina, which I’m very excited for. I occasionally make progress in my music playing, make only the tiniest progress in my music writing, and am not getting nearly enough music listening in. I’ve had some cooking wins that I should really capture at some point, but that would be yet another project, and I just have too many as it is.
Socially, I’ve been trying to get my head around more and more of the things that I just don’t engage in but really need to. This might actually be the hardest part for me. With friends and family, I think I’m really doing quite good. Just talking and opening up has been good, as has the other side of that portion of good friendship – shutting the fuck up and listening. It’s a little surprising just how selfish and closed off I must have been for so long that I find myself constantly surprised at what those closest to me are up to. What a shithead I’ve been. Anyway, it continues to be awesome to reconnect with those closest to me.
On a less sunshine and roses note, I found myself tearing up the other night trying to think through my many piss-poor romantic decisions and how I feel like I’ve left myself in a real romance ditch. I’m honestly not sure how to fix that, or if I even can. I feel somewhat broken as a person, and as I rebuild myself, I do feel like I’m beginning to have some bits of good to add to a relationship. So that’s a plus, I guess. But I still can’t see a woman at all finding me attractive. That’s a real bummer thought, sorry. It was not my intention to send you to the bummerzone, but it is something that I think about and I’ve decided to talk about it. And if you are in the bummerzone, please let me help you get out of there. I am fine, truly, I am not on an emotional island or beginning some fatalistic cope. Look – I have been in relationships before, and I was able to get laid even when I was very, very overweight and clearly not taking care of myself. I’m not that worried about going through the rest of life entirely unsexxed, okay? I’m certain that there is a woman somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic that would be down to clown. It has been absolutely far too long, which is rough, but this is at least in part because I no longer want to just cat around like I did in my late 20s/early 30s. It feels kinda gross for me now. That’s not a judgement, by the by, you do you. But in my current place in life, I don’t think I just want to smash and move on. Such an uplifting way to talk about this… anyway, I’d much rather find a woman that I think is very cool and who is also well into my particular brand of lonely. Maybe we’ll actually want to spend extended periods of time together, but that seems like a lot right now.
I think between that last paragraph and this upcoming one, I’m about to sound fully serial killer. I think there’s a fair chance noone would actually think that without me calling attention to it, as a chronic over thinking, I still want to try and head some of that off at the pass here: I don’t think of people as just objects or of real life stuff as video game pickups. I’m not a tech-dweeb who thinks of everyone else as NPCs, you dig? I say that in worry that what I’m about to say is going to sound like I’m filling up an experience meter… so here’s that: I think I want to approach this in the same way as the handful of things in my life that are good and/or improving. And that way is as a sort of project of improvement. Actually, you know what? New paragraph.
That was the cringe part, hopefully it came off less so than I feel like it might have… I don’t know, I think that study isn’t really what I’m going for here. That also seems like a bad way to treat fellow humans, but in a way it also seems like what we all should do. Like we should be paying attention to all of the people that are in our lives already, and in caring about and for them, we should get a better idea of how to be a decent person in general. Then through that, you can be better at your part of a romantic relationship as well. As for ever feeling attractive again, I think all of the other stuff that I’m doing will suffice. You know: improve my health, work on my education/career, tune up my fashion, and be a better friend/family member. It seems like working on those would equate to me being a less shitty version of myself, and a less shitty version of myself would be someone that a woman I find attractive would find attractive… back… me… I don’t know how to write this sentence, I got lost around the end there. Was there a coherent point? Well whatever, I’m working on those anyway, so that seems like a decent plan.
Alright, it’s later than I wanted to be working on this, and this post is far longer than I intended anyway. But I’m not going to cut any of it because it is all stuff that I want to talk about. Plant a flag in the current position of my life, so to speak. I have, I think, a busy(ish) couple of weeks coming up, but I’ll still try to get a couple posts in here and there. That’s it for today, so keep it easy.