Jumblies

I just started crying watching the wedding scene in 'Muppets Take Manhattan'.  The lyrics are 'She only knows he'll make her happy.'  <Sniff, sniff.  bursts into tears>  I guess part of me DOES want to get married.  To Kermit the Frog, my dream guy!

I hope everyone had happy holidays.  My Christmas was overall pretty quiet.  I have some kind of a flu that doesn't look like much- I'm not coughing or sneezing.  I'm just head-achy and need to sleep a lot.  I'm getting bored from being home so much, but if I try to do things I feel weak.

Small Christmas incident.  My mom still does stocking stuffers for her kids and now their spouses.  I got two chocolate Santas in my stocking and wondered if I'd accidentally gotten someone else's.  No, apparently they came in packs of six.  "And you won't get stuff from your partner and your siblings do, so I gave you the extra."  Thanks, mom.   Thanks for reminding me.

I've seen Walrus twice.  We went out for sushi and I went to his parents' open house.  It's still the same story.  There's still touching, just at the edge of what's considered platonic.  At times I look at him and feel a rush of affection, and sometimes it's almost an aversion.  He got me a nice Christmas present, although I suspect his mother had a lot to do with it.

I told my friend in the north about the situation; I was afraid to because she got so angry at him when we broke up.  She was pretty calm, but she said, "He's convenient and he's the devil you know.  How much is that part of the appeal?"  She also said the problem with "friends with benefits" is that sex releases chemicals to make you like your partner more- so that you'll be a mating pair if there are offspring.

Alright, alright.  I never said it was a good idea.  Besides, it's not going to happen.  Much better to put effort into finding the real thing.

Since I'm pretty much couch-bound with this flu, I've been thinking about my New Year's resolutions/life goals.

I read this book called 'Making a Living While Making a Difference'  and there were two things I took from it.  It said that small changes in your routine can make a big difference to everything in your life.  A new job changes the people you're surrounded with, your daily rhythm, where you go and what you see....
I thought about choir and what a difference it made in just a year, and only 90 minutes a week.  And some of my volunteering things that I've stuck with have brought me new friends and new skills and new opportunities.
So that really cheered me up.  I could probably fit in another club or activity into my schedule and reap the benefits.  Way better than time spent on Pinterest!

The other thing it suggested was to gather together people who know you and who do work you admire.  Have them look at your resume, where you've applied, the skills you have, etc.  They as a group can offer suggestions about how to get you doing the work you want to be doing.  I'm not sure if I know people who would want to come to a meeting like that for me, (and my house is so messy!) but I can start asking people for their opinions and advice individually.  (And for dating advice, I have this blog!)

I hesitate so much.  I really like to think through my ideas and then tell someone.  I kinda need someone to tell me, "Yeah, go do that.  Go be awesome."

My dreams are getting so small.  Get a job that's not horrible.  Move out.  Date.  Those aren't dreams!  Those are the basic stuff of life.  But they seem so unreachable at times that anything bigger seems impossible.

Here's the thing.  I'm sorta interested in cob building and started looking around for some workshops in my area.  I found a really hippie place about two hours away that offers a 2 or 4 month internship in the summer.  It's not really an internship, since you have to pay, but you live on site and construct a small building, learn about composting toilets and building code and a whole bunch of technical stuff.  If you do the longer internship you actually become a certified builder, although I'd have to look into it more to know what that really means in the real world.

It's really caught hold of my imagination.  I want to live sustainably- why not go all out?  Why not do something adventurous, something to really get me out of my rut, out of my comfort zone.  I'm an artist and I might be really good at it, since the shapes are organic and often decorated with bas-relief sculpture.
The cost:  $3500-$4200.  Yikes.  I could travel for that, I could volunteer in Africa.  I do have that much money in savings, but is that a responsible thing to do at this point in my life?  I can only gamble on the potential benefits...I don't know if I'd get a chance to use these skills in the urban area I live in, even though there is a growing interest even here.

If I stay here I'd probably end up teaching art at a kids' summer camp.  I've done my share of those!  But it's income earned, instead of savings spent.  But maybe there wouldn't be a better time for me to do this, I have no apartment to sublet, no strings of any kind except for my dog.

Partly it's the practical considerations and partly it's the hippyness of it.  I have never been able to go very far outside the mainstream, and I'm an artist!  People expect artists to be larger than life; it's part of what they give them money for.

I don't have to decide yet.  It's close enough that I can visit the place for a weekend and see if I can picture myself there all summer.

There were so many more resolutions and goals for this year I won't go into...but since this is sorta a dating blog, my general philosophy about dating is that I should work on creating my life the way I want, and being the real cool person I want to be.  If a concern for the environment is pretty high on my list of 'Musts' for my potential life partner, then I'm going to volunteer with environmental groups so I meet these types of people.  They don't seem to be on OKCupid!  Internet dating is fine, I'm not going to delete my profile, but I'd rather put it on hold for a while.  Maybe in a few months (when there's new fish in the pond) I'll make an effort to contact 5 people, or ask my friends to set me up, or whatever I need to do to start dating.  I'm obviously thinking about it day and night so maybe I won't last that long, but meanwhile time is passing and I'm moping around not working.