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Aug. 29th, 2004 07:31 pmThe games last night and this morning went off fine, and otherwise it has been an uneventful day. Managed to do some laundry and clean a bit, but I've generally spent my afternoon slacking. Work this week will be odd with most of my team in London. There were a few fires starting on Friday, so hopefully they won't be totally out of control when I'm the only one on watch.
Called Andrea just to say hi and see how she was doing. She is terrible about responding to e-mail, and we seem to touch base like once every six months or more. Sounds like she is doing well at Intel, is enjoying her house, and working on dealing with her depression proactively. I'm reminded how much I miss her and the silly conversations we have on all sorts of topics, her little quirks of personality that I find so endearing. Our relationship never had a chance in hell with the history we both brought and the reality of our career needs at the time, and I'm well aware of the crappy way things came to a close between us. Still, there are people you meet in life that find their way into your heart, and you never stop being fond of them. Andrea is definitely one of those people for me.
I try not to dwell on regrets and the sense of loss, which frankly is mostly so intense because of the emotional history that lead me to this point in my life. I choose to move to Seattle rather than just show up on Andrea's doorstep in Portland and hope for the best. I choose to hang onto Kim for years and let the pain consume my life in Austin, despite the utter waste of it. I choose to leave my marriage and focus on healing my own emotional damage. If my life now is often lonely and difficult, I have no one to blame for it but me. Still, it is a far sight better now than it was, and for that I'm grateful.
Andrea said one issue she has discovered about herself is that she made many choices based on the belief that if you do everything "right", things will work out and you'll be happy. I made many choices myself on the belief that if I tried hard enough, things would turn out how I wanted them to be. The truth of life is that you don't have the ability to make that happen, at least not always. Some things don't work out despite one's best efforts, and perhaps we sabotage them trying too hard to make them work. That lesson goes hand-in-hand with becoming an adult, which is not always a fun process. I don't think being a responsible adult requires acquiescing to depression and disappointment, but it does require learning how to move on. That is definitely something I continue to struggle with day to day.
Called Andrea just to say hi and see how she was doing. She is terrible about responding to e-mail, and we seem to touch base like once every six months or more. Sounds like she is doing well at Intel, is enjoying her house, and working on dealing with her depression proactively. I'm reminded how much I miss her and the silly conversations we have on all sorts of topics, her little quirks of personality that I find so endearing. Our relationship never had a chance in hell with the history we both brought and the reality of our career needs at the time, and I'm well aware of the crappy way things came to a close between us. Still, there are people you meet in life that find their way into your heart, and you never stop being fond of them. Andrea is definitely one of those people for me.
I try not to dwell on regrets and the sense of loss, which frankly is mostly so intense because of the emotional history that lead me to this point in my life. I choose to move to Seattle rather than just show up on Andrea's doorstep in Portland and hope for the best. I choose to hang onto Kim for years and let the pain consume my life in Austin, despite the utter waste of it. I choose to leave my marriage and focus on healing my own emotional damage. If my life now is often lonely and difficult, I have no one to blame for it but me. Still, it is a far sight better now than it was, and for that I'm grateful.
Andrea said one issue she has discovered about herself is that she made many choices based on the belief that if you do everything "right", things will work out and you'll be happy. I made many choices myself on the belief that if I tried hard enough, things would turn out how I wanted them to be. The truth of life is that you don't have the ability to make that happen, at least not always. Some things don't work out despite one's best efforts, and perhaps we sabotage them trying too hard to make them work. That lesson goes hand-in-hand with becoming an adult, which is not always a fun process. I don't think being a responsible adult requires acquiescing to depression and disappointment, but it does require learning how to move on. That is definitely something I continue to struggle with day to day.
