enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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A little bit of stupidity and distraction.

Well, today it felt like spring. All day I had trouble focusing - I mean, really focusing on work - as I wanted to be outside. But my horoscope for this week told me to focus on finding myself instead of on worldly success, so I obeyed!

About mid-afternoon my mother emailed me to tell me that my step-grandmother had died. It was completely expected; she was old, had had many strokes and was about to be put into long-term care; and I didn't really know her. It was the kind of death that you call peaceful and merciful. My step-father had a nice day with her last Sunday. His dad is very elderly and has been caring for her, which he really couldn't handle. She was deteriorating rapidly. So I will send a card to my step-father's father and will send some flowers perhaps with my mother to the small, private family service that will happen next week. I wouldn't have minded going, but I don't have much connection with my step-father's Canadian family and the funeral is far away and so my mother didn't encourage it.

I was thinking about her life, however, and it was helpful that my mother reminded me that she and her husband had traveled quite a bit on the sailboat that they had owned for many years. I had forgotten that it was from his dad that my step-father got his love of sailing. In case I haven't mentioned it, however, my mother married my step-father the year before I left for university.

The deceased was a war bride; she and S. were married for 68 years. Sixty-eight years! He was a Canadian soldier who met her when she was 19, I believe, in Hastings, rather near where Anna lives in England. My step-father was born in Hastings, which is why I know his relatives who live near there, as when I ran in London a few times they were always excited to see me there.

Anyhow. So I walked out of work for a bit and thought about how incredible it is to have lived with the same person for 68 years. Mind you, it didn't make me want the same. Lately I've been realizing on a deep level that the best we can do is to be ourselves. I want to be EB and no one else. Accepting EB as she is, unadulterated, means accepting that she's not really the partnering-up type. It will take someone very unusual to attract or compel me into any longterm union. And really, I don't mean this as a compliment to me or to suggest that other people aren't good enough for me. It's just that other people crowd me. I need someone who can leave me be.

Many people don't want to be free. The woman who died, for example, liked to keep her territory small. She and her husband had lived together for nearly seventy years, as near as I can tell, in a small apartment. They played bridge and watched Coron@tion Str33t together. They had two kids. I don't know if they raised the kids in an apartment. I seem to remember that maybe they lived with his mother in a small bungalow, as she had been widowed quite young. My step-father was always closer to his grandmother than to his mother. The couple sailed on a boat together as empty-nesters. She nagged him a lot. This used to bug my step-father a great deal, as he adores his dad.

That's the thing about a life: it's complicated. No one is all sugar and spice. Even from one day to the next, a person is a confluence of moods and health state and perception. It's normal not to be likeable all of the time. Thinking about someone who went through the war and then moved to another country to make a life...well that fills me with something nearing only compassion, which probably shows that I'm finally growing up a bit. Personality is only one part of the equation. I think I kind of get it now, and I feel sorrow for S. for his loss.

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Well, anyhow. I wasn't proud of my work effort today. I wasn't proud of my panicking yesterday. Do you know what? I stayed late last night and before I left work I emailed the consulting econometrician in Montreal with my solution to the problem that I was panicking about...and I got an email this morning telling me that this was a perfect solution. So there I was worrying for nothing. Really makes you wonder about the waste of energy.

So...I should get off the computer. I've gone for a run with C. and he is now at home preparing dinner for his girlfriend. I am perfectly happy - thrilled, in fact - to be alone. I am going to pop out and buy a nice little bottle of white wine and will prepare a yummy meal. Being a lone wolf is greatly underrated at times. Phew - I love it. I can't exactly explain why, but after the last few months of considering it a possibility to be otherwise, I am so over dudes.

Let us refer to TS El!ot:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

ACK! PS I cleaned my office today and it looks marvelous. I found one of my favourite "inspirational" pieces on focus, when so doing. I greatly recommend it. It helped me a great deal in focusing on my work a couple of years ago, when I was very anxious.
It was timely to happen upon it anew today: Pitching with Purpose

XOXO

7:23 p.m. - 2010-03-19

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