It may or may not be my imagination but the lady at the flower shop seems to be getting prettier in the last few weeks.
Dude,
That's nature's way of telling you that you need to take care of something by hand. The reservoir is full and needs to be drained. Clarity of thought will return.
Experiencing a lot of stress lately and not dealing with it well. My sleep has been way off and there have been a couple of long nights with a bottle of wine that were much longer than appropriate.
I wish that there was someone I could talk stuff out with but there isn't. S23 does not engage on anything that isn't positive or is complex and doesn't involve him. Just like his mother.
It's not so much that I miss my ex as an individual, but there's an empty spot where I could really use some support right now. A good friend of mine at work has noticed my distraction and stress and is very concerned. I'm not sure that he can help but he means well.
I feel overwhelmed by what I need to get through in the next 6 months or so. Not from a purely professional point of view. What's required of me there is relatively trivial. It's navigating what to do about life and career. I'm doing my best to not make any rash choices. I have to make a decision about one of my pensions before the end of August and while I'm pretty sure I know what I want to do, I'm waiting.
I also need to decide where to hook my chariot. I'm at our acid plant today which is located close to home, has some great people here and perhaps has some scope for me longer term. It would mean switching career path a bit becoming more general admin / management / jack of all trades. The future just seems like an uncertain blurry place where I don't know where I want to go or what I want to do. It's almost like being back in my "phantom cyclist" days but with much less terror and angst.
I believe that I have 6-8 months before I really need to make a choice. In fact if I left early it would leave the transition team in a bit of a lurch since I know where most of the bodies are buried having placed them myself. They would manage though without me.
I'm also more seriously looking at finally starting to date. There really is nothing holding me back other than perhaps the work uncertainty and S23 living with me. Would it add stress or help with it? It would certainly be something else that I could focus on and be a positive something else.
Hopefully my vacation week next week will allow some of this to drain out and sort out. I'm planning on working around the house and relaxing combined with digging in to the job search things some more. There's a networking event on the Thursday that a friend gave me a ticket for that I probably should go to as well.
On another topic - I was reading on another forum when a light suddenly went on. I remember back in the day holding on to the crumb of hope that since my ex had left so much stuff at the house that she doubted her path / was uncertain / yadda yadda yadda.
I realized that what was more likely the case was that she was intentionally keeping me stuck. There seems to be a common thread where the one spouse thinks that it's perfectly ok for "them" to have extra lovers and explore their options but that it's not OK for the LBS to do that in their mind. I remember on the one temp-check mentioning to my ex that I was considering dating and her response was a sad "I wouldn't blame you". The double-standards and sense of entitlement are just still jaw-dropping.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
I feel overwhelmed by what I need to get through in the next 6 months or so. Not from a purely professional point of view. What's required of me there is relatively trivial. It's navigating what to do about life and career. I'm doing my best to not make any rash choices. I have to make a decision about one of my pensions before the end of August and while I'm pretty sure I know what I want to do, I'm waiting.
Andrew,
I have those occasions when I avoid certain things (tasks and decisions) because I feel overwhelmed or uncertain about how to move forward. Procrastination is a strange beast; it can provide a mental break in the present but it's almost always at the expense of additional future anxiety.
My old-fashioned remedy is to write down everything that needs to be done, including decisions that have to be made, and rank order the list. Then, I get off my duff and start getting things done. The hard part is getting started, after that, momentum helps push you forward. I always feel great after a day of productivity. Just keep pounding away at the obstacles and you'll feel better.
My sock and cutlery drawers are things of legend. Epic poems have been written about them.
I have one tidy stack of identical black socks, and one similar stack of nearly identical white socks sub-sorted by whether they have a small red stripe on them. I have two pairs of exciting socks for special occasions which have their own drawer. Pocket handkerchiefs and underwear are similarly arranged although I do not own any underwear that could be considered particularly exciting.
My cutlery is neatly arranged by pattern and utility all facing the same way and those items that stack are indeed stacked. When the real-estate agent came through the house last fall she had to resist the urge to shake the drawers. She did however, formally and in writing request in advance that I wear pants during the tour.
As my ex-wife used 3 of the 4 dressers including the larger ones, the larger closet and a wardrobe in the hallway for her "stuff" not to mention the piles that were all over the house I currently have a lot of flexibility in storage. Perhaps something to add to my online dating profile if I ever do get the courage to un-hide it.
You are right on track with the idea of lists. I am overwhelmed by the single imponderable question of what to do with the rest of my life and how to pay my bills and achieve happiness in what time is left to me on this earth. I perhaps need to break that down into a longer list of more ponderable questions. I did win $2 on a lottery ticket that I checked this morning. I'll need to consider where to invest that. It takes $3.45 to buy a tray of a dozen cookies.
I did just check and yes am indeed wearing pants as well as my safety shoes - the latter being required to be allowed on site at this particular plant. I am unsupervised and do worry about making poor choices. Having a very controlling wife for more than half my life will do that to a man I suppose.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
One thing that's hard when a marriage ends is that you are used to hashing out these decisions with your spouse as a sounding board (at least I was). Fortunately for me I have a best friend who has really taken that role for me in most areas. It's not quite the same but at least I have someone to talk to about it.
When you're young, there's a perception of a lot of runway ahead of you, and thus you feel like you can totally screw up and still recover. As you get older, there's less runway so you constrain a lot of your wants and desires to fit the shorter runway. I think the perception of constraints on the possibilities that life has to offer is probably one of the biggest factors in the mix of things that create depression in the more mature crowd. Just as a mental exercise, you should let go of all of the constraints that you put on yourself and consider what you do with your life if you could simply choose where you'd be and what you'd be doing for the rest of your life.
About ten years ago I decided to do something, it had to do with my finances, and afterward, I'd regretted doing it. I beat myself up over that decision on a regular basis over those ten years. You know what? On mediation day, it turned out that was one of the best decisions I'd ever made. The point is that the randomness of life can be both terrifying and awesome. You can make what seems to be a good decision today and it could kill you tomorrow. You just have to embrace what you're given and make the best of it; the alternative is to be miserable all of the time.
Easier said than done. Add on to that the "operating without a net" and it becomes problematic at least for me.
I may get called out on this, but I think that those who were abandoned after 4 or 5 years can face things much differently than those like me who had more than 1/2 their life invested in a relationship. In less than a month it will have been 30 years since we first met and became inseparable. "Barnacle Bride" are the words that just floated through my head.
If she had died it would be different but I continue to have very real financial obligations to a woman who is not there to support me. It svcks but that's what it is. Not that I wish she were dead but the moving on part is certainly cleaner I would expect. I know that you are still doing co-parenting which I don't (more or less). The emotional attachment is pretty minimal at this point but that's because there is no interaction at all and hasn't been for a very long time.
There are sometimes simplistic answers - but implementing them on a human life is beyond my skills to do in a simple fashion.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
My wife and I were together of over 18 years. Then I became like Bruce Jenner's appendage - unwanted. I was hacked-up and turned into a...
Wait! That's a terrible metaphor.
I think we need to meetup at Margaritaville. It's in the tropics somewhere between the Port of Indecision and Southwest of Disorder, but no parallels of latitude or longitude mark the spot exactly.
I think we need to meetup at Margaritaville. It's in the tropics somewhere between the Port of Indecision and Southwest of Disorder, but no parallels of latitude or longitude mark the spot exactly.
I'll be the man wearing a bow tie and carrying a jug of maple syrup.
Pants are optional in Margaritaville I believe?
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
