Leaf on the Wind

AutumnLeaves said:
But I also love myself enough to recognize when something is going to be unhealthy for me.
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This is so important! I have so much respect for you Autumn! It takes strength to walk away from relationships that aren't healthy for us. It's not about judging or not loving the other person, it's about loving ourselves enough to do what's best for us :) It really sounds like you're in a better place emotionally now.
 
PinkPig said:
This is so important! I have so much respect for you Autumn! It takes strength to walk away from relationships that aren't healthy for us. It's not about judging or not loving the other person, it's about loving ourselves enough to do what's best for us :) It really sounds like you're in a better place emotionally now.
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Awwwww thanks! It only took about 6 years of living in a relationship with FirstFiance, who I loved but who was a bad fit for me mental-health wise, for me to realize that I need prioritize my own mental health. Because me being miserable (but for love!) is still me being miserable. And I don't feel that I'm able to offer my full potential to anyone when I'm miserable, much less reach my own full potential myself.

My bipolar diagnosis has really helped me organize things in my head. Unfortunately, a lot of the retrospective has come... in retrospect, after my relationship with Purr ended. I think I could have put a lot of what I've learned to some good use there.

But I am where I am now. There is only moving forward. Where I am now is not all sunshine and rainbows, but medication and counseling are making huge positive improvements in my life over where I was 6 months ago.

In other news, I got over myself about the 'feeling sorry for me don't want to message first all the time' thing and messaged some more this morning with OKC Woman, who I've decided to call Raven (because she identifies as a Ravenclaw, and that really seems to fit her personality). It turns out she's been sick and is trying to work from home. Oh, the parallels. Anyway, I've asked her out for coffee/bubble tea some time when we're feeling better, and she responded with a lot of positivity!

She's also trying to organize a regional polyamory group, and I've offered some suggestions about local locations that host other events groups, including the Steampunk group that is having a night coming up but that I haven't gone to in forever. Right now, the major poly group, which Spice and Raven's husband/Spicewife's boyfriend (henceforth dubbed Ravenhub) is a part of is based in a city that's about an hour and a half drive for me. But if there was a group based in Nearby City, it would only be about 30 minute of driving time, and that's a lot more doable for me.

Anyway, I'm interested and excited to explore this possible future connection. Not yet full on NRE, but I'm feeling optimistic about things. And I'm finally shaking this flu. Things are looking up.
 
My understanding is that you're asking if you're wrong to be a little frustrated that Guitarist is not paying much of anything right now, or to expect him to pay his own school loans. I said no, you're not wrong. And you seem to have corrected me that all my assumptions are wrong.

So I'm left wondering why you even asked. If you're happy supporting him, that's great. You just didn't sound terribly happy about it.
 
Aaaaaaah I think I see what happened there. You probably did some catch-up reading, some things struck you, and you posted about them. But for me these things and feelings happened months ago and a lot has shifted since then, so I was really confused about why you were bringing them up, and I responded with defensiveness. At least, that's what I think happened.

I'm feeling a lot less stress now that we are both on the same page that I'm not going to pay his student loans, which are back on deferment anyway, and now that he's holding up his end of the dishes/housework agreement again. We were both pretty depressed for a while there, so I was freaking out (as I tend to do when I'm depressed) and he was letting chores slide (like he tends to do when he's depressed).
 
It's going to be a busy week. I have counseling tonight, a hair cut and possibly attending a book signing tomorrow, meeting my writing buddy Thursday, and dinner with my parents one of the weekend days. Guitarist is seeing Spice on Wednesday.

Maybe it's good that I'm not trying to fit dates in yet because I might go insane.

As well as playing hours of Stellaris, I got a lot done this weekend, too. I finished my third full-length manuscript and used the post-book-finished high to send out a bunch of queries on another novel and apply for a writing retreat late this year.

My body hasn't yet adjusted back to its during-work sleep schedule, which requires going to bed and getting up earlier than I have been lately, so today is a super tired day for me. Back to work, I guess.
 
The book did not get signed. It ended up being an icy road mess yesterday so I just didn't go. I'm sure my mom will be happy with an unsigned book.

I can't remember what else I needed to do. Sooooo... no, probably not, to answer the question.

Tonight, I'm going to bake bread and give myself a pedicure while Guitarist is out with Spice. I'm thinking a couple of loaves of standard white. Maybe I'll try a braided loaf this time. Nothing with an egg wash, I don't know if we have enough eggs to last Guitarist until grocery shopping on Monday.

Means no pretzels. Boo.

Also I checked my checking account balance and yikes. I maybe got a little too into the holiday spirit. Well, that and my antivirus auto-renewed and I spent a lot on gas for getting places lately. And I maybe bought a couple... few... a few couple books. I'm glad I'm getting paid on Thursday because unless I want to dip out of my savings, I have to keep my expenses until then in the low double digits.

I filled my car up yesterday though so that should be easy enough.

Raven messaged me out of the blue yesterday and we chatted and it was OMG so nice. I may now be crushing a little. I hope we can get together some time soon. Stupid illnesses.
 
I have a couple poly crises taking place entirely in my head right now.

Crisis number one. Because of icy road conditions that Spice was more willing to drive on than Guitarist, Spice ended up coming over Wednesday night instead of him going over there. While she was over, I baked bread and did Netflix, as planned (no pedicure though because ew feet no), and when I offered Spice some bread, and mentioned that I'd appreciate it if she cut the loaf from the middle since I like to push the ends together to preserve moisture.

And then as they were lurking at the door as Spice was getting ready to leave I mentioned that I don't mind if they kiss in front of me. It was the first time that I was there in door-viewing zone while Spice was over by herself (sans Spicewife), and it looked like they were sort of awkward there, and I wasn't sure if it was out of concern for me, so I just wanted to make it clear that I didn't mind. And Guitarist made some comment and it turned into a whole mini-discussion of not hiding affection when I just meant it to be a polite poly thing.

But now I'm wondering if I stepped into couples privilege land with either thing. It's kind of driving me mad so I might bring text her an apology if it came off that way. But maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion in my mind and bringing it up will make it more of a thing than it is.

Second crisis. I've basically not logged back into OKC since Raven and I moved our chats to texts, and I'm a little worried that I might be unnecessarily limiting myself. I know that a lot of general dating advice is to not limit yourself, to keep looking. But my personal impulse is... fuck that. I want to see what this thing might be before I start looking for other possible things.

We still haven't actually hung out in person. Between illnesses that were like relay race partners and amazingly shitty weather and now an injury on Raven's part due to that same shitty weather, stuff just hasn't worked out that way.

There is a board game thing at Spice's tonight that she had been going to but now can't, and even if she WAS going, I'm not sure that's the WAY I'd like to meet her the first time. Maybe that's a little neurotic of me, though. Yay anxiety and related issues.

So anyway, sometimes I look at OKC and I just have no desire to open it. Not out of fear, but out of my interest just being on this possible thing with Raven. And then the little voice in my brain chimes in: but what if you're missing someone super amazing because you're pursuing this thing that isn't yet and might not ever BE a thing?

I tell that little voice to fuck right off because this is just how I do relationships, by exploring one thing at a time, but the voice is still there. Maybe that isn't as much a crises as it is an annoyance.

Isn't poly fun?
 
I think a lot of my little freakouts yesterday were anxiety about going to the party misplacing themselves onto other things. The couples privilege stuff wasn't too privilege-y I don't actually think. For instance, the bread thing is a ME thing and I phrased it that way, not a WE thing. And the kissing thing was privilege-y in the sense it was focused on my house and looking at it from the other side it could seem like a territorial thing (I don't mind if you kiss in front of me in MY HOUSE being how it quite possibly came off, though I meant it in the sense of I don't mind if you kiss in front of me because I don't want you to feel like you have to sneak around). I'm just going to try harder in the future not to do that.

Anyway, I texted with Raven yesterday, and we are definitely going out for a getting to know you at some point. She's the one who texted first, brought it up, and it very much felt like she wanted to nail it down so that she wouldn't miss an opportunity (even though we can't set a specific date yet because she has medical stuff that is uncertain in schedule coming up next week due to her injury).

I tend to not want to feel like I want a relationship or friendship more than the other person. It's been this way since basically forever, a holdover from being the uncool trailer park geek kid growing up, always trying to get 'in' with this or that crowd that didn't want me there, until I started hanging out with Irish and the rest of my guy friends in 8th grade. I really worry about digging someone more than they dig me and driving them off with my neediness. Which is why I'm a little leery of always being the one who texts first, always being the one who wants more dates, because to me it makes it seem like I want a relationship more than the other person. I do not want that power dynamic in my relationships. But the way things are playing out with Raven, though, makes it feel like that is not the way this is very much.

So I'm basically giving myself permission to feel a lot less cautious and a little more excited about this possible thing.

The game boarding party ended up going very well. We got to play a game of Betrayal, which remains my favorite game ever, and then also a couple games of 7 Wonders. I enjoyed how fast and dynamic 7 Wonders was. It was also an easy game to move into after Spicewife and her date showed up, when we had seven people. It's sometimes a little hard for a board game to move into the seven or eight people range, and it ended up being a quick, fun game. We also played another game whose title I can't remember, but it involved trivia and charades. That one ended up being fun, even though I am frankly very shitty at trivia, because the setup made it work out so that you had some idea of what the cards were by the time it got to the charades part.

Anyway, lots of fun was had. I'm glad I didn't let my anxiety about meeting a bunch of new people talk me into not going.
 
It has been an intensely busy week, and I suspect that I'm currently afflicted by PMS. I've had something every night this week, except tonight, and my weekend is also full. I'm protesting on Saturday and running my Deadlands game on Sunday. Even though I'm so tired of doing things, and also just a little crampy and feeling gross.

Guitarist is taking the dog to the vet today while I'm at work. She has a sore on her rear that I'm really worried about. It has just appeared in the past couple days at most, but she licks it constantly, and I just noticed it last night. I hope it's not an infection.

Worry in general is making it difficult to work today.

Flame posted something on Facebook about being single and that hurt. It's pretty clear that he's downgraded our long-distance thing in his mind to a non-thing. I think I'm okay with that, since he has definitely withdrawn lately. But I still would have appreciated some consideration there. Or talking about it at all.

Not that it's really shocking. We haven't had a solid talk since he moved out of his shitty living situation into his new place in December. I've been feeling less and less connected to him since we don't really talk anymore. And I had a realization while I was reading Luvvie Ajayi's book that he is a particular type of friend, the type that shows up when things are going poorly in his life, but ghosts on the connection when things are going well.

So I think I'm going to not worry about trying to get out there and just let that be what it will be: a long-term flirty friendship, but nothing more.

I'm still chatting regularly with Raven, but because of life, we still haven't worked it into seeing each other. She was at a poly meetup thing on Wednesday. It was after counseling, so I declined my invitation. The inauguration has been hanging over my head like a toxic cloud and I thought counseling might be rough. It wasn't, but I was exhausted by the end.

I'm exhausted in general lately and having a persistent low mood issue. The fucking grey skies. I have a sun lamp at home but you're not supposed to use them at night. My counselor sent my psychiatrist a note to write me a prescription for one, since my insurance will cover it.

Next week is more free. Hopefully I'll get some introvert recharge time and start feeling better.
 
I'm finally having an introvert night here at Casa Leaves. Last weekend was pretty crazy. Mad depression Friday, protest Saturday with Guitarist, Tiny, and a gaming friend I hadn't seen in a long time, then Sunday was supposed to be Deadlands but turned into board gaming due to illness and cancelations. Yesterday was a date night with Guitarist and it was... very nice, lots of good sex. Enough that I was super exhausted and went to bed an hour early.

We've also had a couple of good poly talks lately. Just catching up on general things and reassessing.

I have a bubble tea date with Raven on Friday! So that's something to look forward to.
 
Today is a writing day, and I'm waiting at the coffee place for myfriends to arrive, a little irritated that a couple has taken the largest table in the joint (with plugs!) to sit and flirt at. When there are plenty ofplug-less tables open.

Maybe I'm being a grumpy guss and they've been there flirting since all the tables in the joint were taken or something, but jeeze.

Oh, another plugged table opened up. MOVING.
 
So when WriterFriend showed up, she marched over to the table I was sitting at and loudly asked if those gooey-eyed coeds were taking up OUR TABLE with their flirting nonsense. They got up and moved shortly thereafter (which was good because the table I was sitting at was really inadequate for three women with laptops). As soon as they were moving, WriterFriend winked at me and innocently wondered if they had heard her.

Then we vented spleen for about half an hour about how hard it is to write in the current political climate. WriterFriend works at a large lawfirm where some of the people she works for vocally voted for Trump and she has reached the point where she is about to just walk out or snap. And after that, we got some writing done.

I'm juggling the question of whether any of my stories need to have straight characters at all. I'm kind of leaning "no" right now.

Anyway, today is my tea meeting with Raven. I'm of some seriously mixed feelings about it. I want to look forward to it, but there's that little voice that says dating women never works out for me, I always get my heart broken, why am I doing this to myself again, etc. I feel like I'll have fun but it's been such a long build-up that there's a lot of pressure and I'm oddly anxious that it will go really well. Because it can only screw me over later if it does.

Yeah, I have some Feelings. I should probably talk about them with my therapist.
 
Going on an impromptu dinner date with Raven tonight. Guitarist is out with Spice, Spicewife is out with Ravenhub... maybe this is the joy of a small polycule.
 
So the dinner date with Raven went super well. I have a really good vibe about her and we closed down the restaurant (restaurants in rural nowhere close down at 9 pm, whee). When I dropped her off at home, since she still can't drive due to her knee injury, we were sitting in my car and talking until Ravenhub made it home. I didn't go in because she was clearly embarrassed that her house would be a mess and I know those feels well. So I got to meet Ravenhub briefly, and he seems okay.

So now I'm full of Indian food and squee. However, it's tempered squee.

There are a couple things that both explain Raven's behavior and give me a little pause. While she has been in an open relationship with Ravenhub for 6 years, they've mostly done swinging (but didn't like that vibe) and casual sex things. They've only been "really poly" for a few months.

So that's a caution flag. There's nothing WRONG with being new to poly, and at least they're not coming in from closed, but I'm going to have to be even more careful than usual not to make any assumptions and to enforce my personal boundaries.

Second yellow flag. She's never seriously dated a woman before. Points for coming right out and saying it, but it does explain a couple things about her lack of assertiveness. Because girls who have only dated men tend to be used to being pursued and tend to be a little more passive, but women who date other women have typically gotten over that at least in the type I date, since if no one initiates, things don't go anywhere.

So the things I've interpreted as a lack of interest, like being more responsive (always happy when I text but doesn't often text first; happy when I propose a date but doesn't propose one first), are probably not a lack of interest. She said she's dated a couple women and it usually doesn't go beyond a couple dates. But if she's dating women who date other women, they're quite possibly interpreting her lack of initiative as a lack of interest.

Anyway, I'll have to adjust my expectations accordingly.

On the one hand, new to poly and new to real relationships with other women seems like kind of a heavy load. There's nothing wrong with either, but either can explode spectacularly. And there are things with both that might be personally exasperating to me.

On the other hand, she's smart and funny, a good communicator, and she knows for sure that she does want a romantic relationship with a woman. There's enough of a spark that I'd really like to kiss her. She doesn't set my entire being on fire like Marian did, but that's a relief at this point. There's more of a mild, cautious NRE squee.

There's a poly meetup a week from Friday that she was really encouraging me to go to. My social anxiety says "meh" but I know the venue and enough of the people there that I may go. I'm putting it firmly in the maybe pile. If Guitarist wants to go, there will be at least four people I know there. We'll see.
 
I had a really good poly talk with Guitarist last night. It's good to regularly touch base on things to make sure we're still on the same page instead of only having poly conversations when we're in crises mode. We reaffirmed our only real rule, which is checking in before initiating sexual contact with anyone new. Meaning an in-person conversation after making sure everyone is up on testing and barriers and disclosing new partners.

There was also the difference between the kind of sexual contact I'm worried about, which involves STD risk, as opposed to lower-risk contacts like making out or touching breasts, etc.

So like... if there's a voyeur thing and someone else is watching does that count as a three-way is a conversation he'd need to have with the people in the room, because unless he's doing risky stuff with someone new, I don't really care or need to know.

Guitarist might have some emotional component to things that might bother him, but he said he can't really think of a specific thing. So I'm not going to worry about it. I do know what MY concerns are: HIV (which has happened to people I know), hepatits (same), unintended pregnancy, and at a lower level the other more treatable sexual infections.

Anyway, it was a good talk.
 
I've almost talked myself into going to that poly meetup a week from tomorrow. In other news, I feel like the new evening routine recommended by my therapist is going really well so far. It involves 20 minutes of exercise and then a hot relaxing shower, which seems to be really calming, which means better sleep, which when combined with the exercise has improved my mood.

This is day three.

Of course, since I'm feeling better, Guitarist is in a bad mood. That's just how it seems to work around here. Sad face.
 
I have toasted flue cured shredded cigarette tobacco before with good results. Now I am interested in toasting flue cured for pipe tobacco. I wanted to make my pipe tobacco in plug or flake form - not shredded. Has anyone ever toasted the entire leaf? If so, how?
 
You know, I really wish I could turn off rating on this thread. I never really cared that my blog didn't have a rating, or paid attention to it on the other blogs I read (since I really focus more on the writing style and content), but any time I log in and see two stars it just makes me not want to bother. I only logged in today to report that guy's spam.

I can see how thread rating might be helpful on other areas of the site. But it's pretty rude to look at someone's life story and care enough about it to go "oh, that's bad." That's the power of anonymity, I guess, to be shitty to people you don't know on the internet.
 
And who's rating anyway? I'm personally given 5 stars to all blogs on here (including yours just now) because everyone's value is worth more than 5 stars to me anyway. And that for me is regardless of typos/writing style/writing ability or success in relationships or any other arbitrary reason, I vote because people are human and deserve to be validated on this site who are brave enough to post about themselves. So now you have 2 votes, 1 at 2 and one at 5.

I am not sure what constitutes a 5 star rate either? It seems to me those most successful at poly (on terms of long term V or relationships stable and happy mostly) have the least amount of stars???? So I wonder if people are paid to come on here and down vote to lower confidence??

I've mused on an off about this for some time.:confused:
 
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