calendars of our lives circled with compromise

[j4]

There are insufficient days in the average week.

I was planning to go to Erotica on Sunday 21st November, but now I've got an orchestra concert on that day, which means I will have to go to Erotica on the Saturday (and get back in time for a party that night) or Friday (and take a day off work).

On the plus side, orchestra half term is next week (which I hadn't realised until this week) which means I can, should I so wish, go and see the Magnetic Fields again at the Corn Exchange next Wednesday. On the other hand it probably won't be as good as the Festival Hall gig was, and it'll cost money, & I could be using the time to do one of the million billion things I'm not going to get done otherwise... we'll see.

Pub tomorrow, clubbing on Friday (rah!), party on Saturday, and then I was vaguely thinking of going up to Manchester on Sunday to see the misc-type-folk, but I'm just not sure I can face that much train-travel. Out for dinner on Monday, singing on Tuesday, possibly gig on Wednesday, pub on Thursday, our party on Saturday, recovering on Sunday ... and that was the end of Solomon Grundy.

I do not have a cold. I do not have a cough. I have chased them both away by sheer force of will. There are more interesting things to do than be ill.

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No subject

[j4.livejournal.com]

a few days ago she was very unhappy about Being Too Many Shoes In Front of the Telly

I go through phases of being unhappy with the living arrangements here, because who-I-am doesn't always sit terribly comfortably with who-sion_a-is. I feel guilty for taking up space in his house, for ruining his life, and that essentially boils down to feeling guilty for existing; I suspect even if I gave away all the stuff I didn't actually need I'd still feel that from time to time, because it's only an external symptom of an internal feeling.

If living with sion_a occasionally makes me feel guilty for being who I am, does that mean I should change who I am? If it makes me feel guilty for existing, does that mean I should stop existing? I try to come to reasonable compromises. But I often think that my ceasing to exist would solve an awful lot of problems.

Things are what they are in their own right: shiny shoes are great, as shiny shoes. A child is a child, him/herself, not a compensation for anything. In fact, to believe otherwise ruins the child's life and one's own.

I'm not suggesting that a child is a compensation for anything; quite the opposite: I'm suggesting that one of the reasons I fill my life with mountains of things is that I don't have the meaning and purpose in my life that you do. Shiny shoes are nice, but they'll never have a conversation with me (and if the conversations you report with Child on LJ aren't just fiction, he's more articulate at preschool age than many adults I know) -- they're just things, they're not with me, they're not of me, I can't love them.

I'm not judging you harshly, I'm just envious; but then, you're a good person, you deserve a good life.

Re: No subject

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Funny - sometimes I think I've ruined 'II's life.

However, not only is this highly likely to be untrue (for both you and Sion, and 'Im Indoors and me), in my case (mine, not yours) I think this is a form of introverted egotism on my part: he has the right and the duty to decide who and what does or does not ruin his life. If I respect him at all I have to accept his judgement, both as to ruination-or-not, and as to what happens next.

Changing who we are is an interesting concept. Some people posit that we either work on truly becoming ourselves or on increasingly divorcing our real selves from our externally-configured self; other people suggest that we change who we are, inevitably, through the mutual processes of time passing and the effects of our choices.

You ask: If living with sion_a occasionally makes me feel guilty for being who I am, does that mean I should change who I am? If it makes me feel guilty for existing, does that mean I should stop existing? I try to come to reasonable compromises. But I often think that my ceasing to exist would solve an awful lot of problems.

In reverse order, no, ceasing to exist would not solve a lot of problems, except notionally for you; but everyone else left would be up the creek without a paddle in eight million ways for the rest of their lives.

That option, therefore, set aside: living with Sion gives you occasional bouts of deep, serious guilt about Stuff physical and metaphorical. Should you change who you are? I think it's inevitable that you will change 'who you are' no matter what: you might continue to live with him, and with guilt, and the effects of that will change you; you might eventually move house, and that will be a change of 'who you are'; or you might change some of your other habits and interests, or hold them in abeyance, not move house, and see where that gets you.

I am not recommending any one course of action, just thinking out loud.

I love shoes, all of them, even the ones which would make me look like a sow dressed up as a Victorian tart if I could even get them to go on. I would buy them and put them in a cabinet to stroke.

However, spending two hours at the bank this morning addressing my debts has made me consider what I could run up in papier-mache, 'cos I ain't gonna be buying shoes for some little time. 'Kin'ell, and the ruined kitchen floor is like papier-mache as well. Maybe I can make some shoes out of splinters of bamboo....

Please put up some shoe gifs for me to drool over...?