Category: Personal

Midnight Cowboy

I keep telling myself to love someone like I used to. Find someone, wife them up and live in romance, but I keep finding myself unsatisfied. I’m smitten for a moment but my feelings evaporate the next moment. It’s happening again. She’s a sweet woman but I’m not letting it go any further. I’m having a difficulty clarifying why I can’t commit to her. I want to a relationship. Be with somebody. So why can’t I just go with it?

Maybe I need to stop trying for a while. I’ve used dating apps a lot over the past few months and met some woman. All them wonderful and sweet but I’m not smitten as a friend put it today. We were walking Torrey Pines State Preserve this morning and finding ourselves in the same place. Late twenties and single. Meeting many partners but not captured like we once were. Lovely people but couldn’t commit.

Perhaps I’ve become comfortable enough alone. I don’t know what it’s going to take for a relationship to happen. Happenstance seems more evident. I value my independence. Maybe I’m not ready to bring a woman into my personal life. I know I’m not ready for anyone to meet my parents and friends. I don’t desire to get that involved right now. I think I need to maintain my independence more than anything.

There are different priorities for me now. Career goals sit at the top. I will spend more of my free time after work taking professional courses online. I’m exploring going into a Master’s program to better my opportunities. When I narrow down what I want, right now, elevating myself to higher level of professional responsibility and income supersedes a girlfriend. For many reasons personal achievement supplants everything.

I’m not in love with any one I’ve dated recently. Some of them evoked me emotionally but not love the way I have loved before. That’s not their fault. They were all wonderful women and deserve all the happiness in the world. Unfortunately I’m not giving them that happiness. I don’t have it for myself yet. I’m still working on making myself happy. Finding out what that is for me and what will keep me happy right now.

Uncle Tony

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I’m wishing I had another day like this before the reality of going back to work sets in. Let me have another day with my oldest friend back home for a weekend. Another night with a pretty girl in my bed. Just one more sunny afternoon under the umbrella with condensation running down my plastic coffee cup. Let me day dream about things I want to experience again and for the first time.

Writing this makes me grateful for the life I live. I have the smallest of problems. I look back and know not too long ago I didn’t want this life. I can’t help grieve for Anthony Bourdane who took his life this week. It’s been a few days but I was so angry when I read the news. Angry because I loved the person I saw on Parts Unknown, but more upset because suicide is such a waste. I’ve been there. We are worthy of finding happiness. I’ll probably never know what was going on with him but it sure as hell wasn’t worth it. He was loved and he will be missed.

His legacy will impact his loved ones more than anyone. For me he showed me places I never thought of visiting. He inspired me to travel. I don’t care how cliché that sounds. I’ve had good fortune seeing some wonderful places early in my life but once I hit my teens those experiences stopped for a while. I didn’t have any ambition to travel. Bourdane’s show feed that dormant desire in me. It wasn’t just the food but how he romanticized the places.

There wasn’t anything phony about his admiration. His genuinism influenced me to travel on my own dime and find solace in these new places. To find the space and air to find peace within myself.

Bourdane did that for me. He was one of the few people in recent years that gave us ideas about what’s beyond just working and going home every day. That the world isn’t just bigger in size but in its meaning. Sharing a plate of rice in Thailand means more than meal. It’s asking “how are you doing?” He introduced me to people who fought a revolution so they could eat Kentucky Fried Chicken. I could go on but you should just watch for yourself at this point. Bourdane might have left us physically but for those who watched a little piece of him will always live on.

RIP Tony

5.19.18

Shifting with change in my life has never been easy. I started a new job in late February. It’s been about three months and the job still seems new. Most of my time has involved training. I feel a long way from making professional progress even though I need to accept this was a professional reset button. Funny, this HR representative from my old job made an insulting statement saying I was making a “career change” during my exit interview. While in a way true, it was like she was offended I was leaving the company. Obviously I left clean energy finance but there wasn’t much of a career working for them. When you get passed up too many times and knowing you’re worth it makes one realize it’s time to move on. I made the right decision but I’m facing some personal consequences.

This new job feels far more isolating. There’s no down time, and understandably I’m being paid to work. I’m happy to grind but I miss working with a team of people. I miss the camaraderie. I’ve made some new friends there and even gone out but it’s not like before. I don’t want to get too close to anyone. At my last employer I unfortunately burned some bridges and made some people upset. I also had to deal with truly dumb, spiteful, and Judas people. I’d rather show enough personality but remain mostly anonymous.

Working feels far more draining now. Maybe it’s learning so much new information. Perhaps it’s having to work much harder than before. I typically don’t have the energy to workout and do something socially after work. There’s a companionship void. I thought I had to prioritize work first but I think I need them equally. It can’t be healthy to work so much and so hard and feel equally alone. Just can’t go on like that for much longer. Meeting new women, even knowing most won’t work out, will keep me engaged and not as alone. Shit, maybe one of them will work. I’ve learned not to compromise the things I want the most: my professional career goals, what I want intimately, and how I want to be treat. The last person I was with briefly gave me some of that but not all of it. It hurt to end it but going on that way would have been worse.

There’s a lot I need, as I laugh out loud in my mind. Having someone care about me emotionally and physically would answer a lot of those needs. There’s a comfort to someone asking me how my day is going. There’s a feeling of fulfillment to being missed and desired. It was nice for a little while recently but I won’t concede my goals and what makes me happy. I hope to meet someone who shares the same vulnerabilities as me. Wants the same things as me for themselves. I don’t expect the next woman to work but I will try until I know if she will or won’t.