Dear Yoga,

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

nothing like breath to make you feel not-drowning.


love,

Day

Tired, and so many things left to work on. Need to study for work stuff before I go to bed; want to goof off. Want to call a friend. Want a hug. Dishes, laundry, lawn needs mowing, haven't made any progress on the driveway for days, bloggy things I need to write, various portions of my house direly need cleaning, sleep--all of this feels pressing.

What I have done today: made a new friend, confronted my therapist, wrote in my journal, read two chapters of a trashy vampire story, slept when my back hurt, went on a long walk, thought about life, slow gentle yoga. And now this. Priorities, priorities.

But, I feel OK. This is what it's all for?

How do you say, “I'd like to finish your class, but trying not to want to kill myself seems to be a full time job?”

I wonder if I'm not doing something right, or if I'm just irreconcilably broken. Maybe that crucial part was knocked off long ago, like the rear view mirror came off that Cadillac when your teenage son backed it in too close to the mailbox. Or the time he didn't know what the fuck he was doing when he tried to rebuild the engine.

Some days I wake in the morning and my skin feels tauntingly intact. I would give anything just to be held, but my craving for someone to take a baseball bat or a knife to my back seems like a more honest version of the same desire. So I do the dishes; try not to cry, shake it off. Keep moving. Get dressed. Do something else. Fight. Remember to want to fight. Try, at least, to remember.


It's tempting to just tell her to give me a fail, leave it with everything else in the wreckage behind me. There's legitimacy here; I am trying, really, to build something new. New things need space to grow. The idea of tapping out is liberating, but also, angry and frustrating and sad. I love this work; I don't just like it. It uses me, all the intellectual muscle built up from years of reading useless crap that was never going to be any good to me if I was a physicist or a dancer. It's about taking the things I was inexorably drawn to, almost against my will, and weaving them into something useful and beautiful and real. I don't want to loose it forever.

"Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value."

-Ralph Nader

My front yard has become weirdly important, ever since someone suggested it as a way to deal with fear. When fear is such a big part of you and your life, honor it; do the things you reasonably can to be more safe. Then after you've tried that, after you've given yourself that chance, choose the compromises you want, if you decide on the trade-off for more time and freedom.

As far as the outside of the house goes, the idea is "show no weakness"; don't look like a victim. Don't look like a target. It's become a very tiny, personal crusade. I find myself watching all the time--which houses seem like easy marks, like places where you could get away with it? Which ones don't? More tangibly, what are the details that make that difference? My goal is: just from looking, it will be clear that someone cares enough about the people in this house not to let things slide. Just from looking, it will be obvious that we who live here are well taken care of.

It's an enlightening study. Learning to do is hard, but so is learning to see, and suddenly there's the obvious connection that I've never made; to make things so clean and tidy and neat like that, to make a space that emanates strength, you have to be aware of your surroundings. You have to notice little details. It's a natural connection, so much more than just learning to bother--which is important enough on its own.

Somehow this is more important to me than everything else I should be working on. It's a slow building; half a step, stand back, consider--what can I do, with the tools I have? With the strength I have? How many more days will it take to finish weeding around the driveway? What other tools would be good for the job? Is there any way I might take that stump out by myself? Will it make a difference to sweep away that dirt, does that edge need to be straightened? Is there a solution to the weeds next to the house without buying pavers? My imagination is on walkabout; this will be a showplace, beautiful, clean, bountiful, precise, liveable. Just keep working every day, thousands of baby steps.

Stages and details of maintaining an everyday life are so new to me. What I'm probably best at, in fact, is keeping it nominally together after everything has gone to shit--and assuming that it's always going to be that way. I am scraping a different life from weeds and black clay, handful by handful.

1) depression. Woke this morning and imagined an enormous pallet load of red bricks falling from above as a packed mass, bones crunching, blood spatters everywhere.

2) deleting facebook and some other online accounts in hopes of focusing on real friendships.

3) Had dinner with some friends, and it was wonderful! Pale blue damask on the coffee table, crystal stemware, leg cramps, spicy chickpeas, and low-stress interesting conversation that made me wonder about gregorian chants and Wittgenstien and music school. Let me take this moment to reveal how much I sometimes love being a grown-up.

4) love--contemplating feeling unloved. . . which I do, almost all the time. Wah wah. This will be another post.

5) happy would look like light, and color, and music--and love. Thinking of how to go about it.

also safe.

Confession: what I have been thinking about is fashion. Part of this taking-care-of-myself nonsense. How very women's magazine.

History? Armchair fashionista, all longing and anger and doom.

I started without a chance, no money, sacks of old hand-me-downs many times picked over, two blocks from the public library. I can tell you about the Dior dress. I can tell you about thread count, and rayon viscosity, and the de-constructed genius of Chanel. I can identify silk and cashmere from their synthetic counterparts by touch, from walking down the aisles of value village and examining every piece, from stealing into banana republic for moments at a time only to fondle and gape.

I wear enormous men's wool hiking socks under four year old sauconys, layers of plain threadbare t-shirts, black thrift-store jeans, sometimes hats.

I resent my passion, because this is what's expected of me, as a woman. I resent it because it at first was fueled so entirely by expectations of others which I would ABSOLUTELY NEVER be able to meet. But--there are things you need. Clothes to wear, for example; to sleep in and hike in, to work or work out or go grocery shopping.

I resent it also because it is most commonly followed with such vapid, brainless persistence. There's nothing say with clothes if your entire world is clothes, nothing but self-referential circles to chew off your tail in. It is social appropriateness; it could be art.

I definitely don't have this clothing and gender stuff figured out. It helps that my closest guy friend is an artist and dresses well--equality, or at least a taste--what would the world be like if everyone would dress well? Prettier, for sure. More expressive. Aesthetic preferences say something about your soul.

I've been coming together about it in pieces. Slowly.

This is the day when you're tired

and wonder in fragments about old patterns, and how they can change

This is the day when you have only two-plus-a-million major things to get done.

I'm angry at the world about a roof.

My house needs a roof. I want a metal roof. It would last three times as long and be completely recyclable, and it costs two thousand dollars more. I don't have it. In order to get a metal roof, I would, basically, have to not spend money on anything for the next several months.

It's the small things, yeah? There's no reason I shouldn't have clothes that fit me and don't have holes in them, and buy fresh groceries, and own shoes that don't hurt to walk in, and have access to a swimming pool so that I can exercise on the days that hurt the most. I discover, this is a startlingly big part of taking care of myself--prioritizing my material needs. I hate that, to take care of myself now, there must be such a waste of resources--that to make it through one summer entails such a throwaway, a cheap and wasteful decision that will last fifteen years.

I'm not giving up, of course--creative and resourceful money management is in my brain and blood. Waste angers me.

Tuesday, there was a cinnamon roll--breakfast, grabbed on the way to class--without guilt. A cinnamon roll, a banana, a glass of water, that I did not feel ashamed of, did not want or try to hide. An incidental meal, eaten without caving to the sugar and fat and lack of whole grain--without thinking, how dare I violate this propriety--thinking, I'm hungry, it's time to eat. And I'm going to eat what I want to.

When I got there, Newlin turned around to me and gave a big thumbs up; same breakfast. Is this how normal people eat? So relaxed, casual?


I see my body mostly as betrayal. Its fatness, its roundness; its weakness. Injury and breakage and pain that must constantly be accommodated. Needs for food and sleep and rest that are always slowing me down. Helplessness, fear. I want to live in a body, yes, but I want to live in a fighter's or a dancer's body, lithe, powerful, open, graceful, strong. Something for living a fiery and glorious and short life that also isn't mine.

For the first time I catch a glimpse of it, my body, my broken body as it is now, as some sort of victory. I have been taking care of myself, in some way; there are other parts of me deserving of care, not just this body on which the war has been waged, other needs besides hunger that deserve to be filled. This has been my compromise, my choice, my survival--and maybe that's ok. Maybe it's alright to be the marginalized fat woman, forever explaining to people that I didn't need that lover or that job, I never expected to live past thirty, thirty five. May be a freedom worth having, keeping, holding up against the world.

It's not a choice to say no unless you can say yes.


I don't want to always say yes, but for now--for now, yes. Glorious.

As soon as I finish this semester's work, I'm taking a year off. People keep asking me what I plan to spend it on, and it's been hard to answer. This is the answer: Learn to take care of myself.


Here's the longer answer:

Pick a reasonable standard of cleanliness and organization, and implement it (no more feeling guilty when my house is dirty and when I spend time cleaning it)

Make good decisions about what to own--includes culling accumulated junk and old files, as well as careful budgeting

Get in the habit of maintaining the things I own, in very good repair

Keep working on good financial habits

Work on certifications (at work) or other projects for long term financial independence

Develop better work habits for personal projects

Focus on taking really, really, really, really good care of my back

Learn enough compromise, body awareness, and ability to ask for help to keep up with basic life stuff without further injuring myself

Get in the habit of keeping up on medical care, including the small stuff

Learn food skills--cooking, rotating food, gardening, planning

Get PTSD under control. . . maybe the depression too. . .

Come to some terms with fear and happiness and whatever else seems urgently important, emotionally

Deal with the emotional stuff that has to get out of the way before I can fix disordered eating

Develop the network and skills to have a really rich, diverse, and satisfying social life

Become more emotionally independent (or, less dependent on social contact to "feel better"/escape)

Study only what I want to study

Try to enjoy life (?)

this last one is hard.


It's especially complicated to summarize when you're trying to explain why you aren't doing what (I guess?) people are supposed to do these days--pack their schedules very very full, and let all of this "taking care of yourself" stuff just happen. Some of this I don't know how to do, or I have bad habits about, because my parents taught me more about Fermat's last theorem than how to take care of a body or a house. A lot of it, I feel I don't deserve. This is a common trauma related thing, I hear--I guess I'll add another list item: get rid of unnecessary guilt.

I'm not going to go to school, volunteer, do political work, or commit myself to academic projects for other people. I'm just going to learn to take care of myself--for myself. For a time.

Be afraid of the lame
They'll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old
They'll inherit your souls
Be afraid of the cold
They'll inherit your blood
Apres moi, le deluge
After me comes the flood


I must go on standing
You can't break that which isn't yours
I, oh, must go on standing
I'm not my own, it's not my choice



(soundtrack to the book. . .)

* * *

I was ranting to Jacob at the restaurant yesterday:

"I stayed up for an extra two hours after work to finish reading The Handmaid's Tale. I read it before, a long time ago, and didn't begin to understand.

Now I find it real, horrifying. Compelling."


I don't know why feminism feels so central to me. For all the substantial violence I've been subjected to in my life, there's little I can point to as concrete evidence of oppressive widespread patriarchy that doesn't come off as paranoiac whining.

Paper-thin parodies of liberatory thought that find their way into the popular consciousness don't scratch the surface of the problem that concerns me, personally, the most; I want to be taken seriously. Women are taken seriously at some things, a few things, but the largest parts of me are most interested in being in the places where we aren't taken seriously--continental philosophy, hardcore non-humanities scholarship, violence, emotion.

I want to be taken seriously without giving up fun.

And I want my priorities to be taken seriously, even when they don't match up with the patriarchal ideal--stay at home mothers, for instance, are not a solution to the complexities of adequate childrearing in an egalitarian society--and yet these complexities deserve to be understood, dealt with, respected, maybe even solved. Wanting to be safe, but not patronized by a "protector" (who himself is free to subject you to whatever he likes; see: God) is not "trying to have it both ways."

Still, I feel that I must be exaggerating; it can't be that bad.



The waitress came back with the receipt and returned my debit card to him.

Things are not done.

Lately, I've been thinking about a lot of things that I'd traditionally consider a waste of time. In honor of this: my first fashion post. Not cultural critique of fashion, just fashion. With no commentary. At all.

We'll call it an exercise in restraint.

Outfit--

Shirt:

http://www.textilejunkiebrand.com/inc/sdetail/142

Corset: I love the green, but for this particular outfit, I think greys--maybe with one that matches the hat color.

http://www.clockworkcouture.com/?q=handsoftimecorset

Gloves:

http://www.clockworkcouture.com/?q=woolengloves

Skirt:

http://www.totally-ballroom.com/images/details/d_2836.jpg

Boots:

http://www.shopping.com/xPO-Born-Born-Thicket-Womens-Boots

Overcoat:

http://www.clockworkcouture.com/?q=blackwoolmilitarycoat

Hair: something like this, but with a bit more pulled back--and maybe in a more interesting color, or more than one more interesting color:


Hat:

http://media.rei.com/media/ll/5b6e1928-453f-40c1-8599-147c57008471.jpg

Jewelery: maybe these? I'd also keep the pocketwatch, but in silver.


http://ruthwaterhouse.com/studio/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/276e.jpg

Dear body,

I propose a truce. You will not hurt all the time, and I will try very, very hard not to hate you. I will not get angry about how squishy you are, I will not daydream about impaling you on things, I will be excruciatingly careful with you, and I'll try to give you all the healthy delicious food, exercise, and painkillers that you need.

Sound good? Think it over. We can talk about it in the morning.


-Day

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I'd like to make three things clear. First, I'm not deeply attached to this, it's just an idea I've been kicking around; please, discuss. Feel free to prove me wrong. Second, I'm generally--and still--an advocate of a very man-friendly reading of feminism, which is not clear from the content of this post. Lastly, I like men. A lot. Even if this theory happens to be right. Ok, now we can start.


I have a theory that since men held so much material power in sexual relationships for such a long time--the ownership of all property, children, and spouse, and a greater right of divorce, among other things--women have, for a long time, been more or less forced to do the work of emotional and interpersonal regulation for both parties.

There's a pattern often found in abusive relationships. Anybody who grew up with a severely physically abusive parent will recognize it; constant threat of violence changes the way you see the world. Your behavior and emotions are absolutely dominated by the goal of keeping yourself (and perhaps also the people you love) safe--which you do by trying to keep your abuser happy, at basically any cost. There is not possibility for give and take in this sort of relationship, no honest communication or mutual recognition of needs. The child is basically not allowed to have needs, particularly not emotional ones.

This is exactly the sort of power over others that has traditionally been afforded to men within marriage, generally without negative physical, legal, or social consequences. Despite the fact that, even in the most brutal times, there were probably lots of men who were decent enough not to engage in this sort of terrorism, I think the fact of it's possibility probably had a large impact on women's functioning over time.

And so we arrive at the (usually essentialist) argument that women just care a lot more about relationships and emotions than men seem to. I think this is definitely the current state of affairs, and that if we're interested in any form of gender equality it can't and shouldn't be ignored.

Here's some evidence:

When addressing ethical challenges women are more likely to place a high value on taking care of people's emotions and creating collaborative solutions to problems--instead of focusing primarily on principles, as men are more likely to. Regardless of technically having access to all fields, women still choose their work by very predictable criteria--on average, we're far more likely than men to be motivated into our career path by wanting to help people. We also want a lot more emotional feedback from our professors then men do.

Perhaps most tellingly, we perform far better--especially in technical fields--when placed in classrooms with no men, whereas men perform the same or worse in single gender classrooms.* Usually people explain this in terms of men showing off for women, and women "showing off" their suitability as mates by not being intellectually intimidating.

I think it useful to contextualize this differently. What is a woman doing when she chooses not to be intellectually intimidating, other than looking after the emotional welfare of her potential colleagues and partners? And why is it that, rather than recognizing that by looking after people's emotions she is performing a valuable service (maybe the reason some studies show that men perform better with women in the room?) which needs to be done by somebody in order for everybody to function well, we simply try to "empower" her out of it?

This is a problem I see with basically every kind of "women's work." Liberating some women from housework doesn't change the fact that housework definitely needs to be done--and that this problem is often "solved" by hiring someone of a lower economic status to do this thankless job instead. Encouraging women not to be completely bound to parenting doesn't change the fact that parenting is a spectacularly important project, which deserves to be done well. The wage gap (for the same hours working outside the home) between mothers and non-mothers is far larger these days than the wage gap between men and women; chew on that.

When you look at the lives of great intellectual men, they are often littered by complicated, even ugly relationships with bright or even brilliant women who never accomplished anything particularly visible themselves. Maybe, there was work going on there too--work of a different kind, work that we ought to recognize. Maybe it will never be possible for women to reach their full technical and intellectual potential until men start to reach their full emotional and relational potential--until men start carrying their weight in doing the work of relationships, along with all the other marginalized kinds of work traditionally left to women.



*Not better or worse as compared to one's classmates, but on national standardized tests like the GRE subject tests.

I missed God by no more than two days on a flight between Salt Lake and Baltimore. Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if I had found him--planting tomatoes and chasing toddlers, living a life of different struggles, a more rooted but so much less examined life.

As it is I lay awake at night and think of suicide. I'm not sure about anything, but I think there would be no answer no matter what I were to read, no way to transcend absurdity, and such a lack of endgame makes me want to die. This game isn't that much fun, to make it last forever. Still, I wake up in the morning and I do the things I would have done, if there was God, cleaning the dishes and turning the soil, just with my questions echoing in the stillness. I listen, and I try to escape them, and I'm happy for the wind and sky and sunlight through the glass.

People use each other to bury truth. This is why I'm afraid to be alone, why I shouldn't be with people. They're a refuge not an answer, a temporary peace, a short term solution to a long term problem. I'll take it but wonder what's next, and worry how to get there.

self-indulgent

"Today," I announced to my roomate, "I have been TOTALLY self-indulgent."

"Well, what did you do?" she asked.

So I told her about waking up hurting, trying to do homework but taking motrin and going back to sleep; about visiting a friend in the sculpture studio, watching him glaze bowls and helping him make sculptures of fish, then taking an hour of his shift at work (not a sacrifice, trust me) so that he could get things done on time. I told her about visiting my oldest sister's family, taking two of the kids with me on a grocery run, letting them both sit in the cart even though they're way too big; getting stared at in the aisles while I animatedly told them my favorite Asian fairy tale. I told her about having dinner with my sister's family and playing their piano before everyone went to bed, then eating the ALL of the tinned oysters I'd bought myself as a shopping treat.

It was fun.

"I love that this is what totally self-indulgent means to you," she said.

And I've been thinking about that. The things I spent my day on aren't useless; they just aren't the things I more officially need to get done. I didn't do any homework, or housework, or writing, or repairs, or reading, or exercise, or therapy(Bleah). This is apparently how things go when I prioritize social interaction. I don't feel wasted, though; I just feel. . . like. . . happy.

Weird.

Today continued the trend. I rolled out of bed after six hours of sleep and hastily checked the web to see what homework I'd ditched (none, but not on purpose), sat by my window soaking in morning sunlight, and eventually took the bus to class. If I were a good academic, I'd be putting in the hours to get a solid foundation in early modern, but I only sat through feminism. . . and it was fun--fantastic, actually. I was with people I like, having a long deep informed discussion about things I care about a lot--as I said, fantastic. Then I went home and promptly fell back asleep.

And this is my self-indulgent life. I don't know if I'm ok with it. It can't be ethical, right? People are starving. All this time I'm spending on myself--it's not helping anyone else. Is this what it feels like to be safe and stable and fed? If anyone stopped talking to me, it would not be devastating. I'm not sure if I'm ok with it, but now that I know I can have it, it's nearly impossible to motivate myself to do otherwise.

I think I'm going to go with it, for just awhile; my plan is to take the next year off of school and just. . . do what I want. Just do this--just read and garden and sleep and cry and talk to interesting people pretty much whenever I want. Most people have a life at some point, don't they? Even the ones who then give it up to fight for Truth and God and The American Way?

I miss my feet.

Dancer's feet are important, strong. When you dance you feel your feet, know exactly where they are. Foundation for everything, they can be more expressive than your hands or face. Lately, I've been walking a lot, and I feel them differently, torqued and sore from all directions, jelly, mush. They are overworked to stabilize my unconditioned stride.


Sometime 'round the end of January, a Very Awesome Friend invited me to hike to the Havasupai falls with his family in June. I was pretty thrilled at the chance; it seemed perfect in several ways. First, for all my cavorting about the country, I've never been to the Grand Canyon, and I'd wanted to see it this summer. Second, I've wanted to take up backpacking for half a decade now, but things keep interfering. Third, this particular Very Awesome Friend also has a Very Awesome Family, and who wouldn't jump at the chance to observe such a thing so close to it's natural habitat?

Initially, I was bummed. After the thirty seconds of jubilation, I remembered that I have a mutineer spine, and ten incredibly steep miles with a pack on seemed both unlikely and not bright. After several days of moping, I came to a compromise: I'd set up a training program and at least try. If I got injured along the way, I'd find a shorter more local hike to do and invite friends for a "celebration of failure" party.

Thus it came to pass that I abandoned the cautious exercise program I'd been, with so much self restraint, following for the past month and a half. I traded it in for the aggressive sort that falls somewhere in that gray and shadowed land between "unwise" and "categorically stupid."

It was going really well till Monday. I'd done a 13 miler on Friday at an incline setting of 5 (my commercial grade treadmill goes to 15). Then I'd had a really hard time sleeping for a couple of nights, and woke up hurting on Monday. . . then I planted a tree. And THEN I hiked another six miles. It was after the six miler, doing a careless/stupid forward-bend hamstring stretch, that the moment came.

Have you ever watched a potter use a wire cutter to take a vase off the wheel? It's a bit like that. All the pieces are intact, but something has definitely just shifted a bit sideways. The pain is sharp across that line, but also aching everywhere else. As you try to move a little in the moments afterwards there are hints and flashes that if you do something wrong, it will soon be shattering. You hold yourself up with your arms and you try to breathe, try to tense your core muscles, try to will them into putting whatever it was back.

It turned out not to be too bad. Definitely not another herniated disc; I can walk with ease. Still, the whole incident has been a reminder; dear self, this is what it's like to live in a body that can't be whole. It is more fun to ignore this, to try to forget this body is heavy and slow and weak, the kind that will give out on you indiscriminately, at seven o'clock on a Tuesday or five minutes before the biggest show of your life. Ultimately this is all human bodies, all of us, and it makes us nervous to know this something we'd rather forget. Some days I get lessons in remembering, and this is what I've learned.

It feels way better to get hurt doing something hard than washing your dishes or tying your shoe.

It feels weird to be able to walk thirteen miles up hill, then not to be able to tie your shoe four days later.

It feels weird to walk thirteen miles up hill, and not to dance.


I'm reminded of my college PE teacher, kindred spirit; as he put it, yeah, I know this isn't some kind of promise. Maybe I'll still die young, I could drop dead tomorrow of a heart attack or a stroke. . . but no matter what, I will die running.

I will die running.

It's astonishing how often I start considering some problem that I find really interesting, or that otherwise relates to my life, and it immediately turns to, "I've really got to get around to reading ___________ book." From today:

Infantilization of women by otherwise decent guys: The Macho Paradox (Jackson Katz)

The question of whether systemic violence is necessarily the case in a global economy: Empire (Negri and Heart)

What to do about elitism in education: Literacy with an Attitude (Patrick J. Finn)

Whether female sexuality inherently entails victimization: The Second Sex (de Beauvoir, of course. . . though to be clear, whatever she says, I don't expect to believe her)

How to prune my new plum tree: The Backyard Orchardist (Stella Otto)

Whether I should go all out and get micronutrient soil testing (mostly for fun): Introducing soil science (Brady)

Whether capitalism has any merit on a macroeconomic scale: MIT Opencourseware, and the economist. Ok, so that's not a book. Still. . . you get the idea.

Clearly, I am an addict.

Today I came home hungry and tired and sad. I ate food, tried to take a nap, and discovered I was still cold, hungry, sad. At least I'm getting better at keeping track.

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of getting my own social needs met. . . like, what exactly are my social needs? And in an ideal world, the things I'd want from friends are about this:

-Real conversations with people who actually want to talk to me, and can talk about both social/emotional things and cool other stuff (literature, music, philosophy, politics, electronics, economics, etc.). I think on average I'd want this to total at least a few hours a day, but I'm happy for much more if it's intellectually productive. I'd like these to be people who I talk to often enough that we sort of know what's going on in each other's lives. I'd like them to be able to deal with me being depressed or otherwise crazy (when I am) and willing to act as support network for this. Hopefully the need would be very rare.

-Good feedback on the stuff that we talk about, social, emotional, and otherwise.

-Depression support is: sometimes shoulder to cry on, sometimes normal conversation even though I am upset, sometimes someone to help be a problem solver, sometimes listening ear, and always a safety net. Also--when I say safety net, I mean, I want there to be people who would know and care if I were getting close to falling off a cliff, even the sort of cliff that wouldn't leave me physically injured.

-Good company for quiet things, sometimes, maybe twice a week or a bit more; probably cooking, eating, doing housework, or watching each other do hand-work of some kind while talking or reading--maybe followed by a movie on the couch. This particular thing is nice because it can sometimes save a lot of time for the person being visited. I like visiting people like this, but I would like it to sometimes be reciprocal.

-At least two or three good hugs a day, from people who actually want to hug me, and not from children. Diversity in timing and huggers is preferable. (I love child hugs, but they are different, and I've extremely affectionate nieflings.)

-People to go out with occasionally and do fun, expensive (in my budget) things--like eat out, go to concerts, etc. This one I don't have trouble finding, though honestly, I also sort of enjoy going places alone.

-Introductions to new interesting people with some sort of reasonable frequency. For this, I'll need at least one or two friends who are way more social than I am.

-Other assorted social goodness: crazy midnight adventures, backpacking trips, swing dancing, back massages, making music and other things together, showing up to each other's important events, road trips, and whatever else seems like a good idea at the time.


There are several encouraging things about this, especially to notice that they are basically all things I can do reasonably well in return, even if I am less entertaining and socially appropriate.

Also; I sometimes get the feeling of adequate conversation from some philosophy classes. Awesomeness.