Just your average blog entry

Last week a nasty cold fell on me like an avalanche, wiping out my voice, and filling my lungs. I left work at noon on Wednesday and it wasn't until Sunday that I could get out of bed without feeling dizzy. So I stayed in bed. A dozen long-stemmed roses in a gorgeous salmon-pink colour arrived to grace my room on Thursday, a bit of beauty to raise my spirits. This afternoon, more flowers, this time at work (a big no-no): an arrangement of orchids and interesting greenery. The card read "Stubborn wench--at work when you should be at home, in bed..." I added the parenthetical "with me" that he left off of the message, probably to save the florist embarrassment.

A cold front hit the Pacific Northwest at the same time. It was interesting to look at little drifts of sun-sheltered snow on vivid green grass. Such a contrast. The culms of the black bamboo seem so dark right now, the leaves sparser and less vivid. The holly trees are full of berries this year. Big red berries that show up so well against the spiky, waxy leaves. I really need to get out and take some photos. I've been wanting to for days, but I dared not go out in below-freezing weather, not with my lungs so full of crap. Perhaps this week.

I finished a naughty story yesterday, the seeds of which started months ago but which I just didn't have time to do right. I wanted to do a D/s story, but I wanted to get the nuances right, the psychology, the dialogue, the scenario. I'm fairly pleased with it, though I know some people think I will have ended it prematurely. I just don't feel it necessary to spell out what any reader knows is going to happen. That is the thing about erotica. You know the ending before you even start reading :) I doubt I'll record this one, there is too much male dialogue.

Plans for next month are shaping up. An upcoming seminar in San Fransisco just before my birthday prompted me to take some extra vacation time to spend with loved ones in the area. It should be a very full 10 days. Hopefully the weather will be conducive to photography. I may even bring my tripod.

The intensity level seems to be ratcheting up in some of my relationships. I don't know if it is a function of my stress-level or my customary availability during this period in my work. But I am being asked on several fronts when I'm going find a less demanding job, when I'm going to settle down, narrow down the list of people I'm dating, etc. I've got some great people in my life, people I enjoy so much and enjoy dating casually, no intimacy pressure or awkwardness, a fair number of whom are 'poly' people. And then the two most intense, rewarding, and frustrating relationships are with men who are monogamous, love me, 'wouldn't ask me to be exclusive' and yet aren't happy. I've offered to end the relationships. I've offered to eliminate physical intimacy and focus on what is important: relating. But that is not what they want. No, they want me available and all to themselves. And I'm floored. They are both good-looking, personable, financially-stable professionals that just about any single woman between the ages of 25 and 40 would gladly date. So why do they want me? Or why don't I want to pick one and settle down? Oddly enough, this is not good for my ego. And its definitely not good for my peace of mind.

There is so much love in me. I think learning metta meditation, learning to project that love out into the world, has helped to diminish some of that compelling intensity I bring to my deeper relationships. But not enough, I think, for one person to bear the force of it, of what they both seem to covet for themselves--my uniqueness. I am of the mind, however, to give one of them what he thinks he wants. And see how quickly he changes his mind. I don't think either of them is capable of valuing what being in a monogamous relationship with me really means. All of my intensity, my libido, my intellect, my spontaneity, my intuition, my emotions--everything I've honed in the past 2 years I've been single gathered up and devoted to one person, focused on one person? Heh. They would be intimidated.

They both deny it, but they would. I don't know why, but even when I try to be open and warm, I intimidate some people. Daily, prolonged exposure to me seems to make my partners feel insecure or overwhelmed or whatever. I am whole unto myself, self-contained and self-reliant. I don't need any one person. And men need to be needed. They need to feel they have a purpose in a woman's life, a reason to be: protector, friend, lover, provider. But no one person can be all things to another. Its a fallacy that monogamists the world-over have bought into and try to brainwash and socialize others into believing--that you're not whole until you find your other half. And two men I love think that their individual self-interest is jeopardized by the presence of other loved-ones in my life. They don't realize that it is not the others they have to worry about competing with for me. Its me.