staying up all night.

Hurray, we're doomed!

Another Woom, another success. As far as I could tell, anyway: I was purposefully a bit less connected this time around. I signed up for cleanup, and I was there for a few hours before I fell asleep, but in general I just talked to people I already knew, listened to their lives and how they're doing, and tried to stay more or less quiet.

My shoulders hurt. In particular Big Jeff tweaked some muscle in my right shoulder, doing a technique using speed and strength instead of doing it, well, the right way. I didn't slow him down soon enough. S'okay, though, it'll heal, especially since I'm not rolling on it and I'm learning to roll properly. (Yeah, yeah, I've been learning to roll properly since I started six months ago. Bite me.)

Here's what has happened to me in the past with relationships.

Imagine, if you will, two sets of train tracks. One of them goes someplace wonderful and fun. New Orleans, say. Or the Caribbean. (It's my metaphor and I say trains can go wherever I want them to go.) The other set of tracks goes to a horrible, awful place, dreary and full of suffering. Let's call it Detroit.

For me, these train tracks run completely parallel for two to six months, before diverging off to New Orleans and Detroit, respectively. The tracks are nearly identical, and appear to go to the same place; the difference is in my mindset and how I'm approaching the relationship. If I'm keeping some kind of spiritual focus, I act from my true nature, with honesty and integrity, and while things might not be fun, they work. If I focus too much on myself or the other person, I act from my ego, I convince myself I believe and feel things I really don't, the entire enterprise becomes an exercise in thrashing self-centered falsehood, and before I know it, I'm in Detroit, it turns out I only bought a one-way ticket, I left my wallet at home, and I have to walk back to wherever I started to catch the train again and see if I can get on the right track this time. Except I never do. I end up in Detroit every time.

Now, it's still not a given I won't end up in Detroit, but the big difference seems to be that I can actually see the two different tracks. I have some perspective on my past patterns, and how I can better act truly, given the changes I've gone through. It's fun.

Every now and again somebody points out, not always on purpose, when I'm being a dork, and in the best case I shuffle my feet and admit they've got me dead to rights and go ahead and do something about it. This time around it was an ex-girlfriend's mother...

I told [name] I had heard from you, and she wanted to know why you had responded to me rather than directly to her! (This loses the nuances of the conversation--the amusement in her voice, for example.)