Knowing What You Want
For the most part, my blogging since moving to San Francisco has either been professionally related (the business, the comics and the conferences), my short movie reviews to remind myself what I thought of a movie, and small random and somewhat humorous anecdotes. It’s not exactly your LiveJournal kind of navel gazing content and I don’t mind that.
But every so often, it builds up and I feel like I need a release. I shy away from writing such because in general, my mind isn’t clear about such things and so it’s hard to actually have a point. That, and people who read this blog are most likely people who think I’m talking about them, even if I’m not. If you’re one of those people – I’m not talking about you. No, seriously, my life is social spaghetti. It’s not you. It’s me.
It apparently is a “season of breakups” here in SFBay. Numerous couples breaking up after months or years of being together, all happening within the span of several weeks. I’m technically not involved in this tangle and yet, I sort of am. Know when the last season was? A month after I got here when I very much was part of the “trend”.
WTF.
The problem at heart for me I think is that I don’t know what I want. At least in terms of a person I want to be with. A friend of mine is leaving her job and she told me that she wasn’t really looking around – she’s always had the opportunities come to her. She’s a designer, so she could get any number of jobs here given the current market. So, I tell her, “that’s stupid. If you don’t go for what you want, how can you expect to get it?” Her response left no argument:
I don’t know what I want.
Oh. I guess professionally, I’ve always been fortunate enough to know. I knew I wanted to go into engineering when I went to college. I knew I really wanted to work at Trilogy in Austin when I learnt about it. I knew I wanted to spend time in London and maybe get a Masters along the way. I knew I wanted to be in the Center of It All when I looked for work in the Valley and I knew the kind of role I wanted.
But personally? I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like I know. Sometimes, I even feel like I’ve found just that. On some rare rare occasions, I’ve known, without a doubt, that here was a person I could totally see me giving everything to. I would give up all the things I want professionally if it meant I could be with the person. I count two, maybe three times that’s ever happened to me and every time, it’s impossible. The reasons vary, usually, it’s timing. Timing in terms of availability, and I don’t just mean they have a boyfriend, though that’s been the case.
On the surface, I have to ask, “how is it I find this perfect person who understands me and I think I understand her but we can’t be? And why is it I don’t even get to talk to you anymore?” Deep down, if I’m totally rational, I could probably understand that if they’re “emotionally unavailable” because of one reason or another, that means they’re _not_ the perfect person because it’s not just about _who_ but also _when_.
But I’m not rational and it fucking sucks.
And ok, maybe I’m talking about you.
And you.
And you.
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