October

It's no big secret that we had a difficult Summer, and that that Summer is bleeding into a tense-yet-resolving Autumn. M's school situation took longer than we'd hoped to sort itself out and instead of joining the flock of undergrads at UCSD this year, he's working through his CS program at National.

A lot has changed at UCSD since I graduated, and not all of it for the better. After watching the admissions process from the outside, I think I'm happier that M's at a school that addressed his goals directly, offered him a clear path to graduation, structures their coursework for people with real lives and other commitments and genuinely seems to want to see him succeed. I can't say that about UCSD. That disappoints me sorely. When the alumni letter arrived, asking for donations, I almost wrote Chancellor Fox a pointed letter instead.

Ultimately, I refrained.

We go through phases, at home, of trying desperately to become more organized. And failing miserably at it after making one or two valiant stabs at progress. I cleaned out a corner of the office today. I found the other half of my desk -- it's disorientingly empty right now, and yet "messy" by any one else's standards. I had enough space last night to procrastinate by playing with watercolors while M was in class.

It's occurring to me, maybe for the first time, that the things I take for granted in their solidity and ability to endure actually require maintenance. A solid wood door, for instance. Growing up with just enough abundance to lose touch with the idea of things that last for generations, I think many people my age have to hard-reboot some part of their brains when it comes to home ownership. I now have things that I have personally bought and owned for fifteen or more years. Some of them are in great shape. Others have started to wear.

We chipped one of the green bowls in the dishwasher the other day.

The front door looks remarkably better after an hour of work and some elbow grease. (Though I doubt anyone but me will notice. And M, because I pointedly instructed him to notice.) ... (And also my mom, because she reads this, and she'll feel compelled to comment in hopes that I will actually do more pride-of-ownership home repairs if given sufficient positive reinforcement.)

I feel like some of the cobwebs in my head are starting to loosen up, unbind, let go. Restarting a sewing project -- bright colors, bold patterns -- and clearing out some of the unnecessary, unfortunate background noise is helping. I'm learning to balance the fact that I married M, and I love him, with my refusal to adopt his almost ascetic way of interfacing with the world. In my life there's bright colors, rich textures, adventurous foods, deep and thought-provoking conversation, good music, craft beers or nice wines, and a lot less digital-anything. Rather than waiting for him to want any of these things, maybe it's okay for me to just go enjoy them and hope he comes along now and again.

I've been angry, sad, frustrated, indifferent, passive aggressive, plain old aggressive -- you name it -- for the last several months. Maybe it's because I don't really believe there's any challenge out there that determination, ingenuity and hard work won't fix. Which doesn't really jive with the economic-jobs-wall st.-politico scenario of the times. I have a solid job, we make our ends meet, we've refinanced into an even more affordable house payment, we have more stuff and food and opportunity than we really need but I'm just not one of those people for whom sufficiency is enough. For the last couple years we haven't really had a mission statement. It is depressing to be an Architect without anything to build.

So I've decided I'm just going to build stuff. Sometimes it'll be great. Other times we'll throw it away and ... never speak of it again. But if I don't have projects, milestones, things to conquer or achieve, then I'm unhappy. Even if I have to change paths multiple times, or delve into things I don't know yet -- especially if I have to recalculate, rethink, rework, improve -- I'd rather be working on something than sitting idle.

Blame it on my parents. One's a perfectionist and the other has to know everything about everything. I've struggled through figuring out that sometimes good enough is just that, but I can't shake the need to know-and-understand just about anything that comes to my attention. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's also a little unrealistic to expect that other people want to know everything about everything and spend their web hours working toward just that. Maybe I should give my husband a break for not exhibiting this borderline-madness/voracity for new things and new topics and new experiences. Because, hey, somebody in this household needs to know how to slow things down now and then.

Right?

PS: I'm doing M's C++ homework on the weekends, after he's already finished with it. This way I can finally actually learn to program. But I don't benefit from getting to attend lectures and my grasp of algorithms is really rudimentary, so I'll fall behind fairly quickly. For now, though, it's great fun.