Doing All The Things: Mediocre Ramblings About Stuff

 Afternoon, Subheading: On Knowing and Unknowing.  There are people in life that you can look to as if they were the Northern Star. It's a cheesy analogy, but accurate. They will be shining their same familiar glow night after night, exactly where you left them last. You will not turn to them and find them suddenly in the south, or glowing purple, or ceasing to glow at all. We rightfully romanticize this steadiness, this reliability. When we need to center ourselves, we reach for these people. They restore balance. Regardless of the chaos unfolding around them, they do not waver in their beliefs, their support, or their way of existing. Tomorrow is another day, and it will be approached with the same level head of today. These are the people we want as our friends, partners, and family, because the world is a scary and confusing place and most people find comfort in having an anchor. I am not at all that sort of person- a Northern Star.  I am not a person that is easy to ...

Afternoon, Subheading: From Dreaming to Doing. "It's hard to jump from dreaming to doing. As every architect or designer knows, there is a critical step between vision and reality. Before imagination becomes three-dimensional, it usually needs to become two-dimensional. It's as though the unseen order needs to come to life one dimension at a time.      Women have sent me so many of their two-dimensional dreams over the years. They say: "For me, the truest, most beautiful life, family, world looks like..."     I marvel at how wildly different each of their stories is. It's proof that our lives were never meant to be cookie-cutter, culturally constructed carbon copies of some ideal. There is no one way to live, love, raise children, arrange a family, run a school, a community, a nation. The norms were created by somebody, and each of us is somebody. We can make our own normal. We can throw out all the rules and write our own. We can build our lives from the ins...

Afternoon, Subheading: It's a Process - a LONG Process. (Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault.) A friend of mine shared this meme on Facebook, and it sparked quite a response in my brain. I started to comment on it but realized quickly that I had more to say than what was appropriate for a response to a status. A part of me wanted to stand up and cheer, a part of me cringed, and a part of me just quietly nodded. When we have conversations about assault and rape, we want the story to be simple so we can unequivocally condemn the abuser. It's not only easier for the person sharing their experience, but also for the person hearing it. When we know someone we care about is hurting, we want to be able to comfort them, to say something. It becomes difficult for people to say the right thing when they don't understand the facts of the story, or come to a different conclusion when presented with those facts. In these moments, it's important to keep a few things in mind. ...

Morning, Subheading: "So, what are you looking for?" Pancakes. I want pancakes. The brief spat on my dating profiles reads: "Looking for: Ongoing romantic connections. Open to monogamy or ethical non-mongamy/polyamory. I have two kiddos that are with me part time." You only have a limited number of characters to explain who you are and what you're looking for, so that seems like a good breakdown of things. For some reason, turning to Tinder/Bumble/Whatever to help me meet people makes sense. I figure, well, at least I start from a place of knowing I'm in the flirting lane. Anyone messaging me is already armed with the information that I am polyamorous, bisexual, and have two children. One would imagine this alleviates some awkwardness, and it does- to an extent. However, once you make it past those initial inspections, people generally start to wonder... "So, what are you looking for?" The notion that I am an incomplete pers...

Morning, Today's Heading: The "Resolution" Post. I was speaking with my friend Brett about his resolution for this year, and he mentioned a new way of going about this tradition. His partner Annie over the last few years has been choosing three words to echo throughout her actions in the year, a sort of daily mantra that guides her in making decisions and choices. Think Live, Laugh, Love, only hopefully not trite like that. He has adopted this and chosen his own words to live by this year, and has inspired me to do the same. These words should be something deeply meaningful for you, pertain to what you want to accomplish in your life, and hopefully can be applied to most situations. I feel compelled to share mine with you, and encourage you to adopt your own words for 2020. (Share them with me in the comments!) Since I am extra about everything, I have chosen to add three things to focus on within each of my three words. Those will be listed as a caption under the ph...

Morning,  Today's Heading: On Breakups When Polyamorous. Very fortunate to have partners like this. My husband Alex and I opened our marriage in March, and over the course of these nine months, I've already experienced multiple separations from partners ranging from "Meh." to "Excuse me while I sob in the car." I'm currently working through one now, and it got me thinking about how different this experience is, and how ill equipped I feel to handle it. There is no road map for how to handle breakups in general, but when you add in the complexities of multiple partners, this has been a whole new realm of, "I have no idea what the hell I am supposed to do right now." As per usual, when I am trying to understand how I feel, I turn to writing. I hope to come at this from a few angles, simply because there is more at play (at least, for me) than when going through a breakup when I was monogamous. More than anything, I'm hoping to...

Good Afternoon, Trigger Warning: Rape/Sexual Assault/Consent Conversations. Today I listened to an extremely interesting podcast called In The No. It is a three part commentary on consent, what it means, and how complicated it can be for people to navigate it. Parts One and Three were particularly interesting to me. Number One deals with the grey areas in sexual assault, Number Three talks a lot about consent in the BDSM community. People get confused about this, and it matters, so I want to be clear about the difference between rape and sexual assault, as it would be defined by the law. Rape: Forced sexual intercourse, including vaginal, anal, or oral penetration. Penetration may be by a body part or an object. Sexual Assault: Unwanted sexual contact that stops short of rape or attempted rape. This includes sexual touching and fondling. Consent: Informed, freely and actively given, mutually understandable words or actions which indicate a willingness to participate in mutually agreed ...