Art Intrudes On Life

Once upon a time, in a blogoverse far, far a way, I had another blog. It was my starter blog, that first taste of blogging crack that created the blogging jones I live with today. In the beginning I thought it would be a fun way to keep in touch with the girls from the junior high small group I led at my parish youth group. Then I publicized it to my friends in far off places, and it started to take on a life of its own. One day a young man suddenly showed up in the comments section. His name was Andy, and he seemed a nice enough guy. He shared an interest in C.S. Lewis, and seemed to have a similar offbeat sense of humor. We commented back and forth, getting a little flirtatious at times. It never really went anywhere. We came close to meeting each other in person once or twice, but never quite made it happen. Things petered out, and I almost forgot he existed.

In the meantime, I started wanting a somewhat different blogging experience. My previous blogging service was regrettably teeny-bopper-ish. Plus, I had too many close acquaintances reading it – people I saw regularly, but with whom I wasn’t close enough that I really wanted them knowing too much. I started self-censoring a lot, and feeling the pressure to be cute! and perky! all the time! And then, what if I wanted to blog about a guy? No way was I going to do that on my old blog except in the most oblique fashion. After all, even if the guy himself wasn’t reading the blog, I knew for sure that people who knew him and would be able to readily identify him were definitely reading it. It all got to be a lot, and so I started this blog, the blog no one knows I have, the grown-up blog on which I write about grown-up things and also crushes. (Contradiction? What contradiction?)

So… back to the story about Andy. A few months ago he found me on facebook, and we became friends there. We chatted a little, but then things dropped again, and I was happy to let them go. Then I decided to have a party, a nice, quiet party for my Catholic young adult friends. I created an event on facebook, and when it came time to invite people, I threw him in for good measure.

He accepted the invitation.

It was surreal, like some postmodern piece of fiction in which the characters come to life and start arguing with the author. This guy… actually existed? As in, the real world? Lived, breathed, walked around, and was coming to my party? How… odd. And then, why was he coming? Sure, we’d read each others blogs for a couple of years, but that didn’t mean we really knew each other. What did he want? I didn’t think he was romantically interested – I hadn’t gotten a flirtatious vibe from him in a long, long time. It was almost as if Bingley from Pride & Prejudice had announced he was coming to my party. If it had been Darcy, there would have been swooning and frenzied preparations to ensure that everything was picture perfect. But… Bingley? I wasn’t frazzled or nervous, just puzzled.

The party was last night, and about fifteen minutes in, he walked through the door. A slight, reasonably attractive young man, just like his facebook pictures. He was shyer than I had expected, but very nice. He laughed at my jokes, and helped carry things. He seemed to have a good time, hanging out with lots of different people. He didn’t pay me much particular attention, though he seemed to generally drift to the part of the downstairs where I was. He stayed until close to the end, and said he had a good time. My sister was encouraging him to come to our Catholic young adult group, and I seconded the invitation. I hadn’t thought to invite him before since he’s pretty Methodist, and we’re pretty Catholic. But maybe he would like it after all.

I just don’t quite know what to make of it.

People who read my blog are actually real?

 

Things To Aim For

So I was thinking about putting together a few New Year’s Resolutions for myself, which caused me to realize a few things. First, I realized that absolutely nothing that I hoped for last year came true for me. Then I realized that this was because pretty much all my hopes were bound up in Carlos making good on all the promises his flirtatious behavior had seemed to make. I had kindof a half-formed goal of becoming a better dancer, but I hadn’t thought much about what that actually meant. My dancing has improved immensely, but if I were to judge the year’s success by my current relationship status, things would look pretty bleak. Sure, there was the Actual Date with Basil, but at year’s end I’m pretty much where I started. So this year I decided that not a single one of my goals should involve romantic relationships in any shape or form. For a while I toyed with the goal of having gone on another Real Date, but in the end I decided even that was too much. Instead, this year I want to focus on other things, like:

1. My dancing. I have some basic things I know I want to work on (my balance, spinning, not drifting when I spin, relaxing into the lead, etc.), but those are things I’ll be working on probably my whole dancing career. This year I want to work on my solo Charleston. Specifically, I want to be comfortable enough with it, comfortable enough with my own body, that I can dance a whole song by myself without needing anyone else dancing along side me. One of the very few sad things about PittStop was that no matter how infectiously Charleston-y the song was, I couldn’t get anyone to form a Charleston circle with me for love or money, and I wasn’t confident enough to go it alone. Lucy has traditionally been my steady Charleston-circle partner in crime, but there’s a good chance that she might be leaving town later this year. So I need to work up the chops to go it alone. We’ll see how that goes.
2. My friends. There are too many people I really care about whom I hardly ever see. This is partly because for the last two years I’ve been consistently choosing to spend my available free time dancing, and too many of my friends don’t dance. Still, I care about them and I don’t want to let them slip through my fingers for lack of a little effort. I’m a person who needs structure, so I’ve been trying to think of ways to structure friend time into my life. So far what I’ve come up with is having friends come over to watch TV with me, now that I actually have a TV night again. I know there’s got to be other ways to work this in. I’d be happy to hear other people’s ideas on this.
3. My finances. I’m not gonna lie – I’m pretty much a spaz when it comes to money. I do stupid things. I buy stuff I don’t need. I either don’t plan ahead or I don’t follow the plan I have. I’ve bought the financial software, but I don’t use it. I never turn necessary paperwork in on time. I’m just awful at this stuff, and I know it. The accumulated impact of failure after failure becomes so overwhelming sometimes that I become emotionally paralyzed and can’t do anything at all until something snaps me out of it. However, little by little I’ve been improving, planning ahead, taking necessary steps to make sure every thing’s covered. I’m still far from perfect, but I have hopes that finally, this year I’ll get my stuff together.
4. My writing. I took first prize in a poetry contest in 2007. Now I have two publishing creds under my belt. I’d like to have more. I don’t want to set a goal for acceptances or prizes, but I would like to send out at least two submissions every month. It’s not a lot, but I think it’s an important step for me. In his latest letter Joe sent me information on a poetry competition for a magazine he reads. I think I’ll start there.

And that’s what I have. I think they’re pretty good goals, challenging but achievable. The best part? None of them involve romance!

 

When Worlds Collide

My social life tends to be a little schizophrenic.  There’s the swing dancing part, and the Catholic young adult part.  Historically, the Catholic young adult part was the biggest and the deepest, where my good friends were, where I drew my emotional support, the people that I hung out with on the weekends, the people I took care of.  Swing dancing was that odd thing I went off on my own to do.  I wasn’t very close to the other swing dancers, and I was happy with that.  There were already too many people who felt they had a right to my time and attention.  Swing dancing was the place I could go and just be, the place where I could be selfish.  All I wanted was to dance, and so I did.

Then I started getting closer to people at swing.  First Mark and Jenn, then Chiara, then Trey and Anna and others.  I started dancing a lot more, and spending most of my free time (and a lot of time that wasn’t really free) dancing.  Little by little I began to pull away from the Catholic part of my life.  Being Catholic is still one of the foundational facts of my existence and my friendships with my Catholic friends go way deeper, but my social life is now focused on swing.

Last weekend I had a party.  I called it Big Party @ Bernadette’s, and I invited my whole life.  I told everyone that this September marks my 2nd year of swing dancing, plus I’d moved into a new house that I wanted to show off, and I wanted to see all of them.  And they came.  I had maybe 60 or 70 people there, although they came and went, so I think the most we had at one time was maybe 50.  We had beer, and chicken on the grill, and a dance floor in the basement that everyone was having too much fun to use.  It was a great party.  People are still telling me what an awesome time they had.  It was a huge success.

Except my worlds didn’t mix.  My Catholic friends and my swing friends pretty much stayed in their own groups, warily acknowledging each other’s existence at a distance.  I think each group intimidated the other, but for different reasons.  And while my Catholic friends are well aware that my life has a cast of thousands, I think my swing friends didn’t really realize what a large circle of acquaintance I have.  I can’t make people talk to each other, but I guess I’d hoped that there might be a little cross-over.  And… no.  I’m still stuck in the middle.