you can't always get what you want

what to do this 4th of july holiday?

well, as of yesterday morning we were still undecided.

the options:
1. bruinslair for their summer celebration. lovely campout up in the woods with all the cubbies, swimmin’ holes, dj’s spinning fine music, and just a nice relaxing time all around.
2. wedding on the playa. harsher time out in space, but more important: instead of just kicking back and having fun, we would be journeying to witness our friends’ union ceremony.

hmc really wanted to go to the wedding, whereas it was somehow more peripheral to me somehow. hmc had talked to betty a few years back and gave her a good pep talk to keep hope alive when she was frustrated about whether it would ever happen or not, and lo and behold, the next thing you know she’s met christopher, and bing bang zoom, here we are, right? i do remember hanging out with betty at earthtones right after that and how happy and excited that she had met this fantastic artist out on the playa. yet now that the time has come, the wedding seemed distant to me, more that i knew that it was going on, but that i wasn’t really that connected anymore and it wasn’t important that i was there or not.

(granted, there’s the issue of whether/how much i’m connected to the rest of my community these days, but lord— one problem at a time, please.)

to be honest, i was really on the side of bruinslair. maybe i’m just that lazy nowadays, but since i’m exhausted from work and hmc is exhausted from work, doesn’t a few days off choosing the thing that didn’t require several times the effort seem like the more relaxing choice? at least somewhere that actually had toilets. and water. and less conditions that could possibly kill you would be nice as well.

warning: possibly deep personality flaw revealed ahead. as roo or anyone else who has tried to travel with me can attest, i’ve got this annoying habit of not choosing any activities, claiming that i’m fine with doing anything or whatever, and that if i actually want or don’t want to do anything, i’ll speak up at that moment. which i still believe to be true to a good degree. unfortunately, this does not preclude me from being passive agressive about actually trying to express this.

so what’s the practical application? example: i think i would rather go to bruinslair instead of the playa for the aforementioned reasons. unfortunately, i just end up hemming and hawing about it, and bringing up lots of ways the playa trip was more difficult and onerous instead of just saying, “you know, i think i could use an easier trip, and would rather go to bruinslair.” thus it ended up turning into a big fight, and after much strained conversation over several days (reason #17 that living away from your wife is hard - arguements take WEEKS to finish) we finally got to the point where she was giving me the chance to pick to see what we were going to do. and yet, i STILL COULDN’T DO IT. i finally had an actual preference in something we were doing, and realized i had a preference, but i couldn’t get over worrying that hmc might be unhappy or feel guilty about not going or whatever. i still couldn’t choose her possibly being unhappy over me being unhappy.

which is crazy, because not everything has to be win-lose. especially things like vacation trips.

after all that, i got tired of all the permutations and agreed to go to the playa. we were running out of time, and i just needed to have something to work towards instead of spinning the wheels in my head around and around.

but at least now i can understand that i need that overhaul. “it makes a funny screeching sound, like WHEEEEE WHEEE WHEEEE…”

Posted at July 1, 2006 7:01 AM