Deciding to be better.

Deciding to be better.

It's on a cliff.  I can see the forest below me and the dark clouds saturating the green.  I can see the lightning in the clouds and I can taste the damp.  It's cool and windy, it's a storm, not a tropical, steady, heavy rain.  

Water flows through the forest and its water churns white.  

That's how I see the change I have to make.  But I welcome it, with some trepidation.  Not because I don't think I can make it.  No, that was sorted a year ago when I decided to get into shape, Sep/Oct 2012.  This is deeper and will require more energy, effort and lasting change, the effort to cement that change in place.

What's the motivation: sure, it manifests as growing older, maturing, whatever.  But that's not the feel.  It's an unlocking of potential perhaps.  But it will need work.  

It comes from a fight over a stupid trip to go shopping.  Nothing major or lasting, one where bitter words were spoken.  But a recurrent issue, an inability to cope.  But rather than incident specific, I need to gather the motivation and look it in the face.  And then wrestle with it and use it.  To cement the change.

It's a work thing.  I have consolidated.  But now it's embracing the effort that is drained at the end of the day when my head is buzzing.  

It wrestling with my other demon as well.  

It's choosing. 

It's deciding to be better.

I will pen down what it feels to be there, when I am.  

Steps: 

choose to eat better

continue working out

push myself at work to think to the 3rd degree

better self control

deep breath and more patience

There's no goddamn room outside

So it takes me a while to express how I'm feeling. And once I do, I don't repeat it or wax eloquent to add volume for emphasis. I articulate it and let it lie like a wound, expecting the other person to help. Well, bullshit, not really. More to take out like a wounded organ, watch it and try and fix it before putting it back inside.
Some time, I don't have the tools to fix it on my own because I'm emotionally retarded even to myself I think. So I just put it back patched as best as and go on. Well, that;s how I've done it so far.

Now in this I have to help someone else when they put it on the table. The options are: listen, offer solution but making sure that in either event, to imagine it literally from the other persons perspective (the psychopaths empathy. Haha)
The thing is, I can't do the same. In fact, I can't even do the former. When I was looking for a job, I had to not only keep my own inside (which killed me near about) but also fix the other persons. Now, with the job, I have fixed, to some degree, a major person of my own wounded part. But I haven't fixed the others. Even with mine, I hold it back for months on end, twice this past week I let it out, on my own to deal with it on my own. Yeah, that meant ignoring the others and that led to well, worse consequences for me.

This is the best I can articulate it, dispassionately. To not do so would well, be feeling that pain and I can't.
Whoops, tried and felt it there for a second and no. not tonight.

I don't even want to say the two words out aloud to myself let alone commit them to 'paper'

Oh I don't know

I've been in anticipation of writing this, of being in a hurry to type so that I can narrate (to myself, which in itself is bizarre) that it hurts but this time I'd like to take the time (part of my 'SF Chapter') to fix the typos myself and think about each thought before committing it to writing.

So I've moved and I like this city. I have the time to do what I want to, the 'life' stuff like watching all these movies (Romancing the Stone, Delhi Belly, Flash Gordon and Dune) in a weekend, walking around the Wharf with her, of stepping in and out of places at random, having the time to do that, of buying books (!!). I like having the time to wake up before I need to, to make the time to ease into my day, the way I like, to not worry about a dentist appointment because it's ok to take the time for stuff like that, of learning something new AND having the space to learn, still, in usual form, waiting for the catch (so far it's manifested in the long-distance nature of my r with her which is to say the least, the worst thing that could have happened. It's an incompleteness to everything every moment)

Moving on, before I *do* forget, I'm at a point where I can't procrastinate without a valid leg to stand on. For without good reason re the bad habits, the lack of forcing myself to do something with a rational, tangible benefit.

Also [] came out to me today. He did allude to the fact that us in dolores park booming (lack of petter word I'm ok with) would make it easier for him to tell me which set of bells but i had no idea what to expect. he told me he was questioning what he wanted and didn't say it explicitly (which i said explicitly and him not doing that would mean i would continue to marvel at the fact that i lived in a city with plan trees which is unusual because i normally don't like places like that because of the images i see i.e. of LA and SF is quite different yet with the palm trees) and then he told me so.
So after 20 odd years, i have to put a new dimension to hereto with fixed point.

I didn't ask him anything from his point of view, i kept going back and forth from the subject from talking about this to random gossip (which i don't necessarily see as a bad thing in my own definition where its going down a list asking how each person we know in common is doing, which is better than say, what, Facebook? eff off)
but i didn't have a reaction to mimic (that the word? no but close enough for the moment) so i just asked who knew, how he told them (not why because that would make me inevitably ask him why he never told me sooner).
But here's what's bothering me, not that he is out but that that fact is so much on my mind, it's on the forefront, it's there and i don't know why. I don't know how to process or what the process of processing it even is. Maybe this is the point you talk to someone about it?

Oh of being able to find the time to do this

Things I Didn't Think I Would Appreciate But I Did After the Process:

-- a long shower where you stand long enough that you appreciate the feeling
-- walk past a bookstore, stop and browse
-- sit on a bench for a c
-- sit with a cigar, listening to music while reading something non-work/finance related
-- listening to non-favorite songs because heck, I have the time to really listen to the song and not just have something definitely good in the background for the time I can focus on it but not long enough time to find a new song
-- clean up my computer. And realize why I am a little possessive of it. Because it's my think-space, almost like a residual storage that well, is just my own library with everything the way I like it and a relatively tangible source of knowledge that it will be the way I left it. Which also explains why I get upset when it doesn't work. It's losing a library of stuff that was important enough for me to file
-- thinking about this stuff
-- while packing, listening to chura liya hai, one of the seventeen hindi songs I have and not just because I do like it a little; it's because it reminds me of Saudi and being a kid and dad's beard when he had it
-- while packing, the sight of my things, books mostly, in a cardboard box reminds me of living in Pachshila Park as a kid, my things from Saudi in boxes in the garage and having to wait a while for someone to open the garage for me to get to them
-- of calling up a friend just to speak about nothing in particular
-- of not having this giant preoccupying gorilla-thought in my head when I'm hanging with her
-- of being able to breather deeper than I did, odd yes but that's the visual form of the emotion
But really of finding the time to convert a strong desire to remember this feeling into words

Pasting to clear desktop

My inability to organically express social convention makes me mimic it. But because, and in my opinion, it fits the dictionary definitions of social convention without the appropriate timing (or at least being off just one beat but being off nonetheless), it in itself gives itself away

Aspergers

I am happy. I really am (about this, not the rest of the shitty time we are going through).
But I am happy for a few (three) reasons:
* It explains so much
* It's a better word than 'odd' or 'weird' or 'eccentric'
* Ironically, there's a sense of belonging vs. the isolation, a group
(it's ironic that people with aspergers want nothing more than to connect with people which is the exact thing they have difficulty with. Grass greener much?)

And then I am sad. She only sees the downside and ... I wish she shared reason 1 with me and got happy over it because well, it just explains everything.

I was watching Adam and Mozart & the Whale and it's the first time I have heard people say how I feel or process things. I suppose it started with Temple Grandin
But the point is, for the first time, *someone knew how I feel!* And that was brilliant.

I'm just sad she can't be happy that I'm happy.

Sure, there are downsides like emotional retardation but everything she has read online is about how difficult it is and all these people ranting.

It's the most parallely different I have felt from someone I am the closest to. And that makes me sad

Earthquake. Or a shift in things

I woke up with a start and I swear to bejeebus there was

a small earthquake (okay, tremors or something)

(either that or the Short one talking

about hypnagogia had something to do with it)

(Subnote: she asked me to do some homework on it)

So I spent some time in my head

(I think I'm too tired to sleep. It was an awful flight back from HK, more so because of the meal at Chilli Fagara. They had a deep pot with bits of fried chicken but chillies out the wazoo. And that's what I think kept me from a comfortable flight. But I would like to go there again)

One thing I realized is I would

rather be the *remarkable* person than the rich, successful, heck even happy maybe. May be not.

(Maybe being that would make me happy. But a selfish sort I suppose)

Anyway, that was for one.

The other thing I realized is that when I do have money, I will spend (especially on family) without second thought. Perhaps to a fault. No, I don't mean to sound like an ass about it but I think back to the holiday I took my family on to Scotland. I usually remember det

ails, including the cost of big ticket items.

But of that trip,

I don't. I remember where we stayed (B&B), the train and the first class cabins (first for me. Last for me thus far), how excited my folks were, the brilliant car ride, eating Haggis, Dad in front of the soap/candy? store, hanging with the sister in the main street/market in Inverness, telling Dad one day we'd be back so he could play St. Andrews (I don't get golf yet), mum cooking when I got back from work, accidentally locking

our selves out and the sister having to climb in through a window one floor up, the god awful loch ness boat, the lochs, them leaving and me going back to an empty flat)

…

.

Anyway, there was one other thing. Oh yes, so I get *that* from Dad. But when I don't have money, I am, for a large, some?60% of the time, careful.

(Okay, maybe I can do better)

But the mindfulness / panic over it, that I get from mum. I suppose instead of a panicky extreme, perhaps more moderation to the mix?

My point is: maturing involves realizing how fallible your parents can be, seeing them as other human beings, taking the best from each but learning to recognize th

e best in them as well.

I just checked the news. It was an earthquake