Just a quick bookmark here so no one thinks I fell off the face of the planet.
Most of my Minneapolis trip was great, and I got to enjoy a lot of sun. It perhaps would have behooved me to ask how warm it had been before the week I arrived before I dove headfirst into Lake Calhoun, but I survived that error all the same. The Baby Liam is well into his two’s for the good and the ill, and began calling me “Daddy Heather” for some reason, which I have no doubt his father will not think is the best thing ever. I had a migraine for several of the days there and as a result, learned a bit late in the game that the person to send for coffee for you is not your friend who a) doesn’t drink it herself and b) has a degenerative eye disease. Only many days of growing pain later did I discover I’d been drinking decaf.
It was great seeing people, and really good to have some real downtime. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to, but that was mainly because I did actually manage to truly vacate a lot of the time there, a nearly impossible task for me.
I, however, came home to considerable and very unexpected catastrophe, and need to find the right way to discuss how I’m feeling in writing without actually disclosing any actual details of the situation. That situation has me a bit of a wreck, though, so I’m not quite there yet and need a couple of days before I can write about it, my trip, or anything else.
I now return you to your regular programming. More later.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I stumbled onto your blog site and read a lot.
In your line of work it surely must be impossible not to become hard, bitter, critical, cynical . . . about men in particular and life in general.
I just want to encourage you, that while you are “fighting the good fight” (whatever that may mean) that there are men, people and relationships that are normal, sane, balanced, fulfilling, responsible, tolerant.
The temptation is to evaluate the entire world, the human condition and experience on the contents of the 8 o clock news. Most of the world, most of the time, is a wonderful place but I’m sure that from your perspective it must be very difficult to see this.
God bless you in what is sometimes, clearly, a lonely crusade as you fight to be a blessing to people in need.
Regards
Steve
June 28th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Um.
I don’t think it’s at all impossible not to become hard, bitter or cynical because of the work that I do, and I think none of those things describes me in the least. As well, with all of the kinds of work I do, I actually find that all of it enables compassion and the like, rather than stands in the way of that.
I also don’t for the life of me know what anything I have just posted here has to do with my relationships with or ideas about men. I am well aware that there are people, including men, who are all of the things you’ve described. It’s not difficult for me to see what is wonderful in people in the world: it’s actually something I meditate on daily and tend to find I have to remind others of more often than myself.
And would that I even had time for the 8 o’clock or any-o’clock news. I assure you, the media is hardly the lens through which I do or have ever evaluated the world.
I’m having a hard time with something right now which I cannot and choose not to detail publicly, as will happen sometimes with those of us who are writers, artists and/or public people. What I can express is feeling distressed, but please do not presume to know what that distress is about or what place in me it comes from.