It's been a good weekend, with lots of sleeping in and no drudgework at all. Absent the pressure-cooker mentality I tend to find myself a little listless and bored, especially in the recent aftermath.

When you're a small child, the most boring day in your life is the day after you go to Disneyland. It's a very high high, tons of stimulation, really kind of incredible if you think about all the psychic energy that gets built up by the whole Disney cultural complex. Anyway, the next day you're one strung-out six year old, and you don't even really understand what's happening.

The trajectory of my adult life has grown up around projects. Productions, plays, parties, road trips, websites, campaigns... all variations on the general theme of engaging in an ostensibly focused effort to Get Something Done. At their best, they're like little births; creative miracles born in the spastic passion of inspiration and carried to term with love, craft and care.

At their best or worst though, projects tend to leave me with that same Disneyland hangover. The stress and attention called for to see things through the last mile are (ideally) some of the highest functioning times we experience as human beings. Afterwards, our metaphysitcal children born, grown, gone, and possibly even dead, we wonder what to do with our lives.

Spending a week inside the Robbins Family Nest got me thinking quite a lot about my own rather barren romantic landscape. I'm being screwed by O'Hare Airport (as usual) and have several hours to sit here, so I figured I might try and organize my head a bit about this.

I've come to see my decision to relocate to remote Humboldt County in part as a semi-conscious decision to get away from women. In one way it could be seen as a sort of self-purification or monastic thing. Alternatively, it could be seen as a decision to flee. It's unclear, but all in all the decision was right for me, and I am where I am, so I sort of try to look forward.

It occurs to me lately that sex and love are in some ways skills, requiring energy, attention, and more than anything practice if you want to do well. It's like a bicycle in that you never forget how, sure, but it also really seems like the kind of thing where you can lose your edge; or, to be more specific, where I currently feel dull and edgeless.

So there are flashes of paranoia that, having taken myself out of things, I may not easily find my way back -- that I could end up drifting along nonplussed by the world, libido curled up asleep inside me where I put it to bed. That's an unpleasant thought.

And then, thinking of that mis-attributed quote about how our greatest fear is our own power, I'm immediately struck by the opposite idea, that maybe what troubles me isn't ennui or boredom, but rather a fear of living, of what I might do or be or become.

That would explain this semi-conscious self-divorce. If I made a move to cut myself off from sex, I must have done it for a reason, and that reason probably has something to do with me not being very happy with myself.

And, thinking this, I know immediately that it is true.

The rain is on, steady and heavy for the past two days. Listening to it fall in my bedroom reminds me of childhood home. It's peaceful and soothing as long as you've got a roof over your head, especially if there's also a fireplace going.

Things have been going really well. I'm stuck working though the holidays on an overdue project, but we're making steady progress and I've come to accept that it just needs to get done, stopped being angry at myself for letting it get out of hand and frustrated with the other cogs in the system. This too shall pass.

I had a really scary moment on Satuday. Trying to wrap things up and get ready for the party, I accidentally deleted some critical files. Luckily there are multiple backup systems in play, and very dependable people out there too. Nothing was actually lost, but for the twenty minutes or so it took to sort out, I found myself staring down the barrel of a truly colossal fuckup. Feeling that kind of weight made me realize my stresses and troubles now aren't so bad, and (silver lining ahoy!) it makes them that much easier to deal with.

Getting that crisis resolved to neatly sent me into the evening with a lightness in my spirit and a new energy for life. Contrast reveals. That feeling is carrying on, and I'm learning the practical truth of my words about the contagious nature of Love and other emotions. Attitude is infectious, and in any organization or relationship, we all feed back into one another, both positively and negatively.

It's a lot of responsibility, really. I'm reminded of a cheezy country anthem by Hank Williams Jr, and the traditional barroom call and response:

Why do you drink? _(To get drunk!)_

Why do you roll smoke? _(To get stoned!)_

Why must you live out them songs that you wrote? _(To get laid!)_

I'm feeling it. Well, actually, I'm totally fucking exhausted to the point of being goofball jittery, but sitting here on a borrowed bed after spending a week dancing along the edge of what I can really do as a person, I'm all strung out, a little hung over, but sizzlingly alive. It's hard to articulate. Words fail, but General Tso's Tofu provides.

Earlier this week I visited with Bill, my Pa, my step-father, father of my sister, who was around the house from when I was about three until I left home and did me a world of good in-between. He and my mom had a really interesting relationship, one which reached a romantic coda when I was a teenager (and was ergo semi-oblivious to this, or perhaps just too self-absorbed to care) but they stayed together as a logical family unit until my sister left for college.

He's married now to a wonderful artist named Patti -- hence the domain name -- who's lives most of her life out in DC, and who he (and my mom) have been friends with since they were wild and young. Yeah. Life is strange that way. I remember meeting Patti when I was a kid in Iowa when we were out there one summer on the farm, her and her then-husband Skip -- who was part of the wild and young thing too -- come out to visit and break the news that Skip had cancer. Skip died. We all went to his funeral in DC. They played The Circle Game.

Patti is dying now too. Same cause. All things considered I was impressed by how well she's holding up, and Bill's doing a stellar job of taking care of her, but it's clear where things are going and it was bittersweet seeing her; made me feel sick to my stomach to say goodbye.