just, you know...stuff

Sometimes I know exactly what is going to happen when I write a blog entry... sometimes I am lucky enough to have a fully formed blogbaby in my head that I just need to birth by way of my fingers. Splat, right through the keyboard onto the Blogger posting page. Finis.

Not so today. Today what is inside my mind is less than fully-formed. You know how when you mix up cornstarch and water in just the right proportions and what emerges is this eerily dense liquid, or a creepily fluid solid? You can poke and prod it and it resists solidly. But turn the bowl gently on its side and the contents flow out like a well-behaved liquid. Agitate it, it becomes rock-hard. Let it rest, and the flexibility is restored.

Hmm... this started out as a metaphor for slightly ethereal and formless quality of my current thoughts, but it seems to have evolved into something better: a metaphor for one of the truths that I learned, or better re-learned, this weekend. Namely: if you agitate someone, expect resistance. If you're wanting the conversation to flow, don't poke. Ease. There is a word for this, actually: dilatant. That's a liquid that becomes more viscous as a result of agitation. I think it works well as a general rule for human interaction, too...

...on which I am feeling like a bit of an expert lately (ha!), since I actually had some this weekend. Human interaction, that is. A visitor, alluded to above (or I guess below, spatially speaking) - specifically the heartbreaker, also known as the German Ex-Boyfriend. I was a little nervous beforehand, I guess. We hadn't really seen each other since the day we broke up, almost exactly a year ago. And though we'd done the "let's stay friends" schtick, the contact waned and then disappeared completely. So we didn't have any actual practice at being friends. There really was only one rubric that he fit into: boyfriend. Which left me, understandably, a little bit nervous about the visit this weekend. I'm lonely here. My life is not full and satisfying right now... was I going to want him back? Was I going to be so nostalgic for the good old days that my brain would interpret it as infatuation?

Short answer: nope. I appear to have moved seamlessly into friend mode and left my heart at the door. Whew. It helps that I have made the solemn vow to myself to never again get involved with someone who isn't wild about me. Casual dating, fine, I guess. But an actual relationship, with vulnerability and mutual disclosure and expectations? Not on your life. I love too dangerously, and I am not setting myself up for that particular fall again. I am not exactly sure how I am going to keep this promise, since I am not responsible for other people's emotions, nor can I ever be really certain what anyone else is feeling... but I assume I will recognize the situation if it emerges.

In other news... two programs that were teetering on the brink of cancellation are going to run. Halleluia. It would have been a huge bite out of our 2006 budget, and would have reflected poorly on my nascent leadership, if these had gone to the big archive in the sky. *breathes enormous sigh of relief*

I also feel as though I must defend my spelling of the title of my previous post. It's Denglish, people! "Shock" in German is "Schock". So... schocker. Anyway. You probably don't care, but it's important to me. :-)

OK, you are probably wondering if I'm ever going to shut up. Short answer: yep.