January 13th, 23:25 | Swing of balances

It's been a strange day of balances.

The morning started off with a mad rush of tearing around town trying to find a second (and possibly third) wii controller. We were successful, but it did take three store visits (the fourth one, just to see if we could get a third controller, was fruitless too). After that, a good breakfast, complete with made-with-love milkshake. The tasty meal followed by (finally!) going back to the party supply store and not being able to return balloons I will never use. Then a productive (and surprisingly short) run of necessities (water, Kleenex), followed by a long frustrating series of visits to cat shelters where we found cute cats, ugly cats, a tiny kitten who, if she weren't such an antisocial kitty (chan, she was JUST like Nibbley in uber-kitten form), we probably would have adopted her, and an idiot at Petsmart who might well have found another cat a home if he'd bothered to just unlock the cage and let us get to know her instead of letting us stand around unattended for 20 minutes.

And I'd had my cat socks on too.

Back home, there was more swinging between the edges, ending with a fight, and all sorts of anger which remains unresolved due to going to a friend's for Hockey Day In Canada.

I despise the "let's just pretend nothing happened and start over" approach to conflict. (Ha HA. This is especially funny if you've ever seen me interact with coworkers, as I abhor conflict. Then again, I've never gotten into a fight with one.) Really though, I do. The reason is because there are only two messages that can come across when that path is chosen. Those two messages are...

1. What you're saying is not important enough to follow up on, or address. I'm going to move on to the next topic.
2. I can't handle fighting, and would rather just pretend it didn't happen, because that means that there are no problems.

I realize that most of the time when people try to just move on by forgetting the fight what they're really after is the big picture: This clearly matters to you, but it's probably a big misunderstanding, and straightening it out would just take WAY too much effort, and get both of us angrier before we solved it, so let's both focus on what's really important -- us being happy -- and try to move forward together. In reality though, it never works out that way. Inevitably, one person is going to feel that their side, their view, their opinion, their feelings are unimportant. That they will be the one who is "taking one for the team", and keeping silent for the sake of peace. And maybe that's okay. Maybe there's a peacemaker in the relationship who doesn't hold grudges and who after ten minutes, or half an hour, or however long will let go, and everything will be fine. But I'm not that peacemaker; at least for today.

So as of right now, about five hours after the fact, I am officially declaring the "let's drop it and move on" tactic as goat-blowing cowardice. Truce efforts have been noted, and I'm sorry if my neglect to make nice and respond in kind were hurtful, but I don't want a truce. I want communication.

On other fronts, I think the year is going okay. Two weeks in, I still feel pretty collected and hopeful, although definitely a little tired, and presently unhappy. I am still very clear in my head about this year's goal ("No Histrionics: Clear Open Communication Only"), which I've only just now noticed can be reduced to "NoH-COCO". Ahem. So that's all fine, but I'm a little hazy on everything else I want to get done, and that includes scheduling of all kinds. (For this, I am especially thankful that chan seems to have developped a scary Hermione-like ability to get her wedding in order because I? Have been no use whatsoever up to this point in the planning process.)

Thus far I've taken 6 photos (I'm not counting the "knitted Stuff" ones), which is on track for my goal of 150 in the year (which averages out to about 3 per week), although I am frustrated that I keep forgetting to take any (or at least, take any with my camera) at social gatherings. It would be nice to have pictures of friends as well as of, say, my fridge, or the view from the window. I've hit the yoga mat a grand total of 3 times in 13 days, which I consider a vast improvement over previous months, and I only expect this to increase as my class starts (next week!), so that's all good too.

When I sit back and tabulate it, I seem to be pretty much on target for everything I actually set out for myself as a new year's goal (read: not all that much), but I still have that unshakeable New Year Floundering feeling, which is probably telling me that I'm not aiming high enough.

If anyone has suggestions for how to make concrete, measurable goals for the "career and settledness of life" aspects of their lives, please take pity on me and send some pithy coaching voodoo my way. I'm like that rock-climber that's in a pretty good stable place, but has absolutely no idea where to put their hand or foot next. I'm okay for now, but without progress, I'll fall off eventually. You know?

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