Ex-girlfriend(s)

When I lived in Seattle and worked all too much, I would run away to the mountains for a break of sanity. It usually took three days before sanity would appear. Well, I have been at CoolTop working on our house for for four days and sanity seems to be here.

What I mean by sanity is that I get around to thinking about my life, what makes sense, what matters and what I would like to accomplish. I contrast this with thinking about how to make money, how to deal with traffic and, in general, lots of external things. While I am not isolated, I am not engaged in "normal local trivia". For example, I talked a bit with the caretaker here yesterday, and Ana's brother when he dropped off some things. But, nothing involved "the state of the world" and such.

Thus, I have been able to think about "my stuff". Sure, part of that is what is the best way to do the gypsum ceiling in a 5-sided bathroom but that is very different from "life". To put that in perspective, I had a friend about 30 years ago who, while very intellectual, was a mailman. I asked him why and he said "they rent my body but not my mind".

Actually, a perfect example of "here vs. where we normally are" just happened. I looked to my right and there are about 100 ants on top of a makeshift table. I bit more investigation shows that there is a little piece of food (part of a peanut, I think). What am I going to do? Let them remove it and then they will go away. Very different from the "normal city response".

On to the real subject, ex-girlfriends. At least twice (I keep thinking there must have been a third example) I tried to "run away" from the city life. Both times it seemed like it was a "Phil idea" and my girlfriend was willing to go along. To a certain extent, that is what is happening now as well. But, the ex-girlfriend I have been thinking about is not one of them. Our focus was on "saving the planet" but always in the form of us doing something for them (whoever them was) rather than living our life doing stuff for us.

We were into the same things and both very intense about it. We worked very well together but our "always gotta fix the next thing" focus seemed like a path for early burnout. In any case, we drifted apart partially inspired by her move to a different town for a different job. At the time I had a young business to keep in operation and that seemed more important than "us".

Well, I have been thinking about her. Not in a regreatful way but just thinking that what I am doing now probably would have been where she would have wanted to end up doing. And, more important, wondering if she has found something that feels as good for her as what I have found for me.

This was about 25 years ago. I know of how other ex-girlfriends went in different directions but I am guessing she did not. I wish her well.

On a note about the present, most of the ants removed the piece of peanut. About 10 remain doing final cleanup. Now, back to thinking about gypsum.