Four in a Row..
May. 13th, 2002 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geminigirlThere are at least four or so livejournal entries that I wanted to make and never got around to...so instead of making them separate, I'm just going to stick a whole lot of writing behind a cut-tag for you all.
In summary though, since you might want to have a clue about what you're missing, included in this journal entry there is:
1. Something about the great thing that happened at the conference last week
2. Something about disclosure
3. Something about polyamory
4. Something about livejournaling
I. Okay. So, I went to this conference last week. It was in fact a really great conference...a bunch of good workshops and presentations and things. The director of my department was on the conference planning committee, as well as a guy who had run a two-day course I'd attended in February. We'd hit it off, chatting about bagels, and about being from Long Island and so on. I ran into him at the conference, we got into a conversation about the new CDC trendy-prevention thing called SAFE or Serostatus Approach to Fighting the Epidemic. Sometimes also called "prevention for positives." We were chatting about it and this person who's work I admire...suggested working together on some future projects. Needless to say I was floored. It was a real validating moment to me.
II. Some stuff about disclosure. Something I've wondered about...why do people tell me some things. AA says it's cause I'm un-shockable-that I just take everything in. Fair enough assessment...he's told me some stuff that I could have reacted really strongly to, and just didn't. I was more shocked about being told that particular piece of information than what the actual information was. But I know him pretty well, so for him to tell me that was sort of un-shocking. Much like Scott calling me every time he had sex when we were in college. It was more like "I just got laid, now I'm bored, let's go do something" than anything else...and it became a big joke, the after-sex phone calls.
In the last month, two different friends have told me some very serious things about their lives. And asked me to keep them confidental...and I've done it. But why are they telling me? Certainly I have a great deal of respect for their confidentiality. And when they start to tell me things, I try to ask questions that I think will help them sort out what's really going on...but that's the part of me that's trained to be a social worker, I think. And I'm okay with this sort of disclosure. I'm okay with these conversations. It's the other sort that I'm not sure of...the sort where someone you don't know very well, but are fond of nonetheless tells you something like, "Well I started dating this new guy recently, and I told him 'sex stops when allergy season starts.'" And I laughed and said something about how miserable it is here from April to June and August through September. It was a funny sort of remark. Really. But I don't know the guy who said it that well. So what I'm really getting at is...why do people tell me that sort of thing? People I don't know. Is it that I'm pretty un-shockable? That I find humor in remarks like that? That I just look like someone who you can tell things to? It's a remark that wouldn't have phased me coming from someone I knew well. And in fact, the remark itself didn't...it was the fact that someone I don't know well would tell me that. I can't identify the resulting feeling as "uncomfortable" or something I need to discuss with this person either. Just that I'm surprised at what I was told.
III. The poly part-It's been interesting over the year and a few months that I've been dating someone how I've been accepted by the friends that she and her husband have. A few months back, the week after her birthday celebration, I spent an evening playing bridge with my girlfriend, her husband and another friend. I had baked cupcakes for the birthday celebration the previous weekend and there were some leftover. The fourth hadn't been at the celebration and hadn't tried the cupcakes. She ate one, turned to me and said, "S. has had other girlfriends before...but none of them that bake cupcakes like this." It was the fact that I'd been acknowledged as her girlfriend that was so important. I'd received the stamp of approval.
Then, this weekend, we had gaming at their house. Gaming is a fun event...lots of different combinations of games and people playing lots of different things. I arrived late-I'd had to work earlier in the day. I arrived in the middle of a game of Set (which I joined late and still managed to win) and as we were breaking and setting up for other games, Jill, who I'd met maybe half a dozen times, and always at gaming handed me a gift. She and her husband had gone to Hawaii and brought me back a dress. (Even cuter part...it matched S's.) It was a simple gesture that meant a great deal. And the people who brought the dress back are not people I know very well...and not people I've ever been social with other than the gaming gatherings. It said a lot, that they would think to do that, and I certainly appreciated it. And I said so.
IV. I've kept journals for a long time. I sometimes wonder how people will feel going back and realizing that once upon a time they posted "THAT AWFUL THING" on the web for everyone to read it. Me included...since I know what I feel like sometimes when I go back and read old journals that I've kept. And I know some of my old usenet posts are out there for people to read...and that some of them would make me wince if I read them now. It's much easier for me to think of my paper journals and realize that no one's read them other than me...rather than this on line forum where I don't even really know who's reading it and who's not, and who might remember down the road what I wrote. That doesn't stop me from posting though...
Back to bed time, I think. Trying to get the fever to break so I can go to work.
In summary though, since you might want to have a clue about what you're missing, included in this journal entry there is:
1. Something about the great thing that happened at the conference last week
2. Something about disclosure
3. Something about polyamory
4. Something about livejournaling
I. Okay. So, I went to this conference last week. It was in fact a really great conference...a bunch of good workshops and presentations and things. The director of my department was on the conference planning committee, as well as a guy who had run a two-day course I'd attended in February. We'd hit it off, chatting about bagels, and about being from Long Island and so on. I ran into him at the conference, we got into a conversation about the new CDC trendy-prevention thing called SAFE or Serostatus Approach to Fighting the Epidemic. Sometimes also called "prevention for positives." We were chatting about it and this person who's work I admire...suggested working together on some future projects. Needless to say I was floored. It was a real validating moment to me.
II. Some stuff about disclosure. Something I've wondered about...why do people tell me some things. AA says it's cause I'm un-shockable-that I just take everything in. Fair enough assessment...he's told me some stuff that I could have reacted really strongly to, and just didn't. I was more shocked about being told that particular piece of information than what the actual information was. But I know him pretty well, so for him to tell me that was sort of un-shocking. Much like Scott calling me every time he had sex when we were in college. It was more like "I just got laid, now I'm bored, let's go do something" than anything else...and it became a big joke, the after-sex phone calls.
In the last month, two different friends have told me some very serious things about their lives. And asked me to keep them confidental...and I've done it. But why are they telling me? Certainly I have a great deal of respect for their confidentiality. And when they start to tell me things, I try to ask questions that I think will help them sort out what's really going on...but that's the part of me that's trained to be a social worker, I think. And I'm okay with this sort of disclosure. I'm okay with these conversations. It's the other sort that I'm not sure of...the sort where someone you don't know very well, but are fond of nonetheless tells you something like, "Well I started dating this new guy recently, and I told him 'sex stops when allergy season starts.'" And I laughed and said something about how miserable it is here from April to June and August through September. It was a funny sort of remark. Really. But I don't know the guy who said it that well. So what I'm really getting at is...why do people tell me that sort of thing? People I don't know. Is it that I'm pretty un-shockable? That I find humor in remarks like that? That I just look like someone who you can tell things to? It's a remark that wouldn't have phased me coming from someone I knew well. And in fact, the remark itself didn't...it was the fact that someone I don't know well would tell me that. I can't identify the resulting feeling as "uncomfortable" or something I need to discuss with this person either. Just that I'm surprised at what I was told.
III. The poly part-It's been interesting over the year and a few months that I've been dating someone how I've been accepted by the friends that she and her husband have. A few months back, the week after her birthday celebration, I spent an evening playing bridge with my girlfriend, her husband and another friend. I had baked cupcakes for the birthday celebration the previous weekend and there were some leftover. The fourth hadn't been at the celebration and hadn't tried the cupcakes. She ate one, turned to me and said, "S. has had other girlfriends before...but none of them that bake cupcakes like this." It was the fact that I'd been acknowledged as her girlfriend that was so important. I'd received the stamp of approval.
Then, this weekend, we had gaming at their house. Gaming is a fun event...lots of different combinations of games and people playing lots of different things. I arrived late-I'd had to work earlier in the day. I arrived in the middle of a game of Set (which I joined late and still managed to win) and as we were breaking and setting up for other games, Jill, who I'd met maybe half a dozen times, and always at gaming handed me a gift. She and her husband had gone to Hawaii and brought me back a dress. (Even cuter part...it matched S's.) It was a simple gesture that meant a great deal. And the people who brought the dress back are not people I know very well...and not people I've ever been social with other than the gaming gatherings. It said a lot, that they would think to do that, and I certainly appreciated it. And I said so.
IV. I've kept journals for a long time. I sometimes wonder how people will feel going back and realizing that once upon a time they posted "THAT AWFUL THING" on the web for everyone to read it. Me included...since I know what I feel like sometimes when I go back and read old journals that I've kept. And I know some of my old usenet posts are out there for people to read...and that some of them would make me wince if I read them now. It's much easier for me to think of my paper journals and realize that no one's read them other than me...rather than this on line forum where I don't even really know who's reading it and who's not, and who might remember down the road what I wrote. That doesn't stop me from posting though...
Back to bed time, I think. Trying to get the fever to break so I can go to work.
