"so watch me while I take this curve"

I would love to have a slightly less complicated relationship with all forms of human interaction.   Just saying. 

I'd like to know how to talk on the phone, to both start and continue email conversations, to feel less like twitter is an unexploded bomb of insecurity that I must handle very, very carefully.  I'd like to not have transferred all my anxiety about interrupting more important things when I call to both texting and gchat.   I'd like to accept, without any angst, uncommented-upon livejournal entries.  I'd like to know how to communicate that once someone's in the inner sanctum and sometimes even when they're not, I want all the stories, and to let other people know that acts of initiating contact still give me that funny hollow feeling underneath my breastbone.  I'd like to be able to listen to my voicemail when I see I have it, without feeling like I'm bracing for a body blow.  I'd like to be able to call and make appointments with doctors and then go into offices and clearly and cleanly state my problems, and not accept answers of "come back when it gets worse".

 

I'd like to feel like I'm not spending some precious, irreplaceable reserve, some sort of fossil fuel of the soul, when I have to be brave, when I have to talk myself out of checking to see if someone's online, when I'm trying to choke down the apologies that I make any time I imagine I've done something that's upset anyone.

I want to figure out how I feel about Readercon.  I want to know if I want to run for the board, if I want to up my involvement, change my involvement, or end my involvement.  I think there's something about con-work that feeds other people that I don't know how to digest, that I got into this for the neat people, but discovered that I don't know how to form meaningful connections to them, for the most part.  

Which sounds really self-pitying.  Blue and Boots and Kilt all came over after the meeting, and admired our newest and poofiest addition to the tortie army and played Space Team and ate Indian food and talked about what they get from conventions.  It was awesome, and I'd love to have more of it in my life, but I feel disoriented, like I should be on my best behavior but I don't actually know what my best behavior is anymore.   If my therapist is right, and I don't always need to be useful to be kept, there must be some paradigm to put into its place.  I have no idea what it might be, and I can't put my finger on the questions to ask to find out how other people do it.  But I'll get there.  Or at least i intend to.

Now, to change into pajamas and tidy a little before Delight arrives.  Tonight, I hope to unearth holiday decorations.  Maybe this year, we'll actually put more than seven ornaments on the tree.