quote from The Buccaneers

Don’t you see, I’m afraid of having nothing to live on but my passions.”

In lieu of prayer

"Let's have family prayer," I said.  Through my teenage daughter's closed door.  The two younger children were already waiting in the living room, of the house we'd moved in to last week.  We moved a mile because the house must be sold and divided in the divorce.  The oldest child had left that morning for a freshman orientation week at the college she'll start at this Fall.

Unpacked boxes everywhere.  Teen says something through the door.  All I catch is the tone, and it doesn't sound good.

"I can't hear you through the door," I say.  "We'll see you in the living room soon."

"It doesn't make sense that we're having a prayer," she says when she comes around the corner to join us.  "Half of us aren't mormon anymore."  My son and I are LDS.  My daughter considers herself agnostic.  The youngest, in elementary school, has declared herself an atheist like her father.

"I want something at the close of the day." I say.  "A ritual of some kind, to connect.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a prayer."  But a prayer, I think, is the easiest.  The alternatives I can think of are all more personal.  Telling something about your day, like at dinner?  A group hug?  Teenager bats it down because she doesn't any of us to touch her.  It's rare when she allows me to give her a hug.

The youngest suggests we sing Happy Birthday to her brother, who turned teenage this week.

I ask if we'll sing a song every night then?  I have a hard time believing that would work.

I suggest we all hold hands.  Less contact that a group hug.  Some sense for me of what a group prayer contains.  I suggest we each say something we enjoy or appreciate about the birthday boy.

Lots of rhetoric from the teen girl.  She'll be gone in two years, why does she have to pretend we're a family?  We're not like a family, she says, we're like people who happen to live together.  Prayers might have made sense when her older sister was here, who is still religious, but now there is no majority.  Lots of rhetoric about how we don't count as a family, we are not a family to her.

I want us to be a family anyway.  As much of a family, in as many ways as a family, as can be.  These children, this is family to me.  I know she wants to become independent.  I want her to gain those skills.  But also, I want her to be loved, to feel connected, and know that she is not alone.

"It's awkward," complained the youngest.  Several times, to garner favor with the teen.

Give it time.  It will be less awkward with practice.  Let us be together in morments.  There is something it will mean.

God bless this family.

He's acting like a Dad.

The guy I'm dating is someone who's been a friend for years.

The 15-year-old is distressed because he's "acting like a Dad."  She says she's glad I'm happy, and she likes him, but now that he's being "dadlike" around her younger siblings.  The examples are all fairly innocuous things any family friend might do.  And not things her own father does.

I feel for her, but really, in the end, the only way to completely eliminate this issue is for me not to be dating, or date without them ever seeing him.  Both of which are paths I have considered.

Get a Hobby

T's parting advice in our two hour discussion of my resume and job search, was to add a hobby or service activity as a last line in my resume.  I'd like to work at small companies, of around 100 employees, and anyone hiring there is also looking for cultural fit, not just skills.

To my surprise, you can have cultural fit while your hobbies are different from those of anyone already working there.  I'm gathering that cultural fit is about intensity:

• Do you have an enthusiasm for life and your community that is similar to that of people already working there?  Or really, can you present that same youthful energized enthusiasm that people already working there envision for themselves?

Cultural fit does show 

• sedentary vs. active
• intellectual vs. consumable
• mainstream vs. geeky

During months 3-6 of my divorce process, alongside my grief about what felt like was being ripped away, I caught the vision of hope about reinventing my life.  I tried things and spent time on things I enjoy, that had been sidelined during the years of my marriage.  Not because my ex was any kind of controlling bastard, but that in the course of things, hobbies and interests that I have, and he doesn't, were de-emphasized during the marriage.  

Thus began the experiments.  I wore colors I love that he hated.  I cut my hair.  I took up social dance.  I put together costumes for theme balls.  I rode my bike.

I've hesitated to claim my new hobbies, because I haven't been doing them that long.  I haven't yet cycled a century.  I'm just learning to dance.  If you talk to be about these things, you'll know that I have little experience.  But if you talk to me about these things, you'll know I'm excited about them, and you'll probably feel my excitement about them too.  So I declare: the qualifier on claiming a hobby is not how expert you are, as there's always someone who knows more.  The qualifier is that you are actively enthusiastic in it.

I go out to dinner

L. called me at 5:30, she had just gotten my email to her postscript question of "how are you doing?"  So she invited me to dinner.

It's really lovely to be invited to socialize when I'm feeling down.

Admittedly, a significant proportion of the meal conversation was fretting about the uncertain future.  On both sides, but still--I feel like I set the tone.

Yet it was super fun and helped me process things.

Don't be discouraged

Woke up at 6:30. Wanted to go on a hike.