Failures

[rebeccmeister]

I woke up this morning sometime before my alarm was scheduled to go off so I could get up and go rowing. When I woke up again to the sound of the alarm, I pushed snooze, and when the alarm went off a second time, I turned it off and went back to sleep. This isn't a post about excuses, or about regrets about not going rowing this morning. My legs are still sore from doing lunges on Monday, and I also have busy work and home life agendas at the moment, to the point where I could tell my subconscious was rebelling and deserved some thinking-space.

At the moment, my mind seems to be most preoccupied with two instances of failures, which both belong to other people. One instance is an exploration of how certain traditional hetero relationship expectations can wind up undermining relationships. The second is on how housemate dynamics fail, which is a somewhat delicate topic because I'm in the midst of working out how new housemate dynamics will go and have had my own fair share of failures in that department.

I'm not inclined to obsess endlessly over failures, as I get the feeling that such obsessing and anguish can turn into a deep, dark, black hole. I'd like to learn from them, reflect on them, and also use them to see areas that could have been failures, but aren't. For instance - on the traditional hetero relationship expectations undermining relationships. That whole notion got me thinking on how the absence of that structure presents its own challenges, because it means that more aspects of a relationship need to be actively negotiated, especially surrounding "housekeeping vs. the dirt."* So people who might wish to be egalitarian may wind up falling back on the hetero tropes because it takes less energy, and for whatever reason, we're overly busy adults. Anyway, all that said and done, I'm immensely grateful to be in a relationship that feels like it's working pretty well on this front.

But failures shouldn't be glossed over or ignored, either. Heavens, no. Again, I have that hope of learning, tied to that notion of one's whole lifetime as a developmental process.

I wish I could keep lying in bed, to fully work out what's going on, on this subconscious level, but I also know that after a point I inevitably get stuck in my thinking and wind up with an incomplete thought. Plus, the sun was up, the sunrise was lovely, and it was time to start the day and attend to other things.


*This is the title of a book by Nick Hornby, which is a collection of literary essays, but I just love the title.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

One issue with the hetero relationship tropes is that when you end up doing some of them for good reason (I cook more because I'm more interested in it, Ted mows more because it's heavy work and he's bigger and stronger) you need to resist extra to keep from falling more into them. One thing that helps for us is fairness rules (like "whoever cooks doesn't have to wash up") and the other, of course, is just general mindfulness. (He's probably better at this than I am.)