Cars are Annoying and Other Interesting Insights into Human Culture

One thing I will say about women’s liberation is that it makes mundane accomplishments seem like monumental achievements. Case in point, yesterday I got all “dolled up” for work and walked out to my car. I sat down in the driver’s seat, started the car, and winced at the ridiculously high volume of the radio…again. I turned it down, noticed that my “low air in the tires” light was on, and thought, “eh, fine, I’ll just pump up the jam down the road…tire…pump up the tire. There are no jams to be pumped at this early hour of the day, good sir!”

I, of course, was saying that to myself in a hoity toity British accent and all was fun and games until I drove approximately 5 feet and, as my car lurched and thumped forward I thought, “Well, shit. Something ain’t right.”

This was said in an offensive Southern accent.

I stepped out of the car and inspected the tires, only to find that one was completely flat.

“Fuck.” I said, out loud, in my own voice with no accent adulteration. I walked upstairs and announced to Wes that I had a flat tire. He said something like, “Bummer. Do you have a spare tire?”

I had no idea. I had not yet had to deal with this kind of thing with the Fit. So I went outside again and found that I did in fact have a donut. Impressively, I was happier about that discovery than whether or not I had a delicious donut, though I was starting to think that I would need a donut of the delicious variety soon since drinking wine at 9am is a faux pas or something…unless you’re in France…or unless it’s Sunday brunch. I’m pretty sure if I were to take a glass of wine and stir it with a celery stalk, it would be the next big acceptable brunch booze option.

Anyway, I had a donut tire and I had a non-complete-bottom-of-the-line hydraulic jack. Wes appeared next to me and helped me figure out where to put the jack and then said, “Well, I have to go to work! Have fun!”

He drove off in his convertible and I stood there staring at the jack, having already raised the car, realizing that I didn’t know how to get it back down again. Meanwhile, it was humid and the fresh morning dew was fucking everywhere, so it was time to change costumes.

Jessie, Shaun and Ginny were asleep. I changed from my spiffy “I’m a god damn professional” outfit into an “eh, fuck it” outfit. It consisted of ripped, dirty jeans, and t-shirt with a mushroom cloud and scientists fist pumping behind the word SCIENCE! And my hair hastily pulled back into a ponytail. I stomped out of the house already frustrated (mostly because of the humidity, because I am a northern wuss) and proceeded to sit down in the grass and try to read the (1 page) manual to the jack to figure out how to operate it. I read the page again and again and started talking to myself about how this didn’t make any sense. “Yes, I see the release valve, ok?!? BUT HOW DO I TURN IT?!? What handle?!? I HATE YOU!”

Well, it is 2013 and when in doubt, ask Google. After blowing past several links that said things like, “Once you are done with the car in its raised position, simply lower it,” I found something that made sense and I went, “OooooooooooOOOoooH” and managed the first part of this great enigma.

Then I tried to loosen the lug nuts with the tire iron I had…only to find that the tire iron was not the right size. Luckily for me, there was another car I could drive to go get a new one…but I didn’t do this until I had already exhausted various insufficient and inappropriate tools from the workbench. Wes’ suggestion was to hit the ratchet I had with a hammer. Not ready to regress into “Home Habilis Learns to Use Tools” existence, I went with the “drag my ass to Pepboys” plan instead.

I came home with an impressive looking lug wrench and, after thinking that I had gotten the wrong size (only to find that every one of the 4 fittings on there was different), I got the lug nuts loose with my massive strength.

Also with a great deal of help from the concept of leverage. Simple machines make work easier. I wish I also had required a pulley and an inclined plane, because then this would be an even MORE exciting post!

Long story longer, I managed to get the donut on and I cheered for myself, and pat myself on the hip where I have a gold star tattoo for situations just like this. I didn’t even bother to wash my hands or face. I just got in the car and decided to take the risk of getting down the street to the auto repair place. Obviously, as I sputtered down the road at a relative snail’s pace with my blinkers on (envisioning the donut suddenly flying off the car due to my shoddy installation job), I was loudly singing the theme to Indiana Jones.

Obviously.

I made it there alive and without any impressive several car pile ups, and surprised the people working there when they realized that I had changed the tire myself. I was probably just projecting that they were impressed. The one guy asked if I had done it myself after seeing my dirty hands and the fingerprints on my face. “You know you can go wash your hands in the sink over there…” Yup, totally awe struck. I know. I know it had nothing to do with the fact that I looked like I dropped the car off by jumping out of it while it was moving or anything.

So yes, I changed a tire by myself and was proud about it and also knew that had I told some people the story, they would have been like “Why didn’t Wes do it for you?” Some people did say “Why don’t you go wake up, Shaun?”

Here’s the thing: I accept that statistically, men are overall stronger physically than women. I know that sometimes it just makes more sense to get a dude to carry heavy things for me because it’s not going to take as much of a toll on them BUT I also think that being able to change a tire is something that every able-bodied should know how to do and, given the proper tools, should be able to do. When I was younger, I wanted to prove something all the time and proclaim that I didn’t need help. I still do that, but I am learning to assess when I really need help and when I’m just being lazy. In the case of the tire, Wes had to get to work and I wasn’t going to ask him to do this for me when I was perfectly capable of doing it (especially since I was at home when I discovered it). I wasn’t going to go wake Shaun up a few hours earlier than he normally would be up unless there was no option. On Facebook I answered the question of “wake up Shaun” with, “I ultimately was happy to have done it myself. Women are strong like bull.”

I mention this only because of the implied Russian accent needed to say that sentence properly.

I was jokingly calling this whole thing an Adventure in Women’s Lib, and perhaps it was in the way that the whole day was a lot about gender equality and saying fuck you to gender roles. I changed a tire on my own and refused to be a damsel in distress (even though I was frustrated as all get out). Then I walked with Shaun to go pick up a pizza I ordered and he explained to me why he thought the Nietzsche book he was reading was brilliant and unique (then he read a passage to the dog later…she was patient, but confused). Then Wes came home and made dinner while I sat on the porch with a crossword puzzle and a glass of wine.

Then more friends of ours came over and we sat in the hot tub for hours, drinking way too much for a Tuesday night.

Life is mundane and absurd and amazing. I like to look at this more as People’s Lib rather than Women’s Lib because at our house, no one really follows any kind of normal definitions. And I call it quite the privilege.

Gina Wars: Return of the…Um…Not Jedi, but Something Equally Cool.

*THUD! A girl you recognize has appeared before you, accompanied by a loud crash.*

Oh, hi, Polyskeptic readers! It’s me, that other writer who gets a blurb on the bio page.

*Our narrator has fallen out of nowhere and is having a bit of trouble getting up. She looks around and notices that she is being watched by the entire internet and resolves to get her ass up. She dusts off her shoulders and notices that she’s getting old as she bends down to pick up her glasses from the ground. She turns to face…the internet…fixes her hair a bit, though she knows that it doesn’t really make a difference. It’s hard to get rid of that “I just fell off of something” look. A smile curls across her face.*

Good to see you’re still here. Thank goodness Shaun, Ginny and Wes decided that writing was a good idea because yeesh. I have been at a complete loss for words over the last several months!

I know, you are shocked and I don’t blame you, but honestly, had I been writing all this time, I likely would have been doing a whole lot of whining and no one actually likes reading that crap. If it makes you feel any better, I also wasn’t particularly updating my Facebook page! I KNOW! Sacrilege. But again, had I been less disciplined about that, I would have possibly put up a bunch of vague “Oh I’m so disappointed in…people…and I am so…upset…and stuff…” kind of statuses, prompting people to send me eHugs and while I would possibly appreciate the sentiment, it wouldn’t have really helped. What I’m saying is ranting to Facebook is only acceptable to me if I can be hilarious while doing it. I used to illustrate the ups and downs of my day with appropriate YouTube videos, but alas I cannot access them at work anymore.

So, where have I been? What have I been doing? Well, to put it simply, I have been engaged in an epic battle for equal pay at my job. The story itself is boring at this point. The important thing is that I started this debacle in January and just today got final written proof of my victory. Yes, 6 months of fighting.

Now, firstly, I say that it was epic because it felt that way to me…but part of the frustration I was experiencing was that it wasn’t particularly epic to anyone who could make important decisions. What happened was several months of me arguing and fighting by proxy at the powers that be and getting odd responses that, in some ways, amounted to “well, yeah, I know she’s been here a long time and is important and stuff, but is she really that great? I mean, what does she DO?” I internalized a lot of that and it started to seriously take its toll on me.

Secondly, when I say “equal pay”, I’m not referencing a gender inequality thing. At least, I was never able to fully buy that any of this was related to that. I suppose the case could be made, but I really don’t think so. The crux of this whole thing was that I wanted to stop limping along to getting my market value. I wanted to stop having to scream about this every couple of years. I wanted it done so that I could stop fighting and just work…and I didn’t think that was a ridiculous thing to ask for.

It is, however, rare to manage what I have managed, and based on the fact that I felt like I was getting the crap beat out of me often during the process, I can certainly see why. But I won, damn it, and now I can get back into doing what I’m good at and feeling balanced and calmer. And I know that I am valued enough to keep me happy, at market value…and that’s pretty excellent.

This was an important experience though for a whole host of reasons, the biggest being that I needed to show myself that I could fight for me like this. I was relatively convinced that I was going to lose and almost gave up a few times, but my family wouldn’t let me. I would come home and tell them the latest piece of the saga and they would echo my initial reactions and I wouldn’t feel so nuts anymore…but it was hard, because in the end I was the only one who could do anything.

The experience also reminded me how much depression lies and how hard it is to separate yourself from it even when you know what it is and what is causing it. I felt very lucky to be medicated, because I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without Zoloft honestly. I still had days where I was having to go to the bathroom at work to cry and I wasn’t able to leave it all at work when I went home. I was sensitive and insecure. The stress was wreaking havoc on my mind and body. It got to the point where I was convinced not only that I was unintelligent and worthless, but also that I was ugly and completely unsexy. I could barely look at myself in the mirror some days. And I knew that it was an illusion, that I was looking at myself and thinking about myself with an ugly, terrible filter, but I couldn’t remove the haze. Finally, I ended up with strep throat and antibiotics waged war on my innards and my thoughts too and I came into work after Memorial Day weekend completely fed up with the entire process. And finally, after all of that, I got the first good news I needed: a reasonable proposal of compensation and a promise that it was being discussed and that decisions would be official soon.

It took several days for this to sink in. Even when I got the official word, I was still in disbelief and I was still fighting off residual negativity (this is why primal scream therapy would not work for me at all. Allow rage and negativity forward leaves burn that takes a long time to heal), BUT I could feel the haze lifting finally.

So I’m back. I feel like writing again and I have things to say and I don’t have this general feeling that nothing matters and that no one cares. I missed my own passion and gusto and not caring about whether I looked like an airbrushed magazine mutant. I was aware of all these seemingly ridiculous notions, and being aware that they are ridiculous served as a light at the end of the tunnel. “You know this is circumstantial and chemical. This is not eternal. This is a down in a life of ups and downs.” And now I have burlesque shows to write about and the hilarity of family life at the Polyskeptic compound. I am stronger now than I was before…or at least, have a bit of a sense of humor about it. That’s pretty much the same thing, right?

What are you thinking?

This is totally trivial, y’all, but I’m curious. Most of us, I think, have had the experience of being asked “What are you thinking about?” and not being able to give an answer. We might say “nothing” or we might make something up. It’s frustrating to ask and get the “nothing” response, but it’s also frustrating to be asked. What I want to know is, when that happens, what are you actually thinking? Or what’s going on in your mind that makes it impossible to answer? I realized, for me, it’s nearly always the same thing, but I’m curious what it is for other folks.

I haven’t blocked repeat voters, so if more than one of these are common for you you can vote twice! If you put “other,” of course I’d love an explanation in the comments.

Musings of an apostate

I had a mini-revelation this morning while doing my daily blog read-through. Somebody — I don’t remember who or on what blog — mentioned that they’re an atheist now but grew up in a Christian home where grace was said before meals and church attendance was expected. The attitude with which they spoke about their Christian upbringing was both casual and unquestioningly distant: it was a piece of their personal history, but far, far removed from the person they were today. They talked about it the way I think about horseback riding or Girl Scouts, two activities that were hugely important in my childhood and have the occasional quirky relevance to my life today, but don’t have any real bearing on my sense of identity and purpose today. And that’s when I realized: I don’t feel that way at all about my Christian past. Although it’s been over three years since I called myself a Christian and over six years since I regularly practiced the religion in any way (prayer, Bible reading, churchgoing), that part of my history is with me every hour, every day. I publicly identify as an atheist, but in terms of my internal sense of identity, “ex-Christian” would be much more accurate.

Since this realization came upon me just this morning, I’m still sorting through exactly what it means and why it is. It’s partly how emotionally reactive I am to many things pertaining to Christianity, reactive in the way you can only be toward something that’s intimately intwined with your identity. But it’s partly the void of cultural identity that might replace Christianity. I don’t have this sense of practicing atheism, of atheism as serving a central function in my identity, the way I did with Christianity. One might say that that’s because atheism has no defining practices, and that could be part of it, but at the same time, I read a slew of atheist and skeptic blogs every day. (I almost certainly spend more hours weekly reading atheist and skeptic writing than I used to spend reading the Bible or other Christian writings.) I live with four other atheists and discuss matters of religion and skepticism with them regularly. I’m connected to a larger community of atheists and skeptics, and occasionally go to large conferences which are every bit as enriching and satisfying as the church retreats I used to go to.

So perhaps it’s nothing to do with how active and engaged I am as an atheist, and everything to do with how deeply engraved Christianity was on my heart. Perhaps it’s simply that the first 25 years of your life never get erased, never really fade into the background… or if they do, it takes longer than 3-6 years.

Whatever it is, it’s something I never feel I can adequately communicate to people who were never devout believers. Dan Fincke, whose blog I love reading partly because his experiences mirror mine so well, asked a month or so ago about differences between de-converts and never-believers, and as (I think) I replied then, this is the biggest difference I see. I feel like my personal history is broken — not in the sense of “destroyed and dysfunctional”, but in the sense of “has a giant hulking crack down the middle.”

Or like this tree. Pretty much exactly like this tree, actually. I have no idea what other people see when they look at me, but this is what I see when I look at myself: healthy and strong, but with this massive twist, this course correction that dominates the entire shape of my existence. Growing and thriving, but forever and unmistakably different from those trees that grew straight up.

And I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. If it’s just that I need more time to establish myself as a secular girl in a secular world… or if there will always be that sense of being defined by what I’ve left behind, what I’m not anymore.

Poly Life 101: Taking Turns (with Gina)

OK, that title sounds lascivious, but just give me a sec and I’ll show that it’s not what that sounds like.

Since I have decided to write about more every day polyamorous life rather than always writing overly-philosophically about issues all the time, I figured I’d start with a bit about yesterday.

Thursdays are a day off for me, right now. So, that meant that yesterday I got up early, did some auto-didactic reading, exercised, made myself a healthy lunch, then spent some quality time further educating myself by reading various interesting blogs and considering the social and cultural ramifications….

OK, that was mostly bullshit. I did eat a healthy lunch (lettuce, spinach, red pepper, and tomato salad topped with chicken with a balsamic/oil dressing). The rest of the day was spent watching Game of Thrones (I’m trying to catch up, and just started watching it a week or so ago). I’m quite enjoying it, and am only a few episodes behind real time. Oh, I also listened to the new Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories, for like the billionth time since I acquired it a couple of weeks ago. Seriously, that album is amazing! I am really having a problem not listening to it. It plays in my head whether it’s actually playing or not.

Contains 100% Shaun...wait, I think I did that backwards... — Contains 100% Shaun…wait, I think I did that backwards…

But, back to polyamory. To start with, not only did I make myself said salad, but I made Ginny some to take to work with her as well (because I am uber-husband). Then, once she was gone I started watching Game of Thrones, and at some point in the day Gina asked me, over Gchat, to take the ground turkey out of the freezer to defrost. After finishing the episode I was watching, I asked her what she intended to make for dinner, and whether I could help. She said she planned on making sauce and meatballs, and knowing that I make awesome sauce (I’m also made of awesome sauce, it seems) and that Ginny (who subsequently came home from her short work day) makes meatballs well I suggested that I make some sauce, and Ginny volunteered to make the meatballs. And so that’s what we started to do, while drinking some fine Belgian-style ales (Kwak and Three Philosophers).

At some point after that, Gina realized she could just come home from a long day at work and put her feet up, and thus it became our turn, Ginny and I, to make dinner. Gina had planned on coming home and cooking, even though it was my day off and I like to cook, but I decided to do something nice and allow her to relax when she got home. Most days I’m not home for dinner, because I work in the evenings, but when I am home I look to cook. And having 5 people in the house means that there a number of everyday household chores and such which we take turns doing. Not everyone cooks regularly, not everyone cleans regularly, and we are not always all around at the same time either. But on Thursdays we are all usually here for dinner and thus it’s a situation where 1 or 2 of us accepts the duty (I’m very attempted to reference Kant’s deontological ethical rule here, but will resist more than this meta-comment…) of taking on a task for everyone.

Sometimes it’s shopping (Gina does that most often), sometimes it’s cleaning (that’s mostly Gina and I), and sometimes it’s barking at 3:00 AM (that’s usually Lola, the dog). Whatever the tasks are, there are tasks to be done and just like another kind of family, say one with 2 parents and some kids, those tasks are accomplished by different people at different times. And, like families with children, there are certainly some jobs some people just don’t do (for various reasons), or at least rarely. My personal inclination is to be organized, relatively clean, and efficient when it comes to house-maintenance. As a result of that, I end up cleaning things before other people tend to because I’m thinking about it and I care about it more than them. When it comes to planning events, making executive decisions, or me remembering to take my phone with me when I leave for work, other people take up those roles because those are not my strong points.

The point is that this arrangement, this abnormal relationship matrix of 5 adults living together with various types of sexual and non-sexual relationships, is not really that much different than any other family. The advantage, in this case, is that with more capable adults around the jobs that need to be done can be picked up by people who have the time and/or the inclination to do so. And so when it comes to how we manage all the food for 5 people, that requires not only an app to add groceries to a database we can all access easily, but a expenses spreadsheet which we all contribute to (according to our relative incomes), and the time and spatial acuity to Tetris-like fit all the food into the fridge. Then, when it comes to cooking the food into delicious meals, cleaning up afterwards, etc we have all done something to contribute, and that’s how this poly family works.

creepy-demotivational-poster-1217302146 — What the…I don’t know…where can I get some?

So, yesterday Ginny and I took our turn to cook, and since Gina was involved (in that we were doing it to help her) the situation it was with, or perhaps concerning, Gina. In other words, Taking turns (with Gina). Rationalizing creepy phrasing is fun.

Apparently, creepiness mostly what I contribute. OK, I’m done now.

Just remember, you don’t have to be creepy to be poly. In fact, it doesn’t help at all. Nobody told me this until recently. Thanks, everyone…..

Sexism and Transphobia in Doctor Who

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

—–

I love Doctor Who (the show. I have mixed feelings about the character). I think it’s an excellent show, particularly New Who. We all love Doctor Who. I look ridiculously forward to new episodes. At its best, Doctor Who presents masterful storytelling and character development that could be a model to television shows everywhere. I’m currently producing a freaking Doctor Who themed burlesque show I love it so much.

I also love that Doctor Who introduced the character Jack Harkness – one of the first openly bisexual characters in mainstream TV, and with an overwhelming sexuality that was a welcome contrast to the relative asexuality of the Doctor. It showed that the BBC is not afraid to piss off a few haters in order to create compelling characters and deal with adult topics.

However, something that’s always bother me about the show is the sexist undertones. The Doctor, through 11 regenerations, is always male, is always the smartest person in the room, and generally has a pretty young female companion (who often has a crush on him) who wanders off, gets into trouble, and need the Great Man to come rescue her. There are some exceptions (and companions often end up saving the Doctor, but never by being smarter than him), but largely the pattern holds. Even the current season was disappointing in that regard. It opened with Oswin, another pretty young woman. But this time, she was an intellectual equal of the Doctor. That lasted for one episode. When she was reintroduced midseason, her character had no memory of the resourceful genius from the first episode, and was back in the classic hapless woman companion role.

Against that backdrop, we now have this:

After bookies William Hill revealed that the new Doctor Who to replace Matt Smith when he leaves at Christmas was odds on 8/1 to be a female, bosses at the BBC have come out to rule this out as an option.
…
According to The Daily Star newspaper, bosses at the BBC have ruled out a female Doctor, which Sue Perkins and Miranda Hart were both being linked to also, as they feel that it would cause upset amongst its younger viewers, and awkward conversations about sex changes with their parents.

Confirming this decision, Russell T Davies explained to the publication how this mega change would never be allowed because it is “a family show”, adding:

“While I think kids will not have a problem with a female Doctor, I think fathers will have a problem with it.

“That’s because they will then imagine they will have to describe sex changes to their children.”

So much fail.* Before we even GET to the transphobia, what the fuck is Davies even talking about? He thinks kids will understand that during a regeneration, a time lord’s height, weight, hair, face, arms, legs, torso, feet, and entire personality can change, but if their genitalia changes, then IT WILL BE TOO CONFUSING!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

But obviously, the REAL problem is that if having a female Doctor might lead parents to discussion the existence of trans* people with their children, that’s a GOOD thing! Just like Jack Harkness helped confirm the existence of bisexuals, a female Doctor could help confirm the existence of trans* people.

And let’s not neglect to point out the sexist assumption that it’s fathers who will be having this conversation. Because mothers couldn’t possibly. How uncouth.

This is extra disappointing because personally, I would love to see a female Doctor. Flipping the gender roles that have pervaded the show in the past would go a long way toward undoing some of the sexism that it’s perpetuated in the past. I would love to see how various alien races react to a hyper-intelligent woman who battles the forces of destruction with her mind and wit (and sonic screwdriver). I would love to see a woman be just as giddy, juvenile, reckless, dramatic, arrogant, playful, condescending, and ultimately lovable as David Tenant or Matt Smith.

Also, Katie McGrath would be an awesome Doctor. Just sayin, BBC.

———
* to be fair, Davies is no longer affiliated with the show, but he was the lead writer from 2005-2010, and is still affiliated with the BBC.

New post at Sex in Specs!

Another beta-post at my new website, on biological sex differences! This is the piece I have worked the longest on and struggled the most with. I’m still not sure it does what I want it to do. I’d love feedback on it from anyone who’s got the time.

Writers Block

So, in an attempt to not have PolySkeptic disappear into complete (rather than relative) obscurity, I’m deciding to write about the fact that I have been unsure what to write recently.

I feel like I should be writing more often. But here’s the thing; I feel like I’ve said most of the things that I think should be said about atheism, polyamory, etc already. Yes, when issues arise I find ways to comment on them using those same themes, but I don’t want to be one of those bloggers who just writes the same posts over and over, in different ways, just to keep content flowing. When I write something, I want it to be at least a little fresh, even if never completely original.

I’ve considered writing about every day life, living as an actively polyamorous person, but that seems sort of uninteresting. As I thought that, I thought about how that idea itself is sort of interesting. I mean, I live with my wife, my girlfriend, her husband, and his girlfriend (they are actually getting married, non-legally, next year). That is abnormal from the point of view of our culture, even for those who are familiar with polyamory.

But the fact is (and I believe I’ve said this before) that it does not feel abnormal. I mean, there are house chores, shopping, budgets, and all the other things that families do here at the PolySkeptic compound. We all have our schedules, routines, times when we do things socially (my birthday just passed, and we all went to have some delicious Moroccan food, for example). It’s just life, settled into a polynormal framework.

We are not throwing orgies every weekend (or ever, really), we are not always parading around naked (except in the hot tub, from time to time), and we are not knocking on doors together to sell polyamory (although that idea seems sort of hilarious to me). No, we are just doing normal stuff in a non-normal relationship structure.

So, as I navigate this life of mine, I occasionally think that I should blog about stuff that happened to me today, just in case what seems normal to me would seem interesting, bizarre, or just identifiable to other people. I mean, I come home from work at night and I say hello to those sitting in the living room (often Gina, Wes, and Jessie) walk over to give Gina a kiss, then usually walk over to the office area (where PolyBar Galactica is) and then kiss Ginny hello. Is that weird to some people? Does that just seem fitting? I cannot tell how interesting, boring, or whatever that is to other people. It seems normal to me, but then again so does atheism, feminist criticism of our culture, and having a wife and a long-term girlfriend whom I live with. I don’t know what other people think of as normal.

What I do know is that making a commitment to be with just one person, sexually and romantically, seems utterly silly and bizarre to me, knowing that it seems normal to many other people. I know that believing in a god seems very strange and irrational to me, but it feels normal to other people. I know that applying skepticism to as many aspects of my life is natural (now) and feels right to me, but most people do not do that nor would they want to.

So, my perspective on what is worth talking about here is skewed, and so most of the time when I have the thought, ‘I should blog this,‘ I don’t because of this uncertainty. Perhaps I should just blog right through this uncertainty.

Thoughts?