Sunday, June 26, 2005

the wee hours

Lately I've been sitting up a lot in the wee hours. I'm usually pretty tired, but Ross goes to bed and for some reason I just can't bear to go when I'm told - so I sit and surf and read and stay up later and later until finally I give in and go to bed. At one.... two... three in the morning, the demons are alive, and I feel unbearably sad and impossibly tired and all alone in the world. And yet. I cherish that time, that all alone in the world time, because it is removed from the consequences of itself, separated by dark and silence and sleep from all the things I have to get done.

Today was okay. I met up with one of the other coordinators for the science camp I am helping to run at the end of the summer, and we put a lot of work into the project manual for the camp. It feels good to make progress and to be creating something of value. What I didn't do was make any further progress on writing my user guide and documentation for my code. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

It has been so hot. We are all wilting. When will it rain?

Welcome

After a couple of abortive attempts in the past to get this whole blog thing working for me, I've decided it's finally time to do it properly. Part of the incentive is that I now have a few other blogs that I read (semi) regularly, and I begin to see the point of putting some more of my stuff up on the ether.

I just realised that when I get married, and change my name, hingly will no longer be the logical user id that it's always been. In some ways, that makes me feel that hingly can become a retreat, to the secret parts and places of myself. Not that I don't want Ross to have a part of that. Just that there will be some part of me that's not completely defined by our marriage.

I think that that's a common fear, being swallowed up by your married identity - it certainly used to be a fear of mine. When I said that I was engaged, members of my group therapy group - some of whom know me pretty well, inside and out - asked me about a dream I had expressed of having potted plants and cats and being sufficient unto myself. It surprised me to be able to answer that I thought I could still do that with Ross - there seems to be a lot of space for me to be what I want to be, even if that's a mad catlady, within our marriage.

It's a sticky hot late June day, and I've been lurking in my office for a few hours, getting some work done but also just hanging out in air conditioning, hoping for rain. I'm scared to go home because it's so hot - maybe I'll go to a bookstore, and hang out in their air conditioning for a bit, and read something that I can't afford to buy.