I've had things to say but I haven't taken the time to say them. It's certainly not that I don't have the time. I feel like I have nothing but time lately...

I apparently didn't have friend notifications turned on for LJ. There were a bunch of people who had added me that I hadn't added back. I have no idea how long some of them have been sitting out there...perhaps years.

In general, I have always just added back anyone who adds me. I just don't look at my own profile very often anyway to have seen these people. It wasn't a snub, and I don't have any private or friends-only entries anyway, so those people affected haven't missed anything. Sadly, my LJ usage has dropped off significantly over the years, so there's less and less to miss anyway.

Anyway, those people have been added and I have now turned on add notifications, so all should be right with my LJ world once again. :P

The divorce is final. It has apparently been so for over a week--November 6, to be precise. The communication of the legal professionals involved has been a bit lacking. Fortunately, that has not been the case between me and Lissa. I'm happy to report that our friendship continues as planned. We are very much still speaking to each other and doing things together. In fact, she came over to my place tonight and I cooked dinner. She has invited me over later in the week to return the favor. Neither of these is a first.

But I am now single for the first time in over 15 years and legally single for the first time in over 11. To a large extent, it's similar to when we got married. Papers were signed and status was changed...but it's not like anything in either of us was remarkably different in that moment. We were already down the path and the documents were simply an acknowledgment of it. Signing them didn't change how we felt about each other any more then than it does now.

The experience on this end for me has been bittersweet. The bitter part I think is mostly disappointment. This is certainly not the end that I would have written nor the end that I imagined. But on the other hand, it's not an end. Lissa and I continue as friends, which is the best part of anything we ever had together. With the relief that I am not losing that aspect of our relationship--of my life--this is just a transition into the next phase. At least we've moved on...moved past the road block we've been staring at for years. I'm not exactly sure what that phase is, but so far it certainly hasn't been all bad. In fact, I would say that it has been mostly good.

A lot of the pressure of how our married life was not working is now gone by virtue of simply no longer being an issue. With that out of the way, our relationship has actually improved in some ways. In the meantime, the intervening four months have been filled with opportunities for me to reconnect with old friends and make some new ones. In both cases, I've had fantastic experiences that I likely--or most assuredly--would not have had otherwise. I wouldn't trade these for anything.

Everything that has happened is a part of who I am. Not everything has worked out the way I planned or the way I may have wanted, but I wouldn't dare nor do I want to take anything back. I treasure too much to risk tampering with anything that has come before for fear of what would I would be missing as a result. For good or for ill, this is the journey I'm on, and I continue to learn to live with it and live for it every day.

Hmm...how about a rare "what's going on" update?  I don't have anything specific to say.  I just want to document an eventful week.

Last week was quite a whirlwind at work.  I finally got to start the projects I was intending to work on Friday...around 4pm. :P  Lots of broken machines that needed attention and other unexpected events came up that stole my attention away until the whole week was almost over.  It was rather on the hectic and somewhat stressful side, but overall it was productive (just not the way I thought it was going to be) and I survived.

But in the good category for the week, I finally got a netbook.  I've been eyeballing a Dell Mini10 all summer because it's available with a relatively hi-res WXGA screen.  But I was holding out for them to offer it with 2 GB of memory...which they finally did recently.  Then I decided to buy from their outlet to save some money.  I waited patiently for one to come available with the specs I wanted and a good coupon.  All the waiting finally paid off and I got the one I wanted while saving $250.  I like it and I'm using it now to post this entry.

The weekend turned out to be pretty good after the craziness of the week.  I actually got to hang out with friends and play games three days in a row: Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday.  You mean I actually had people over and used all that crap down in my basement three days in a row?  Yes!  What heck?!

Friday night, Common Ground and friends came over for another game night.  I always enjoy their shows, and I'm happy to have had some opportunities to just hang out with them socially as well.

Saturday brought Zach and Melody in for a visit.  Zach brought goodies in the form of new (as in, I didn't have them) old Bemani games to play.  Drummania 5th, DDR Euromix, and DDR Solo 2000 all made for fun, interesting, and/or nostalgic diversions.  Brandon, Lissa, and Heath also made appearances.  I also picked up a new plasma TV for the basement to replace the beast of a Sony WEGA CRT that I've had for over a decade.  I hope to hang it soon and l hopefully reclaim some ever more limited floorspace as my arcade hobby continues to spiral out of control. :P  The IT Crowd references were made and it became necessary to introduce Brandon to the show to let him in on the joke.  Hearty laughs were had.
Zach and Melody stayed over into Sunday where we played some Let's Tap, talked about Japan, and I introduced them to Coupling since we seemed to be on a British comedy tip.  More hearty laughs were had.  Then, in the evening, Tara, a friend I had worked with at Grindstone Charley's years ago stopped in with her brothers and her older brother's girlfriend.  It was nice to catch up with her a bit and meet some new people.
In addition to all the activity, I got both the basement and living room cleaned up.  It goes well the the thorough cleanup in my bedroom a week or so ago.  I'm glad to be getting some of the clutter out of my way and out of my life and look forward to starting on some home improvement projects soon.  It feels good to get things done and feel like I'm making some sort of progress on things.  It sure beats the heck out of stagnation!

It's been about four months now that Lissa and I have been living separate lives. Let me start by reporting that things are still going quite well between us. Our interaction and time together is not at all awkward. We’re just good friends much like we’ve always been. This remains a constant for which I am most grateful. I continue to treasure the life that we shared together and intend for us to continue to share our lives—just in a different context.

At the outset of our separation, I was decidedly and expectedly distraught, but I managed to retain my trademark optimism. The infrequent updates I’ve made here since I think have been progressively more positive and hopeful. My feelings presently, however, are a bit more sobering.

Don’t be alarmed. Nothing terrible has happened. Things are still generally good overall, situations haven’t changed, and nothing has “gone wrong.” I just find myself reacting in unfamiliar—or perhaps simply long forgotten—ways. Outwardly, I’m still the generally cheery person that most would find familiar. Internally, I feel a bit of a mess.

As I have stated before, Lissa and I weren’t bitter toward each other over the years that we struggled. We weren’t miserable. But we weren’t truly happy either. We had each other’s love. There was just something missing in our relationship—some sort of connection that made us really “feel.” Perhaps you might call it passion. I’ll leave it at that for lack of any other way to put it.

Despite this missing element, there was present a certain familiarity and stability. While we weren’t quite fitting together as well as we would have liked, we certainly had plenty of experience with each other to know how we operated and what to expect from each other. This kept me pretty even keel—not especially happy or sad.

While I still draw upon that experience, my life is very much different now. I no longer see Lissa daily—usually just once or twice a week...sometimes more, sometimes less. So, where once a majority of my life was my relationship with Lissa, that relationship now plays a much smaller direct role. All of that time gets replaced with something, and many of those “somethings” are a lot less familiar to me.

At first, I was very uncertain as to how I would deal with this change. I never really doubted that I could. I just wasn’t sure how I would. That resulted in a cautious optimism. More than anything, I wasn’t sure how I would reconcile my feelings for Lissa into a new type of relationship with her.

With the passage of (a lot less) time (than I expected), I felt as though that optimism was being fulfilled. I was finding joy in both old and new experiences with old and new friends. All the while, I was able to maintain a comfortable relationship with Lissa. I found both my mood and attitude on the rise. Life was looking up, things were falling into place, and I was finding my way. I felt as though I was moving on…and it was ok. I latched onto those feelings and rode the wave.

But in the past month or so, that upward swing has taken a turn and I’ve found myself on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I think I rode the wave out and found reality in its wake. I haven’t moved on. I’ve just moved forward. I got past a roadblock, but I’m recognizing that I’m still very much stuck holding on. I still love Lissa, and I’m still trying to figure out how to do that in a way that both of us can find acceptable. The cliché of “loving but not being ‘in love’” is far too simplistic, but it will have to suffice.

This has created something of an internal conflict for me. I don’t want to put things back the way they were. Too much has happened both between me and Lissa and in my new life apart from her. This is new territory for me and much of it has been very good. But the uncertainty of it has caught up with me and replaced the status quo of my former tenuously happy but stable life with unpredictably higher highs…and lower lows.

I’ve experienced tremendous joy in experiences I previously had never have even conceived or had even actively ruled out. This has added to my life in ways I wouldn’t dare take back. But I’ve also suffered deeper and more sustained lows where I just can’t enjoy things I know I normally would and feel isolated and alone even while around people.

I’ve not had depressive states like these in quite a long time and probably never to this extent. I found solace from them in the stability of my life. But my life is presently not at all stable. The future is unclear, and it is both exciting and terrifying.

NOTE: I had originally intended to write a summary of each day of my trip--preferably at the end of each day while the memories were still fresh.  Well, I've been back for about three weeks now and that obviously didn't happen.  I at least go photos posted on Facebook in a fairly timely manner, but even I haven't looked at all of them nor have I gone through to caption or otherwise give any clue as to what most of them are.

At any rate, I did write a day 1 and a day 2 summary while I was on the trip.  Of course hardly anything had happened yet--particularly anything Japanese.  I already posted day 1 awhile ago.  And since I already wrote it and it's just been sitting here on my desktop, I'll go ahead and post day 2 now.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to at least do smaller summaries of the rest of the trip at some point.  But that's going to have to wait as I have more pressing projects to attend to at the moment.

( Day 2 9/13 )

I have apparently recently become a texter. I've had an unlimited plan for awhile now, but I've hardly been using it. And then, last month I sent and received more messages than the entire year prior.

I'm not sure how I feel about the name, but the description feels about right.

I am currently in Japan and would like to try and document my trip as well as I can.  The best way to do that seems to be to do it as quickly as possible while the memories are still fresh.  Of course I'm now on day 6 of my trip (though only my third full day in the country thanks to long flights and delays) and I haven't really started.  So let's get this going, shall we?  Yes.  Let's shall!

First, let me just setup the trip as a whole:

In my previous entry I mentioned that I’ve been trying new things and having new experiences.  For the most part, if I am presented with an opportunity or invitation to something that I have at least some curiosity or interest in and have the means/ability to do it, I do.

This happened in a very big way recently as thenarus, who is currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan with the USAF mentioned that he had some leave coming up and suggested I come out for a visit.  Rather than worrying about the expense and impracticality of such a trip, I just decided that it was indeed something I wanted to do.  And I now find myself over 7,000 miles from home writing this entry from Japan.

While the idea was initially pitched back in July, I had already pretty much booked the entirety of my August, so I decided to make the trip for September.  As it turned out, August was even more eventful than I had anticipated at the time and I didn’t really think about the Japan trip all that much.  All we really did was set a target date for the trip that would work well with Jon’s schedule and also allow us to meet up with another friend, Rik, on mainland Japan. 

It wasn’t until the very tail end of August and through the first week of September that any real planning took place.  I booked my flights and the three of us planned out a basic itinerary in basically he course of one week for a trip that would commence in just two.  It was really a pretty intense seat-of-the-pants experience.

Meanwhile, I had to really put things into overdrive—especially at work—to get things in order for me to be gone for two whole weeks.  I figure if I’m going to the other side of the world, I might as well spend a decent amount of time there since just getting there is such a major cost in the first place. 

I’m pretty sure that I’ve never been away from home or work for such a long period of time since I’ve been out of school.  It really seemed like a major undertaking to get things ready to be gone for that long since I know better than to expect that my world at home would just sit and wait for me for two weeks.

And that brings me to Saturday, September 12…