Changes changes changes

Wow, when things change, they CHANGE!

I have started a new job - yay!! Yes, it is actually very nice. It has also pushed me way out of my comfort zone, and lemme tell you, when you are used to knowing something like the back of your hand it is a shock to go back into newbie mode. The people explaining things FLY through them, and it is all I can do to keep up and hold on. It is tough to say "What is that?" and "just a sec," because it is scary to think "I don't know *anything* and I am worthless!"

Yeah, the old ego thing, and I need to swallow that and suck it up and be patient and learn and know this phase does not last forever, but I gotta tell ya, you know that movie about the guy who went through life being an imposter and a fraud, pretending to be a pilot and a Doctor and who knows what else? When I am like this, learning a new job, I feel like an imposter. I know, I know, the difference is that I am honest and I am not trying to fool anyone, my employers know that I need to learn things, but how many things? If you are not fresh out of college it is understood that you should know something, right?

I suppose this will help me learn humility and empathy for other people learning things. Yeah, but I don't like the feeling, which I suppose gives me the energy to learn and try to become competent once again. And the truth is that in the computer biz there was no 'standing still' for very long anyway. Just about when I'd get comfortable with something I'd have to move on, which I guess also suits me, because I do get bored with things once I know them.

So, yeah, this post is a whine whine whine! Poor me, boo hoo. (grin)

The traffic around Minneapolis I am not happy with, and I hear it is not nearly as bad here as it is in other locations. Anyway you cut it the traffic is a pain, but what can one do?

On the personal front, my soon to be ex, who served me with divorce papers on 12/23 last year, has now backed into her normal, passive, wait and see mode. Geeze. We are supposed to be working out the details, but she is waiting for someone to tell her what to do. Sigh. So I can see that progress on this will be up to me.

Now that I have become the 'perfect' spouse for her, she is backing off, and almost being nice at times. By 'perfect' I mean rarely around but sending the money. I am out of the house for almost a week this time, staying in an in-expensive hotel closer to my work. So, you may ask, why don't I see about reconciling with my soon to be ex?

Two reasons. The biggest one is this - I have found someone who I love and who seems to like me the way I am, warts and all, and when you've faced constant dissatisfaction for years and years this feels wonderful - very wonderful.

The second reason is because this past year I saw, completely, that my soon to be ex could not STAND me in person, and let's face it, at some point I want to stop being an absentee spouse and actually spend time with my wife. I WANT a close, loving relationship with my spouse, and that is not possible with my soon to be ex.

So I am doing the leg work, gathering all our financial info, and will create two or three proposals. I know my wife will be critical of them, and will NOT be able to choose one. She simply cannot make a decision. This is one big reason why she never has time to do what she wants - she takes hours while shopping waffling and second guessing.

But what can I do? I will make the proposals, and I will keep the pressure on, and I will keep this ball rolling forward, because my life has been in limbo for SO long and I am tired of it, especially now that I SEE where I want to be.

I want to be with my new love. Am I in a honeymoon period? Maybe, to some degree, but we are taking things slow, and there is no sense skipping the honeymoon period. Instead, we both are enjoying it, and doing the hard work of disentangling ourselves from our spouses.

And what about the morality of this? Our religion says it is okay. We both have tried, really tried, to re-connect with our spouses after the child-rearing phase completed. What else can we do? We both want to get out and discover the world, and both our spouses want to retreat and cocoon.

I have actually wondered if our spouses would be right for each other. They have a great deal in common. They both are sickly, they both LOVE endless shows full of graphic rape and violence and sending the perps to jail, and they both view the world with tired, crabby eyes. They both seem to be done with physical affection.

Is this enough to build a relationship on? Who knows? It would not be the kind of relationship I want, that is for sure.

2009 - the year that was.

Time for my annual New Year's post. Well, my very first annual New Year's post, but every tradition starts some time, right?

The year 2009 began, for me, with great personal turmoil and pessimism. I had concluded a year with not enough real work to be done, and thus too much free time to study the world of politics, economics, and energy. I think most people agree that 2008 was grim - the Wall Street meltdown, the energy crisis abated only by economic malaise, and the conclusion of eight years of awful Bush presidency.

In addition, my personal job, at IBM, was tenuous at best, because IBM was shedding US workers as fast as it could. And then, on top of all that, my Father-in-law, the patriarch of my wife's family, the one nice guy that held her contentious family together, had succumbed to Lewy Body Dementia, and he was dying.

In early January 2009 my father-in-law died. In late January 2009 I was informed of my layoff from IBM. My old life was decomposing before my eyes.

Financially I was okay, really, but personally I had zero resources. My parents were sickly and crabby, and in addition to my alcoholic brother, who they had taken in years before, and who was still drinking, they were forced to take in my sister, who suffers badly from depression. Thus my parents were already caring for two of their three adult children.

My children, at least the eldest three, were engrossed in their own struggles with high school and college. My wife turned against me. Completely against me. I am not sure how that came about, but I suspect it had something to do with her insecurities and losing her Father, and then having me let her down by losing my job, so despite years of my wife appreciating my independent nature, she now saw it as ingratitude towards her deceased Father, claiming that I had NEVER appreciated anything her family had given me. I tried to explain that I greatly appreciated what her Father had given me, but I was uncomfortable with large gifts because I did not want to be dependent on him. I tried to explain that I identified with him, because he was a giver and so was I and yet while he was alive he pretty much suffered stoically and not until his death did he get the appreciation that he deserved. I tried to explain that I saw the same fate for myself, and unlike her father, I did not want that for myself. I attempted to stand up for myself and ask for some recognition, and this was seen as jealousy and this was seen as a terrible thing, a betrayal of sorts, a criticism of my wife's family.

My wife abandoned me and returned to the security of her family's fortune. My independence was now seen as ingratitude, my intelligence was now seen as arrogance, and my 30+ years of steady, prosperous work was now seen as a failure because it did not extend for another fifteen years like it was supposed to.

At that time the only person who treated me with the smallest amount of giving, and not taking, was my twelve year old daughter, who seemed to like having her Dad around.

I would visit my parents and they would chastise me because they did not like me when I was unhappy. They missed the happy Tripp. My wife soon hated seeing me idle at any time, and she wanted me out of the house, away from her, but earning money to give to her. My eldest children did not want to get involved.

All this, I suppose, comes partly from my own doing. I had built a relationship structure around the idea that I was a rock, a giver, someone everyone could depend on, and so nobody in my personal group was ready to support me when I needed it most. I had tried to emulate my wife's father, but without the security of inherited wealth and the banks that went with it I was not the master of my own fate. My employer cast me out. I was also not of the Catholic faith, so I was not willing to suffer in silence as my father-in-law had done, doing everything that is humanly possible to attempt to somehow satisfy his never-happy wife, his wife who had inherited *her* wealth and who had never worked a day in her life and who was still not happy.

My wife wanted me to take a pill, or talk to a counselor, but to ask nothing of her, and to instead straighten myself out so I could give more to her, to continue, as her father did with his wife, to try to satisfy her and to try to make her happy.

I did see a counselor, a marriage counselor, and he advised me to open communications with my wife, to ask my wife for what I needed, to try to create a mutually helpful relationship between us, but when my wife came to counseling we never got around to that subject. We spent the entire time listening to all the ways that I had failed my wife, and all the problems that she had had with me, and how awful it was for my wife to see me idle, loafing around, while she had to work her sixteen-hour-a-week job.

I continued on with counseling, alone, for as long as it took for me to see that my wife would never change. Whether it was due to genetics or learned behavior, my wife expected me to treat her the very same way her father had treated her mother, even though I had none of the resources her father had, and even though she had none of the resources her mother had.

Once I clearly saw that I began dismantling as much of my life as I could, and I stopped trying to make my wife happy. I started thinking about what I wanted, and I started planning for how I could get it. My wife served me with divorce papers on 12/23, but I had seen that coming. I think my wife was trying to force me back to work, to force me to continue supplying her with money. The funny thing is that I actually DO want to get back to work, and finally, after a very bad year of hundreds of job applications, I have gotten a firm job contract on the same day my wife said "Ha! I beat you to it!!" and told me to expect divorce papers.

Now I am trying to build my life over, and this time I am looking for people that might give as well as take. Someday my kids will come around. They need to grow up more first, and when they become more secure they will be grateful for what they have gotten.

I have gotten very sensitive to what I call 'toxic' people now. I can smell them a mile away, and I run like the wind when I get a whiff. I am talking about sour, bitter, critical and judgmental people. People like my soon to be ex-wife.

Life is hard enough without having to listen to judgmentalism and judgments and criticism. Carping about someone else is one of the easiest things to do, and it is toxic, especially when the someone else is already feeling down. At times like that a kind word, a caring heart, a bit of encouragement and recognition matter a great deal.

My goal, in 2010, is to seek out more of the giving people, more of the gentle people, more of the caring people, and to join them, and contribute what I can, because heaven knows my soul is weary and in need of great restoration.

Peace to all.