Executive Brief: As part of my pondering over whether or not to become involved in a substantial romantic relationship in the future, I worked out a list of what I have to offer someone (and what I do not), and what I would hope to experience (and would also like to help everyone avoid). While I am not engaging in an active search right now, I am an openly receptive and present participant in my life. Being aware about one’s Self is an important part of making informed decisions... and working things out (instead of letting them demand undue rumination) helps me to foster a sense of clarity and associated calm.
Details…
Note: I had the discussion posted for about an hour, but just could not bring myself to feel comfortable with it.
It had an awkward tone to it, associating such a cut-and-dried structure (lists, in whatever form) with what is a much more fluid, natural, and emergent process. And the self-focused aspect of my list of characteristics did not sit well with me… the expressive feeling of the material is constrained by its fundamental functionality, namely to help me approach a sense of clarity (as a list of material about myself). It just ran too big a risk of being read as if a man were addressing topics about women and men and other people. That side-effect was an unpleasant consequence of my (the author’s) individual life experience having been defined by being “a man being involved with women,” when in actual fact nothing that I said in the piece was an -ist/-ism statement about anyone.
If you have a better idea about how to go about this, please just let me know… but in the meantime, I just don’t feel right publishing it.
[2024-02; rev. 2026-04]
[Selfhood]