This week has brought about a bunch of revelations so you'll all have to just sit through yet another long-as-hell-self-absorbed blog o' mine.

1. Endings. The play ended, I had a super time doing it, met many lovely people and may actually end up being friends with a couple of them. It was a strange thing, to get back into acting after so many years. One of the differences being that, with dance, I've been with the same girls for years now and we've bonded. With plays, you get really close to people, and then it's over and you often don't really see the people anymore. You feel the ending of it.

Which got me thinking about beginnings and how it's time to start...starting something again. Somewhere in Barb's Spuffy fiction, there's a line about how life doesn't provide you with endings, because life just keeps happening. And I do have a lot going on, but I need to make some decisions in the next little while about the life that keeps happening. In the next two weeks I have a fairly large decision to make: come September do I ditch the MA, get myself a career-ish type job that has better hours so I can dance more and start applying for dance teaching jobs and start making this dream come true? or do I drop everything and go back to school and finish the thesis, take courses again and lose money and just do the thing?

The thesis seems so pointless now, it's got nothing to do with what I want to do, I would mostly likely have to leave the MA off my resume when applying for the jobs I want as people don't want to see it on non-academic jobs. I hate the program and would have to suck up to people I don't respect in order to continue in it - and man do I dislike sucking up to people I don't respect, it's part of why I'll never be all that successful I'm sure.

But I don't like to leave things unfinished. It's a thing with my mother, who leaves everything unfinished, and it drives me nuts that I have inherited that particular desire to just keep on moving from one thing to the next. I don't want to finish my last obsession, I just want to move on to my new obsession. But dance has been different, just like my mother's book was the difference with her (well, that and raising me, she threw herself into that and never gave that up). I can't imagine being obsessed with anything else the way I am with belly dance. And it's been 5 years now.

I honestly don't know what I will decide, just that the decision will be made by the end of this month. There's a deadline.

2. I'm going to the special hell, you know, the one reserved for child molestors and people who talk at the theatre? Yep, I'm headed straight there. Damn my love of justifying my shades of grey morality.

3. I have been cursed with being both really horny and really picky. It's not a good combination. Seriously. Being this horny makes me a bad person on occasion. My Nibblet is coming to relieve the tension for a bit, but I fear that it will only increase the desire once I get a taste of sex again. Pickle always said he feared my 30's (sexual peak), and it appears he was right to be afraid.

4. This is slightly more complex: I often like myself better when I'm not in a relationship. Other people like me better when I'm not in a relationship too. When I'm in a relationship, I'm more responsible, I pay my bills, and I'm more organized and I save money. But I don't really like me that much. I change. And I change especially when I'm in social situations with the boy.

I was talking to my wisebeautiful roomie about it and talking about how when I wasn't in traditional relationships (being open, a secondary, or a mistress), I was more me, I'm just more relaxed, more free to be myself. Now I'm sure having more freedom is good for me, when I get to be sexually open, get my own space etc. But then she made the point, after listening to me blather on for hours, that there were guys I had been able to be myself with, and guys for whom I "hid my light under a bushel" (that expression just makes me laugh).

The second type of guys were all the ones who weren't as socially capable as I am. I hide my social abilities so they don't feel so insecure. I'm not myself with them in social settings because I don't want to overshadow them, make them feel bad. The guys I've dated with social skills, who are far more charming than I am, I've felt free to be myself in social settings with them.

It hit home so hard, it left me reeling. One of those "fuck, would've been nice if I had thought of this before" moments. Now it's not that the boys expected me to hide my light, but it was something I did to avoid insecurity issues. And I know it sounds like I'm saying I'm this social guru and they were just these lumps, that's not the case. They are funny guys, sarcastic, smart and loved by their friends. I'm often shy with new people, and I often care so little what strangers think of me that I'll spew off whatever is on my mind, which has offended more than a few people on occassion. I just still have/had more...social awareness? than some of the guys I've dated. I was always worrying about them in social settings, were they okay, were they unhappy, were they awkward, were they making other people feel awkward, should I be paying more attention to them? Exhausting stuff I tell you.

So now I have to add charming to my already far too long list of quid pro quos before I date a guy. Either that, or I have to worry less about my partners in social situations, but I suspect that's just not part of my make-up so I'll have to go for charming.

So anyway, I think that's it for the journey of self-discovery, or at least, what I can reveal here on this blog. Thanks, as always, for reading.