magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

It's easy to just let things slide. Old friends. New crushes. The job that I love and hate in turns, that pays the bills, although only just barely. The apartment, with its still glaring lack of furniture, six months after moving in. Writing.

I'm writing daily, and then I'm writing but not posting until I get a chance to talk specific things over with specific people first, and then I'm taking notes to be fleshed out on a later date, and then I'm not writing at all but want to be and know that the only way is to just jump back into it. And I tell myself I'll start on Saturday. Or the next Saturday. Or May 22nd, with a month leading up to my birthday. Or the beginning of a new month, June 1st.

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I've started this entry at least three times.

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It's no secret to almost anyone I've talked to in the last six months, and probably apparent to anyone who has read between the lines of what I have written here, that Ellen and I were dating. My writing about it was always a little ambiguous, initially in deference to her privacy, and eventually due to the fact that it was more and more obvious that things were not working out, and while I've used this site as a forum in the past to say things that I couldn't otherwise find the way to bring up, I am trying to make an effort towards improving my interpersonal communication skills.

At the time of my last posted entry, we hadn't really seen each other for nearly a month. She was busy, and I wasn't in a rush to define a new ending.

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At the same time, I was, slowly, getting to know someone new who I met at a party back in January. However she shares with me a fear of phones, a difficulty in making plans, and a propensity for letting things slide. So much for interpersonal communication skills.

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Ellen and I went out for dinner in early May and had the official break-up conversation. It was the first conversation that we had ever really had about the official status of what was between us. Or of what there was not between us. She was the one who brought it up, but if she hadn't, I would have. And, as it turned out, we were both feeling pretty much the same way. 'You're a nice person, I enjoy spending time with you, but after four or five months there's nothing more than that.'

And while it was a relief that we both felt the same way, 'I think that we're both the sort of person who needs to have someone else be totally into them before taking that leap, and so neither one of us was going to get there,' she said, the end of anything is still sad. It's definitely for the best, it was never going to be what either one of us wanted or needed. But I did enjoy spending time with her, and while this certainly doesn't mean we'll never hang out again, there isn't quite the same impetus to do so. At least for the time being, we may very well end up being better friends down the road. (The two ex-girlfriends who I've remained good friends with both have last names starting with the letter K.)

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On the work front, I've stayed busy enough over the last month and a half. I still haven't had that conversation about my pay rate, and I'm still very much living paycheck to paycheck. But I have had a few conversations about moving into the type of projects that I really want to be working on. Before today I hadn't worked on a Bank of America project in a month and a half. Which is not to say that everything that I did work on was interesting or creative, or that I was necessarily anyone's first choice to work on any particular project, but simply that I logged enough hours to stay on top of the bills without the steady bank work. Which is a good sign.

It's still a little up in the air where I fit in within the social milieu at work. But, as long as I don't expect too much from it, recognise that they're cliquey, and I'm quiet, and so I'm always going to feel a little bit outside, accept that I'll go out with them sometimes, get drinks after work, but that these people aren't likely to ever be my close friends, and just not take it personally, then I should be fine. Of course, I've never been particularly good at not taking things personally, but we'll see.