Nano near miss

I didn't want to count up my nano words because I knew I'd not kept up with it in the last week of November. But actually now I've done it, and it's not as bad as I thought: 47391 words of meaningful communication in the month of November, so only 5% short. And that's partly because I didn't write anything at all over the weekend when cartesiandaemon was here. Chart, as much for my own reference as anything.

I feel pretty good about that, even if I didn't technically win. 50k words felt like just the right level, it was enough to be challenging, but it would have been vaguely possible if I hadn't got cold and depressed and disorganized. And it had the intended positive effect of keeping better in touch, even if I'm still short of where I want to be.

In other good news, I gave a very successful talk to the department today. I cut it finer than I'd like to finish writing it, but once I got up in front of an audience everything was peachy. And I got lots of interested questions which implied people had listened and taken it in, so yay. Also, today I made tasty tomato soup. All in all could be a lot worse!

Interesting questions

I decided I wasn't going to be naughty and work after it got dark today, so I've come home from work for a couple of hours before going out again to the Prog Friday night meal. So I'm sitting curled up with a cup of tea and some toasted "Christmas bread", which is essentially teacake in loaf form. And I thought I might answer a couple of interesting questions that have showed up on my flist recently.

Someone asked in a locked post: what makes you dislike the people you dislike. So I'm going to bring over my comment from there, because I think it's a really interesting question. The thing is, I don't really dislike people. There are a really tiny number who are actually morally bad and I despise or even hate them, and a few that I don't have anything against but just don't enjoy spending time with. But dislike isn't something I go in for much.

( Liv is mean )

blue_mai asked: what do you want in a relationship? In some ways this is tough question to answer, because my default is not to want relationships at all; if anything, I have a list of minimum criteria that someone has to meet before I'm willing to give up my precious singlehood, rather than a list of goals that I'm looking for in a partner. Also because I've ended up with someone who isn't quite what I thought I was looking for; for a start, he's not Jewish and he's not in the same country as me, but I think I'm happier than I have ever been in past relationships. That includes relationships where I was more passionately in love, or with people who objectively seemed to be better suited to me. Besides, relationship with cartesiandaemon is bringing me a bunch of things that I didn't even know I wanted until we started going out, some of which are probably too personal to go into in detail. So I'm rather reluctant to make lists of what I want, because I am in the process of being shown to be quite wrong. But I'll give it a go anyway.

( Liv is demanding )

To reply to further discussion of this topic of blue_mai's, I generally lean towards staying in a relationship only as long as it makes everybody involved happier than they would be apart. I have never been in a situation of trying to "fix" a relationship that's in difficulties, or of making a commitment to stay together "for better or worse". Perhaps it's middle age creeping up on me, but I'm starting to think that maybe I should try for the kind of relationship where you work at things. I don't know if or when I'll be in a position to make that kind of seriously long term commitment, though. Goodness knows I'm picky enough, and have enough definite ideas about what a partner can expect from me, that I don't rate my chances all that highly!

Anyway, I'm going out fairly shortly and will spend most of the weekend playing host to a cantor from the German bit of the Jewish Renewal movement. But I hope I'll get some discussion going for me to come back to in between.