Trade-offs

I've enjoyed my homelife these last couple of years, the domestic arrangement with my ex and spending time with the dog. It's nice to be able to come home to something other than an empty apartment. But sometimes...

I miss silence, I don't really get that now unless I'm alone in my room or out by myself somewhere. Sometimes I think that's the point of all the hiking and outdoor activity, where I can just kind of be. I ended up not feeling like doing a major hike today, and went to a park that was new to me, but I really enjoyed it. It was a little over 3 miles, with some up and down but not enough to where it was difficult, just a little strenuous at times, which is what I need. Thursday I'm doing a more serious hike, which will be exposed. That's an adjustment for me, I'm used to tree coverage. It's also going to be pretty steep, pretty fast. Hopefully I'm up for it. Usualy the drive to take photos is enough to motivate me. Anyway, here's a pic from the place today. Leaves are changing, but not super fast.

"Ain't well, but I sure am better"

That was a title of a self-help book that was popular in the 70s. I used to read it when I was a teenager, trying to figure out a better way to exist in the world. It didn't take, but I still like some of the ideas. One of them was the concept of living life 5 minutes at a time. I don't do well at that, but it's something to aspire to. Now that I'm remembering better, this post title was a different book by the same author, but it was this kind of easy-going self-help concept. I think it was revealed years later that the author was some kind of sex addict.

Anyway, I am feeling better, and my mind is on the hiking trip I'm taking next week. Hoping to hike to a volcanic crater....

Sick

I seem to catch a cold every couple of months now, I blame the return to office mandate. Usually it results in my having to cancel something I was looking forward to, this time it was meeting a friend who was in town, thankfully they're returning in a month. I'm mostly over it now, got to work from home the last couple of work days. It's the busy time of year and I had to work a few hours over the weekend. But I figure it will help pay for a hiking vacation I'm taking in a few weeks, assuming I don't get sick again.

Been reading a lot of the literary/social critic Olivia Laing, highly recommend her book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. She is so good at weaving her personal story with profiles of artists and writers. I'm now reading an earlier book, The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking. Both my writing and my drinking have been somewhat lax lately. Hoping to at least get a good hike in maybe weekend after next. Meanwhile, it's reading and dog petting, and trying to recover from the working days and weeks.

The Lonely City

My latest read [or one of them] is The LonelY City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, by Olivia Laing. It's part memoir, part cultural essay on loneliness and art. Loneliness is a subject of great personal interest, as you can imagine. After I wrote my last post, it made me think about that, the idea of companionship and friendship, and how I've often spurned relationships to where my solitude is a deliberate decision, yet I am also lonely.

We want the type of companionship we want, and anything else just won't work. I attended church for a while and there was this older man who would not leave me alone, to where I quit attending. He would glom on to me to where it was hard to even talk to anyone else. It was creepy. I had to be abrupt, which is hard for me to do.

There was also my previous relationship. I still feel bad that I didn't end it in the best way [suddenly, over the phone.] But it wasn't working for me.

It goes both ways. There are people that I wish I could be close to, yet can't be. I know I've probably unintentionally become the creepy person to someone else. Sometimes I feel like there's a deterministic element to it all.

I really miss the lockdown era at times, I felt like my world had more people in it then, even if they were people from halfway around the world. I"m still in touch with a lot of the people from that time, but it's not the same. There was this feeling that we were all in it together, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. There was also this crazy sense of creativity that I can't seem to access anymore.

I don't really hold much truck with the whole "male loneliess epidemic" idea, most of that is self-imposed by indulging in asshole behaviors that the internet has reinforced. People used to be shamed into better behavior so they would grow out of things. Now they don't feel like they have to.

Those are some of my thoughts on loneliness, which aren't super related to Laing's book, which is fantastic. I sometimes treasure solitude, I like doing things alone, traveling alone, and only occasionally wish I could share moments with someone else. But when I do, it's really a sad feeling.

How I'm Living Now

When I'd last posted, prior to this recent 2026 upswing in blogging activity, I was living alone in my tiny apartment. I realize I need to update my readership on the various upheavals during the four year interval. I turned 50, spent most of my birthday on a plane to Luxembourg, where I met several online friends that I'd been chatting with during the lockdown years. Went to a few Nick Cave shows, then explored Vienna before heading home. I was pretty depressed, because I'd been so happy with the people I was meeting, but didn't feel like I would feel that level of connection again. At the time I was really on TikTok, and chatting with a few people from there. I had met someone who lived a couple of hours away, and we ended up in a relationship. This lasted about two years, which is the longest relationship I've been in aside from my marriage. But we weren't on the same page about a lot of things, and I realized after a while that this wasn't going to be a forever thing.

Then something happened to really complicate things, my ex needed help, and I ended up deciding to have her and her dog move back in with me. We drove cross country for three days to my apartment in Oregon. As you can imagine, my current girlfriend was not a fan of this idea, but I didn't regard our relationship as being at the level where either of us had veto power of the decisions of the other person. That was one of the things we weren't in alignment on. For me, things were at the level of "We're exclusively dating," and she was pushing me to make a marriage proposal.

I'm painfully aware that I made a decision more or less to go back to the past, but anyone who has been reading this long enough wouldn't be surprised by that. Anyway, split up with my girlfriend, and ended up buying a house with my ex-wife. We live together as platonic friends. It isn't the same as before, because we've both changed too much in the interim and had a lot of stuff happen. I don't really know what the future holds, if we're going to continue living like this till we grow old[er] or if this is just going to be for the next 7-8 years, if we will go our separate ways after I retire [and have to sell the house because I can't afford it on what I'm going to be taking home as a retiree.]

It's nice having her here, and I am totally enamored by the dog. I know it's made a lot of things more difficult for me, but I guess it's worth it. It's not always easy. But it's been good to have someone to help me through some of the things I've been dealing with. But it's interesting that loneliness is still a thing for me, though now I feel more like I have a home to be lonely in, instead of wandering the streets like a character in the world's most boring film noir.

Labor Day

After going in circles most of the holiday weekend trying to figure out where to hike, I decided to just go back to somewhere I'd been earlier this year, Beacon Rock State Park. Initially, I was going to hike on a different trail there--but the intial uphill stretches made me feel like taking it a little more slowly and I ended up hiking further to the saddle of Hamilton Mountain, where I'd been earlier. It's one of those hikes that is allegedly difficult, but you see old people and little kids all over it. I went a different way this time, longer, but more gradual. There's a great portion called Don's Cutoff that I took--I'd done it previously but only downhill. It was tougher uphill, lots of switchbacks but it beat the loose gravel of the main trail I'd done months before. I enjoyed the signs of fall.

The best part was not encountering anyone for the first 90 minutes, until I made it to the actual saddle/summit area. Even then, there were only a few there [though they were loud.] The Saddle is a favorite spot, you can see so much.

That's Bonneville Dam below. Me being me, I decided to go ahead and hike another half hour to the actual summit, which was harder than I remembered [because I was going the other direction last time.] But I was happy I did even though it meant more people. It's so funny when you get to the goal of a hike like that, you want to stay up there forever because you went through so much to get there, often hours of exertion, but usually you end up leaving after 10-15 minutes. I went back down the way I came. Was pretty beat the last couple of miles. It was almost 9 miles total. I arrived around 8 AM and finished a little after noon. By then, the roads were a madhouse and I made the mistake of trying to get something to eat....all the places were packed and it took forever. I was lucky to be able to make a left turn to get back to Portland. Will probably take it easy the next few weeks, maybe go on a low-impact nature hike. Not much wildlife at this one.

More rain and reading....

I miscalculated yesterday's plans, and should have hiked. The weather was beautiful and I wandered around the Kerns/Sunnyside neighborhoods but had my usual issue of needing to wait for places to actually open. Today it's raining a lot, and though in theory hiking in the rain can be fine in the right circumstances, I'm not up to it today. Tomorrow should be better, and I can spend the afternoon napping, reading, and figuring out where to go.

I started Yesteryear, and it is a fast read but I am not sure whether I'm going to like it, it seems really heavyhanded yet unsure of what statement it's trying to make at the same time. I am interested enough to keep going, so that works in its favor.

I really have trouble just sitting and doing nothing. I don't know when that started, but I get depressed unless I have really solid plans to do something, and to have everything play out as I imagined it. I waste a lot of my time ruminating over past minor decisions. "I should have hiked today." "I should have eaten somewhere else/ordered something else." "I should have gone elsewhere." It is all very exhausting. It may be time to nap soon.