When we last left our story...

To answer the first and most pressing question: I don't know. I don't actually know whether we're together (his living here notwithstanding), or whether we'll be together, and, actually, I'm perfectly ok with that.

There was a meltdown moment a couple of weeks ago that was less about my free-floating relationship and more about the fact that I'd been living out of a suitcase for two months [Ed: now three months...and counting!] with no furniture other than a bed and a computer desk and the same ten outfits and every housepainting task seemed infinitely divisible, like the trajectory of Zeno's arrow, and the house needs an HVAC technician and an electrician and windows and flooring and a new basement ceiling and oy, the house needs, needs, needs.

There was a moment in which I could've continued my brittle list-making and obsessive control over all the details and pretty much imploded like a red giant, or...just let it go. Which I did. With a moderately impressive degree of implosion. But, seriously: it was an enduring mindset change. We're still working on things, including the relationship, and they'll either work or they won't, but I'm reasonably confident that in either case the planet will continue to spin.

The experience has been something of a forced values reassessment. As in: maybe I only really need a bed and computer desk (though a few more outfits would be nice). And: in all the letting go, the one thing I ironically gave up readily and shouldn't have was the writing.

I'm a passable essayist and a surprisingly awful producer of fiction. There's a play I've been working on fitfully for ages, and it's truly execrable: it's forced and stilted and the characters natter on for pages, rudely ignoring my periodic requests that they get to the point. But, who knows? Maybe if I blindly persevere it'll somehow mysteriously get better. It's a bit like learning how to wiggle your ears: all you can do is will various inert muscles to respond, guessing at which ones, for weeks on end without feedback, until one day you're rewarded with a flutter. The ears may ultimately be revealed to be made of tin, but, hey: you can move them. That's something.

The blog, too, seemed like trimmable fat. It isn't. It's untrimmable fat. Some of us just need to remake our narrative structure every day, the way other people need the daily discipline of making their beds. Whether or not any of you will be reading, I'll be writing.

Ok. Bracket slash navel gazing end bracket.

I've discovered a whole cache of Foreign Service blogs that've made me feel a little sheepish about the endless tortured wedding singing charade (but that said, we're not unblocking the blacked-out text, either).

But in the spirit of new candor, I'll say that tomorrow I start a brand-new assignment (sub-assignment, but the byzantine admin details aren't that interesting) as a writer and editor for the highest-profile communications vehicle we've got. Current emotion, as the kids say?

Sheer terror.