Pedestals

I have off from work Monday and Wednesday.  What's even more exciting is that I made a to-do list of things to get done by Wednesday night back on Friday, and I've already completed everything on the list!  Yep yep yep, I rocked that to-do list on Friday, Saturday and today so well that I technically don't have anything else to scratch off my list before Thursday. While I took Julia out today, my husband did a few things on the list as well. 

Deep, relieved sigh

After my Dewey project, I've been reading more fiction.  It makes sense because I was so fiction-deprived for so many months.  But now, my interest for reading fiction is starting to wane just a bit, and I think I may start writing.  Writing - as in a novel.  My problem is that I can get to 50-75 pages, and then I lose momentum, put it down for a month (or longer), then take a few days to read everything I had written to that point, and I get lost in the plot and can't find my way out.  See why I like blogging instead?  No rules, no theme (at least I don't have a theme), just go by the seat of your pants.  When you run into a wall, you just end the post and blame it on your stream of consciousness running out.

If you could only get out of all your problems that way....

I wrote about something a few months ago, but I deleted it quickly after posting it and am not sure how many people read it. I don't like duplicating things; thus, I will try to approach it from a slightly different angle.

I keep in fairly good contact with one of my ex boyfriends.  It's kind of an odd set-up, but he was one of those guys who was always more of a friend/brother than a boyfriend.  We had a weird dynamic.  As most people who knew us would say, they had no idea why we were ever together.  In our weird - but yet comfortable - dynamic, he and I thought of each other in a rather inaccurate way.  I guess I thought of him as an injured bird (like he couldn't take care of himself and needed constant "help"), and I have no idea what he thought of me - but it was almost as if he thought I was on a different astral plane than he was on.  My husband says that my ex-boyfriend put me on some sort of pedestal.  Again, it was a weird dynamic that didn't work when we dated, but we get along quite well most of the time as long as we're not dating.

I've noticed with a lot of men in my life that it's almost like I put them on a pedestal.  With women, I rarely if ever do it.  It's an awful prejudgment that I have.  My tendency is to immediately associate women with fallibility, indecision, needless emotion, frustration, neediness, and exasperation.  On the other hand, I attribute more "positive" characteristics like steadfastness, decisiveness, rationality, and amiability to men.  If you show me two people with the same personalities, with the only difference being gender, I will undoubtedly like the guy more than the girl.  Women tend to freak me out.  All that perceived neediness and mood swings make me incredibly nervous, and I have no idea what to do other than hide under my bed like a cat.

Besides prejudging women as more difficult in general, the other main error with this gender preconception is giving men more credit than they actually deserve.  Let us be clear, men can be incredibly stupid and are rarely flawless.  I will make the only assertion that I know to be true from my perspective: Men are far easier to understand than women.  Somehow I confuse that assertion with a bunch of personality characteristic prejudgments that are not accurate.

I tend to put men on pedestals until their stupidity and flaws start to show.  It depends on the amount and type of stupidity and flaws as to whether the guy goes to "injured bird" status or "beyond hope" status or just plain "fallible but nice guy" status.  "Injured birds" bring out me as a caretaker.  I kind of suck as a caretaker, but I can have a few weird, maternal moments. "Beyond hope" guys bring out me ignoring them.  They need so much help that there's way more than anyone can ever do for them, and if they don't want to change, nothing's going to happen anyway.  Don't waste any energy on them because it's not worth it.  The "fallible but nice guys" are just that.  I have a reasonably accurate perception of them and know their strengths and weaknesses.  They aren't lost causes.  They're on the whole good people, but they can fall into certain traps.  What has been interesting is that my ex boyfriend has moved from the "injured bird" category to the "fallible but nice guy" category now that we're no longer dating.  It's a lot healthier category to be in.

Another thing that is somewhat odd is that I still have my husband on a pedestal.  After knowing him 14 years now, he has never disappointed me.  He's never succumbed to things I deem to show him as being fallible.  He's steadfast, reliable, rational, decisive.  He's pretty darn near perfect.  In comparison, I am the hopeless one, the injured bird.

He's on one mighty high pedestal.  If he ever comes off it, it's going to be a truly long fall.