Off we go

The family is going overseas later today for a week and a half. Because I'm not working right now, I've taken point on planning. We are visiting family, so most of the "planning" has actually been giving feedback on the family's plans for us. And really I think what "taking point" means is that my partner gets mad at me, rather than his dad, when he doesn't enjoy the arrangements that have been made.

Ultimately my husband missed the classes about filial piety at Chinese school and I am vastly more respectful of his parents than he is. I certainly don't feel comfortable pushing back on his dad's plans. So, who knows, maybe this vacay will be a fiasco and we'll be arguing the whole time.

Still, the kids are excited, and so am I. It's a bittersweet trip, because we're going to a country we love, but for political reasons we're likely to move the elderly rels out of the country soon. So it may be our last trip for a while, or if those political reasons go how we worry they might, maybe ever. I'm trying to be positive and excited that we get to go one last time to say goodbye, rather than sad and bitter that this place that's come to feel like a home-away-from-home to me might not be a place I ever get to go again.

I've been reading this book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life. I just finished it last night. The title sounded like exactly what I needed but the book itself has been a mixed bag. In general, I don't prefer to read books by practicing therapists about how to approach things in life; I feel their perspectives are understandably skewed by the fact that most of the people they speak to are in long-term relationships with a therapist - in this case, a Jungian therapist, a rather niche commodity. So they have a pretty strange sense of what people have experienced and what they need, that's just unavoidably shaped by the conversations they spend their days having.

That said, I think there were some things about it that clarified things for me, in ways I didn't expect. I specifically thought a lot about the ways in which I still think about my partner the way I did when we met. I'm always accusing him of not seeing me as I am but rather as I was, but I think I'm guilty of...well, not exactly that, but I want things from him that I've wanted since we met, and I no longer actually care about getting those things in any other sphere so it's silly that I'm stuck in a rut of trying to get him to give me those things. Like, I don't actually care about them. I'm grown and it doesn't matter. So I guess it was worth my time. Still, I'm glad it's over; I have a lot of books I'm more excited about reading and now I can crack 'em open.

I ducked out of one of my volunteer responsibilities. They assigned me to a thing I didn't think sounded that interesting and after going back and forth for a few days ("but I said I would!" "but this wasn't even a box I really wanted to check!") I was like "for fuck's sake, they aren't even paying me, why am I pretending this is something I want to rearrange my day around" and told them I couldn't commit to it right now. They were kind about it. NBD.