Non-Homogenized Writing...and Digging into Dissertation Revisions

 Hello, old friend. 

I have been rediscovering my love of writing, and it has been everything. I have forgotten how much I love it, and how much it is central to who and how I am and how much it energizes me like nothing else. 

How much of a lifeline it has been for me for so much of my life, hence this stupid little blog I started way back in 2013 when I was going through a divorce, heartbroken, and somehow trying to figure out how to be a single parent to then three-year-old twin sons. 

I was so incredibly overwhelmed, which is an understatement. But then I started and wrote here almost weekly for a year, and it was everything to me. It got me through it somehow in a way just journaling to myself was not. Something about sharing them publicly had an additional power of effect that kept me going. 

It was also a pseudonym I created, which allowed me to just write and say whatever the fuck I wanted, unfiltered. I loved it. 

But I got away from it. Life moved on. I healed. The Life Line didn't have the same place, the same need in my life as it did when I started it, so it faded away. 

I have returned to writing so, so many times over the years. I never stopped, but I also never fully committed how I had wanted to. 

I was 38 when I started that...and here I am all these years later, 51. My kids are 16 going on 17, juniors in high school, and thriving. They are so fucking smart, I can barely believe it. And way, waaaay better students than I was in high school. So smarter than me in every way. And taller. 

I have found love again after my divorce, which it felt like I never would. Lost that love. And I am finding love again...I think...with another woman. 

But love feels, idk, different at 51 than it did even in my 40s, after 11 years with one woman, 9 of them married, and then another what...7 or 8 with another. Two decades of women I was deeply in love with, one of which is the mother of my children. 

Both of those relationships were so incredibly different. I loved them when I loved them both very much and very differently. And I can look back and see the obviously glaring problems in both...retrospectively. 

What a dumb fucking fool I was. But such is life. I have regrets and no regrets at the same time. 

Amor fati. A new favorite saying and just life...philosophy. Love your fate. 

The decisions you made in the past, the things you did and didn't do were the only things you could have ever done in those moments in that time and who you were in that moment. 

So why not accept it and love it all. 

So anyway, I have been writing again, as I was saying. 

I am diving back AGAIN into my fucking dissertation, starting to revise, again, chapter one, which I have put on hold for way too fucking long because of my crazy job that I both love and...I don't want to say hate. I don't hate it. I actually find it extremely challenging and engaging, and I like that about it quite a bit. And I have great support. For now. 

But god damn...I have had so many jobs go wrong, usually for social reasons. Something about me. Autism. ADHD. All that. And the risk of that happening again is just always there. 

That's actually what my dissertation is about. I won't go into that now. This may not even be the place for that at all.

But as I was diving back into revisions for chapter one, based on feedback from my dissertation chair, I wanted to write about it. 

I have a newsletter which is sort of an adjunct effort to go along with my dissertation and connect to my larger framework of hero psychology. 

But I didn't want to use that forum for this. 

As I have been writing more, I've been playing with the idea of blogging again for another, different writing outlet, to just say what I want. 

My newsletter writing is much more public now...with my measly 24 subscribers. But a lot of people read it, friends, family, coworkers, so it is more professional-facing, and in that way curated and inhibited. I can't just write without being too...careful with wording and my professional persona. I can't just go, which is what I love and what I loved previously about the Life Line. It was just free-form getting the shit out of my head and sharing it with whoever the fuck. 

So here I am again, Life Line. I guess I feel I am needing you again. My kids are so independent now, and they will be adults and out of the home sooner than I can even imagine. It will go by so fast. A reality I could not even fathom in 2013 as I struggled nearly every day to just keep up with those little three-year-old monkeys. I don't even know how I did it sometimes. But I did, and I feel so fucking great about it. 

Yes, I'm swearing a lot. Fuck you, that is what the Life Line is about. So I just want this place back to just write and get my thoughts out, chronicle my dissertation, and write about whatever I want. 

I don't need a well-thought-out mission statement as to why. 

I wish I didn't let my last girlfriend know about this pseudonym and blog, but I did. I am not sure if she follows or subscribes or cares. But it compromises my writing anonymity to some degree. 

But really, it would not be so very hard to discover my identity if anyone took a moment to try. But I doubt anyone will care enough to do so. Not for an old crook like me.

I use AI to help me write these days. Usually to polish things and sometimes with structure or how to better say something. But this will be totally AI-free (well, remain AI free, really, since AI wasn't even a writing tool option in any of my previous Life Line posts). Well, maybe not totally. I am a bad typer, and it works great as a glorified spell checker. But otherwise, unfiltered, free-flowing non-homogenized bullshit, from me to whatever comes across it and takes a moment to waste their time.