Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 19

Happy Tuesday.

It's me and Dave's seventh anniversary. :D
He remembered (I didn't!) and he and Elmer came in to the restaurant and had lunch, at least in part so I could eat with them. It was awesome; Dave gave me a present, I got to say hi to Elmer, and I actually got to eat during the day.

Today's been super nuts because it's bill-paying day AND payroll day, which are two things that normally take up the majority of a day by themselves. Oh, and I want to get home in a timely fashion so me and Dave can hang out and get in some anniversary snuggling.
D'oh.

The longer I stay here, the more bearable it becomes--but the longer I stay, the more I see parts of myself shutting down that I really don't want to lose. I haven't written anything to shake a stick at since I came here, haven't finished anything period. Poetry won't come back to me till I'm done with this and all of that. It's a nasty thing to weigh, in my mind. This is an earth magic initiation, no question. Mohammad is an earth mage with a rare clarity to his gift and there's a lot I can learn from him. But like most people who have had success in the area of their strongest magic, he doesn't really (on an emotional level) view the other forms of magic as magic (that is, as worthwhile). I told Zubair earlier today, I feel like Michael Jordan having to make a living as a pro golfer in a society in which basketball is not valued. This is something I'm mediocre at, and the things where I'm brilliant, I have no reasonable way to put myself in a position to get paid for doing them.

Reminds me of a very cool conversation I had with Dave yesterday about the default settings we use to judge the value of people's time and allegiance. Obviously, everyone you know as an individual, you evaluate by your experience of them. But people you don't have that much of a baseline on, you judge according to your values (your religion, your res legiones, the things you have chosen). He judges people on beauty--how attractive they are, how much beauty they bring into the world around them. I judge people by magic--how much magic they have, how much magic I can learn from being around them. And Dave was like, Well, as you define magic, it's just ways to make stuff happen. And I said, Yeah, that's a very concise definition, and better than most. He's like, Well, then, I support it, and you should keep doing it.

And dangit, air magic is my strength. But you need to train your strengths to avoid losing them. Like in the Alphabet of Desire, Frustration is opposite-from-and-equal-to Atrophy.

Ai ya. Z's done stealing my compy to update the wine list. I better get my grind back to the nose-stone. Tally-ho!