I am just in from my weekly one-mile swim. As I swim, I tend to be quite contemplative. Anyway as I wrote recently here on the blog, I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) again this year. It’s my fifth attempt, I think.
I succeeded three times, and bailed on the fourth, which brings us to this year.
Again I’m not doing it in the way in which NaNo was conceived – in fact what I am writing is not a novel at all, it’s more in the vein of Eat Pray Love only less well written or for that matter cohesive.
Plus my main journey is a road trip across America meeting family, friends and a dozen or so former forum members of So You’ve Been Dumped!
Anyway, as you might imagine, doing something autobiographical about your relationships makes you examine them all closely. On the Magic Whiteboard on my wall I’ve written out around nine names of people that I’ve had casual, right up to serious, relationships with.
What is maybe interesting, is that anyone can do this, namely take a look at the relationships you have had, write down what worked and what didn’t. Write down what you learned from the relationship, and if it ended, from its demise.
Also can you think of ONE WORD that sums up your relationship (I know that’s much harder to pinpoint because no relationship is just ONE thing as such). Still is there one over all word that seems to fit?
I have not answered all the questions yet myself, but I will aim to do it by the month’s end. I know that I learned something from each of them, and that not one of them was a waste in any way.
Sometimes our only lesson learned was what we don’t want…I’ve had one or two of them.
So if you’re up for it, take out a sheet of paper and a pen (remember what those are?) and write down a list of names of any adult relationships you’ve had (or any that are significant regardless) and write down what you learned about yourself or about relationships or anything. Sometimes you need to dig deep or think hard about what you learned or how you benefited from them but persevere. It’s worth it.
