Next New Adventure

So, for the past 2 or 3 months I've been really high on moving because I had sort of gotten stuck in a rut on nothingness. Actually, this had been going on for over a year but I kept finding things/people that kept me amused for awhile but they've been coming and going way too quickly, save for my regular bridge partners and somewhat regular visits to friends in Atlanta. By January, the upcoming departure of more of my ATL friends became known and I was looking at options for moving again, this time more serious because in June I hit the 3 year mark here, which means more freedom to leave and probably more job options available. The influx of new young bridge friends across the country, largely thanks to Sean and BBO, made the idea of moving even more attractive.

Things certainly haven't gone as I had hoped (but surely I'm better off now than at the start of January or in October or pretty much anytime before?) and several ideas that I thought were independent of each other seemed to merge and confuse me and irritate me and stress me out and lead to my being slightly crazy. I am still very interested moving in Montreal and slightly interested in Boston and am not seriously considering anywhere else but not sure enough that it's what I really want.

Anyway, my next adventure is being in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, an unusual musical with multiple endings depending on how the audience votes on who Drood's murderer is. I don't really understand it yet, but I really love the music in the play despite having to use sort of a British accent. So, that and online bridge and working on partnerships and teammates for the summer nationals will occupy me and keep my happy for the next 6 weeks, and then I'll re-evaluate the relocation possibilities with (hopefully) a much clearer head.

Preempting Life

In bridge, preempting is an attempt to prevent the opponents from bidding effectively – essentially, it is taking a chance that partner doesn’t have a good hand either and that by bidding higher right away, you’ll put yourself in a better position to score well. Life, however, isn’t a competition so you’re not trying to prevent anyone else from having anything but just trying to be prepared for the future changes that might or might not occur. Occasionally in bridge, it backfires and you go for -800 or so, occasionally you keep them out of game or slam or they get to the wrong strain, and sometimes it really doesn’t have much effect. In life, it can work the same way. Preempting life can sabotage the current state, make the future changes not so glorious, or it can help you move on to bigger and better things, or it can have no effect at all.

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, preempt has these definitions:

1) to acquire (as land) by preemption

2) to seize upon the exclusion of others

3) to replace with something considered to be of greater value or priority

4) to gain a commanding or preeminent place in

5) to prevent from happening or taking place

6) to make a preemptive bid in bridge

So, what does it mean to preempt life? I define it as planning ahead to have activities to fill certain voids in life in the near future that inevitably will be there when some current activity ends. This can include preparing for a new job before you quit the old one, making new friends in anticipation of a falling out with a current friend or a current friend’s move, planning a weekend visit somewhere to preclude being home and alone and bored, trying to get involved in another social activity after it gets to be too cold to play tennis, or trying to develop a new partnership with the anticipation that a current partnership is going to end.

We all do this to some extent, but I maybe take it to the extreme. To a point it is good to have new activities to take the place of old activities. They say the best way to get over something is to stay busy with other things. However, the best way to get over a girl is NOT to find another girl. That’s not fair to her and you’re unlikely to be genuine with her until well after the heartache is gone, which for me has been known to take 3 or 4 months but usually is less. So, while I do try to keep a steady flow of friends and bridge partners and different social and intellectual activities, that doesn’t apply to potential mates.

Recently, my good friend Ramesh moved from Atlanta to Hong Kong about 3 weeks ago. He is someone I could always count on to go out to a bar or to team trivia or to play a fun canapé-style of bridge. In anticipation of his departure, I had been and still am kind of seeking out new bridge partners, especially ones that are interested in canapé and who could also become a good drinking buddy, even if only online most of the time. Locally, that’s not happening as I’m “stuck” with Emory and Joel and Bob, who are actually quite clearly my three best partnerships – just not quite in my age bracket.

Also recently, I’ve been trying to preempt an anticipated dislike of living in Warner Robins by seeking out other things to get involved with (more online bridge and online socializing, writing, singing, acting, working more, traveling more) and also seeking out potential places to move. Having almost decided on Montréal as my next place to live, I started trying to preempt my potential loneliness there by trying to go ahead and make friends there.

In bridge, they say you shouldn’t preempt with a good hand because it inhibits your side from bidding effectively, something that is more important when you have the good cards. Much the same with life – you shouldn’t preempt when it is going well. Or should you? Should you always have a “backup plan ready to be put into action” or does that jeopardize the current state of goodness?

Everything Can Change in a New York Minute

Even though I had visited 48 of the 50 states in the US by the time I was 14, I still have yet to visit several major American cities, but the list of such cities I need to visit has definitely shrunk a lot in the last couple of years. I can’t tell how serious I am about moving. A big part of me is really excited about possibly moving. Another part of me still feels like a Georgia boy, terrified to leave the state that has been my home for nearly 25 years.

I sort of feel like all the little weekend trips I’ve taken since I’ve been living in Warner Robins have been kind of test drives to see if I’d like to make it my next home. While many of the trips have been for bridge, many have been just to “visit” friends. Over the last 3 years, I’ve taken weekend trips to Boston, NYC, Washington DC, Dallas, Las Vegas, LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Nashville, Seattle, Saint Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh. Boston, NYC, and San Fran definitely stand out as my favorites but I don’t think I want to move out west anymore. Maybe I was influenced more by who I was with when I visited (Mila, Megan, and Dana), but those 3 cities have a lot of character and seem to cater very well to single 20-something males. I have been told Vancouver and Montreal are great places, too, and it is kind of surprising that I haven’t been to Montreal. With the heavy French influence in Montreal, I should like the place. That’s tentatively on the calendar for an August visit but I may have to move it up sooner than that.

Don’t get me wrong. Macon/Warner Robins is actually quite a great place to live. I could totally be happy settling down here if I had someone to settle down with. In the mean time, I want to go exploring, even if it means being miserable a lot and starting my social life over, which may actually be harder in a big city where friendships may tend to be less intimate. At least I already have a few friends who live in the places I am looking to move to but who knows how long they will be there.

I hear about some of my other friends, 3 or 4 years removed from getting their undergrad degree looking for a new adventure as well – some starting their own business, going back to grad school, taking a sabbatical, or just changing jobs – it makes me not think I’m so crazy for entertaining these thoughts so much.

Am I crazy?

Of course. But what do you think makes me crazy?

The craziness that's on my mind now is that I've been seriously thinking about relocating for awhile. It took me so long to adjust to life in Warner Robins; how am I going to make it in another new place? I am slow at making friends and in Warner Robins I now do have a couple of good friends - Mo, Emory, Cindy. Two of my best friends and favorite bridge partners - ramesh and sean - are moving out of Atlanta soon and it may be about time for a change of scenery for me as well.

As much as I like traveling, I get traumatized when I have to move. When I moved from Athens to Valdosta when I was 5, I didn't talk to anyone for a year. then I finally met Casey and became best friends. When I moved to Atlanta for college, it wasn't so bad because there were just so many people that were in the same position as me. When I moved to Warner Robins, I had some of my best friends to still see on weekends in Atlanta and I could go 2 hours to my parents almost any time. But considering a move to Boston or New York is a lot different. I don't feel like I can handle it right now, but I think I need to. When I moved to Warner Robins, I sort of decided that if, after 3 years I wasn't attached to someone local, I would move to a big city where there are opportunities to meet people and to experience that big city lifestyle. I sort of got that while at Tech but not really. For a long time, I thought I was going to be attached, but such is not the case, and that's a good thing. It's not that I am unhappy with my job or where I live. I'm just afraid that I will be unhappy soon and I want to do more with my life and live in a giant city while I am still young.

Interfaith Relationships

Today's post deals with interfaith relationships/marriages. Clearly there are widely varied opinions on this. There are traditionalists who would disown a child for marrying someone of a different religion. There are modern theists who are open to the idea of possibly marrying someone of a different religion, but know that it will inevitably create some extra conflict. Then there are the agnostics/atheists who could give a hoot about what religion their partner is.

I’ve searched a lot for statistics about this. But for the most part, experts seem to think atheists and agnostics have a lower divorce rate and born-again Christians have the highest divorce rate. Does this surprise anyone? I’ve seen many interfaith marriages work out well. And I’ve seen many marriages within the same church crash and burn. I’ve seen people go through a relationship for y ears only to realize that they’ve been wasting their time because they could never marry each other due to their religious convictions. I think a big reason the non-religious people may have more successful marriages is that they are more open-minded and their judgment is never clouded by the notion of God and what He wants and trying to idealize things.

I suppose I fall into the category of a very liberal born-again Protestant. I say liberal in the sense that I totally respect all religions and am open to learning about them and possibly changing my faith someday. But my set of morals and values are as strong as anyone’s, and they are mostly independent of religion. Back to the topic at hand. All religions teach basically the same things. They may have different Gods, different prayers, different holidays but all religion is essentially the same. And which religion we are is largely based on where we grow up or where our parents grew up. The goal of all religion is the give us an explanation for the unexplainable, to guide us to be better people, and make the world a better place. Even the extreme Islam groups have this as their primary goal - they just have a very radical idea of how to achieve that.

So, interfaith relationships are totally fine. Religion is not what keeps us apart. It’s the morals and values that we often associated with religion that are the crucial issues. There are many Christians who, when you evaluate the way the live and their personal values, are very non-Christian, while some atheist may have a lifestyle and values that are equivalent to a good Christian. And to me, a good Christian will be better off with the atheist than a Christian with different values.