I have been spending a lot of time lately doing meta-thinking. I’m noticing how things have changed for me over the past ten years. I showed up at my first munch on August 7th (the one down in Santa Cruz) and my second munch–but my first Wednesday munch–on August 9th, 2000. That’s 10 years plus three days since I first met the group of people who changed my life. I met Tom at the second Saturday party after that Wednesday munch and we went on our first date on the 18th. It’s really kind of wild to think about. I’m somewhat horrified to reread some of the emails I wrote to the local mailing list at the time. (Dear God I was a nitwit–and I really needed some lessons in punctuation, spelling, and basic grammar. I guess I did learn something in the pursuit of that English degree.) I’m pretty grateful that people were willing to get to know me at all.

One of the most striking things to me about how I have changed is the ability to perceive shades of gray. I’m less convinced there is RIGHT answer to every question. I am way better about seeing how relationship structures that would not work for me are just fine and I don’t need to tell people to dump their partners just because I wouldn’t work well with their partners. (This isn’t a common thing–there were a few specific cases…) The parenting stuff is also going that way. Things were way more intense for me during Shanna’s pregnancy/first year than they are now. I’m mellowing out about topics way faster than I used to.