This gets complicated. Jenny and I don’t have that much in common anymore. We both lead fairly small lives that are fairly hyper focused on our families. Our hobbies don’t overlap much at all. We have fairly different values about how we want to live.

I genuinely don’t believe my way is the One Twue Way but I am also not very open to being questioned or argued with about what I do. I have worked very hard to reach the set of lifestyle habits I have and I am not interested in defending them. Jenny, even if it isn’t intentionally hostile, often questions me in ways I have a hard time with.

It is hard to talk about these kinds of differences without sounding like “my way is better”. For me, for her, for almost anyone. I don’t think I recognized just how different we were until I got here and stood more face to face with it.

I am a workaholic without a job. So my kids, my house, and my garden are the things I hyper-work on. Jenny wants more downtime than that. She seeks out ways to hire or acquire help so she can do less and she can spend more time relaxing.

I tried relaxing for a while here. It was incredibly unsatisfying to me and Noah has decided not to hold me to that whole “I’ll spend a year with no projects” thing because I was freaking out all the time keeping the house spotlessly clean. I wasn’t allowed to focus on anything bigger so I was an asshole about small, stupid details. Now I’m working in the yard more and dealing with the construction projects (I got to spend 14 hours so far painting oil in the bookshelves for preservation) and I’m not being a neurotic asshole about cleanliness.

I’m kind of like those dog breeds who need to work a lot or they destroy your house.

I’m still doing pretty well with keeping my exercise quantity up. The TRX is now installed so I get to restart my PT exercises. That will be good for my shoulders. They hurt quite a bit.

But Jenny and I have opposite approaches to work. I seek out more work with an almost maniacal focus and she… would prefer to do as little as she can get away with.

What do we talk about?

I am so high energy I feel like I burn with unexpressed energy. The idea of sitting still for hours knitting and watching telly makes me twitch.

If Noah wants to read to us for hours I usually do 2-3 other things while I listen. I watch television programs while I clean or cook. I take intense pride out of my house and my yard looking the way they do because of the work of my hands. I don’t like that I’ve had to pay for as much help as I have had to since I got here.

An awful lot of what they are doing I could do but I’d have to buy all the tools and my hands would go numb. This frustrates me.

Jenny hires someone to come change her lightbulbs and put together her Ikea furniture.

Very different attitudes towards work.

What do we talk about? I don’t know. I don’t say this to be an asshole I mean… I don’t know what we can build a friendship on at this point. We can’t talk about our kids because we parent very differently and sharing our different perspectives sounds like judgment. We can’t talk about how we spend our time unless we take turn monologuing while the other is chewing their tongue off because they don’t understand why someone would want to work so much/little.

We don’t read the same books. We don’t watch the same shows. We don’t make the same kinds of things with our hands. We can’t even talk about food because we eat so very differently.

And so much of this does come down to: I cannot spend time around someone who has negative judgments about home schooling despite doing basically no research. If you are well researched and you have concerns, I can engage with that. I can’t even deal with negativity that springs from ignorance. Just shut the fuck up about things you don’t understand.

Which is not a great attitude when it comes to ones friends!

Did I expect to have more of a friendship? Yes. Is it working out? Well, we have grown apart. In California we would have drifted apart long ago with little fanfare or objection on either side. The fact that we maintained a bond over great distance and great time means that now being in the same place makes it all so much more complicated.

And I genuinely don’t know how to bridge this gap. I don’t know that I want to suck it up and bite my tongue and put up with things that offend me. Which means I am hurting Jenny because I am crushing her dreams and that makes me feel pretty bad about myself.

We are not family. We have no background of shared experiences nor shared future goals nor shared culture.

I feel like a bully and a selfish person. I feel like I “should” just suck it up and figure it out and try. I also feel like I don’t have much energy to throw at situations that give me so little back.