Oh, how I would love to talk about ideas…

So, this trip has been interesting. I have 11 hours to go (and yes, I am counting), till I get to leave the office, get in my car, and drive to the airport. Then, I’ll have yet another bite to eat, board the plane, and fly home.

I can’t wait. I’m done here. I was supposed to have dinner with an Aspie friend, last night, but I ended up having to do a work team-building thing — going out to dinner with my coworkers, and then having ice cream afterwards. It was a good time, and I enjoyed hanging out with them. Just like I’ve enjoyed spending time with other folks, discussing work and other subjects, and everything that goes along with networking for work.

Sure, I enjoy spending time with these people, but when do I get time to decompress? All this peopling has been incredibly taxing. It’s exhausting, no matter how much I enjoy it. There’s too much to take in, too much to process, and all of it’s happening in an environment that’s inherently hostile to me and my sensibilities on a profound level. Everything around me is too too loud, too bright, too frenetic, too superficial, too political, too… everything.

And not an in-depth idea in sight, from what I can tell.

I’ve spent the last four days skimming the surface of life, and it’s about as much as I’m prepared to indulge. Everybody’s saying I should stay longer. I should spend more time. I should even move out here. They like me. I like them. We get along. There’s a fair amount of love between me and my coworkers here, and they enjoy working with me.

But it’s a one-way street, social and mentally speaking. I’m the one working overtime to fit in and adapt to their ways. I’m the one putting out the effort to blend and be a responsible individual who cultivates positive social interactions. I’m the one who’s bending over backwards (metaphorically) and putting a cramp in my back (literally) to adapt to their schedules, their food choices, their priorities, their values.

Very, very little of what goes on here and what people care about appeals to me. Living a classic American conspicuous hyper-consumer lifestyle in ways that support and further the dominant paradigm (as well as  the economy), and structuring your life around your popularity, social standing, and political connections are about as far from my main priorities, and you can get.

It’s just so vacuous… I feel like I’ve been living at an extremely high altitude for the past week, with very little oxygen, no trees, and no signs of diverse life to be found.

And nobody around me seems to notice, which worries me.

I mean, I like the people I work with. But at some point, I need to talk about more than office politics, as well as their mainstream lives. I need to discuss more than what people had for dinner the night before, or what the school schedules are. I’m out of  place, but I’m the only one who notices, because I follow other people’s leads, and I play to their strengths. It’s much easier to interact with people, when I make them the center of attention. They love it. They love to talk about their lives, their cars, their kids, their hobbies. But very, very little of it has anything to do with queer little ole me.

Which is pretty much the story of my life. Not much around me has anything to do with me or my values, my priorities, my interests. Never mind what I would have talked about, if I’d been able to go to dinner with my friend last night. We would have riffed on abstract concepts for hours. But alas… alack… All I have to show for dinner last night is a dessicated, intellectually barren experience, where I’ve worn myself out interacting with people nothing like me at all, doing things that don’t interest me… and there’s always the chance I’ve insulted someone without intending to.

Ah, well.

I get to go home today. Back to my books, back to my routine, back to my regular eating and exercise schedule. Back to my house, my partner, my queerness, my nonbinary, noncompliant ways, and the life that I’ve structured exactly the way I want it. Back to my quiet, my peace, my steady cadence. Back to my ideas. Back to a place where I can actually think, instead of being rushed and pushed and cajoled and coerced into meeting someone else’s cookie-cutter social needs, on someone else’s time, according to someone else’s idea about how things should be done.

Well, I’m sure I’ll get some insight from this trip, on down the line, but for now, I’m just really relieved to be finishing up my stay here and going home this afternoon. I’m sure I’ll be back here, sometime in the not-so-distant future, but for now, I’m looking forward to getting my life back to how I want and need it to be.

The day is starting. Let the games begin. Again. For the time being.