6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 5

 [I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4 sch 8/14/2026]  

 Dawn disappeared on me almost 20 years ago because I foolishly said something about finally having sex with a girl from my high school. She got upset; saying something about competition. So much for saying a factual truth about how things had changed in my life. I thought she was funny, beautiful in a skinny brunette way, and eminently loveable. She was brightness to KA's dourness. Too bad my foot fits so well in my mouth. I learned later she married and had children and was quite happy with her life. Another exhibit of women doing better away from me. I applaud her success.

T2 came into my life in FEbruary of 1991. How did I first become aware of her? I cannto remember now. She was another lawyer in Anderson. I remember her telling me that she noticed me first. Our first date occurred at Anderson's Nile Restaurant. She wore a low-cut blouse with a red bra. When she leaned forward it was difficult to avoid noticing that particular combination. 

We belonged to the same profession, she had ended a bad relationship, and I was becoming disillusioned with KA. At this time, I was seeing KA and two other women. One ended quickly, while the other continued a while longer. That relationship  ended the night we pulled up at my apartment with this girlfriend's face in my lap and KA in my apartment. KA was supposed to be home with her children. (We only went out on the weekends when her ex-husband had visitation.)  I displeased the date by taking her home instead of us confronting KA. No way I wanted my date put in that position. When I came to my apartment, KA and I had an argument over a letter from T2. I patched things rather than deal with her anger. Now, only T2 and KA remained. Then it was only T2. She stayed somewhere in my life until my incareration.

T2 equaled T1 in height. They met once at JH's house, specifically her kitchen. T1 and T2 squared off across from each other. There was a singular look on T1's face as she took in T2; a combination of amusement and curiosity and speculation. What we men generally describe as catty. T2 stood next to me which left me unable to see her face, but I felt her bristle a bit. JH stood between and away from them with her back to the sink, a bit drunk, and trying to be nonchalant with her amusement at my discomfort. I waited for all hell to break loose. Then the smell of marijuana wafted into the kitchen from JH's sister and friends in the living room. T2 suggested we depart. We said our goodbyes, Once in the car, she noted she had never been to any place where her boyfriend had slept with three of the four women there. I did not mention I once flirted with JH's sister. T2 never said anything specific about T1.

 sch

[Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 6. sch 8/14.]

6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4

 [I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3 sch 8/14/2026]  

JH and I were involved sexually before I went off to law school, before TJ broke up with me, during my time in law school, and after her divorce. No details are needed by you. She even proposed to me. I sometimes wonder what have happened if I had taken her proposal seriously. Nowadays, she and another friend of mine have been deeply attached for over a decade. When she took up with him, we started talking; a a bit of pique and shard words. Neither speak to me any longer.

Cindy F. and Connie W. came into my life about the same time. I cannot remember who came first. I like to think it was Connie, who nicely sent me on my way as she went back to her ex-boyfriend. Both were blondes; Connie was kind with a broad smile as she orgasmed. Cindy was none of that.

Filled with divrocee's resentment, Cindy came riding hard and furious and left quickly, too. JH warned me against her; Cindy being a first cousin. She was the first anti-TJ. 

I lost track of Connie until her murder. She came home from work to have her soon to be ex-husband shoot her as she walked to her house. There had been a protective order - so much for them. Then he killed himself. The deaths of many people might improve the world. Hers did not.

The friend now so attached to JH introduced me to KA. It was a wild time with threesomes and oral sex in cars being turn ons for her. On our first date, she told me she had had a husband and did not need another, nor did her children need another husband. I took this seriously, even if she quietly changed her mind about the husband bit. She is one of two women toward whom I have some resentment. Because I relied on her statement of what she wanted. She changed her mind by the end of our relationship. By then, she was telling friends of mine of her intent to marry me within the next six months. Too bad she had played the tight-mouthed, too jealous, humorless girlfriend for too long by this time. If she had come and made an outright offer, things could have been different for her. KA made another mistake by not involving her children in the marriage question. My mother did not marry again until all three of us children approved. I would not marry a woman who with children unless they approved of me. So, we did not marry. Not liking the feeling of chains, at one point I was dating three other women at the same time. Our ending was not pretty. She began acting more irrational than usual. She informed me that the wild sex was just to please me. If so, she had been a great actress, the enthusiasm in her eyes did not seem easily faked. This angered me as I had never asked anyone to do anything they did not want to do. We broke up.

Several years ago, KA turned up and asked me to get her divorced from her second husband. I did. She never finished paying her bill. Go figure that out. KA was the second anti-TJ in many ways. She has been one of three who might have actually helped my career.  

sch

[Since writing this KA is one of two of my ex-girlfriends I would like to speak with. As time went by, questions grew and I would liek answers, but not enough to hunt her down. 

JH died in 2015. I omitted one conversation with had in 2008 or 2009 and the one time I saw her about the same time. I failed to follow up with the phone conversation just as I failed to speak with her when I saw her.  She died from cirrhosis of the liver. Her boyfriend did not tell me she was ill. I wish he had it would have motivated me to change the course of my life. Since her death, I have given up any thoughts of new romantic attachments. I am not convinced that anyone's attachment to me did them any good. More importantly, that I am not that good of a friend. JH was a far better friend to me than I was to her. The boyfriend has become a former friend of mine. I suppose he wants to avoid any possible taking up with my ex-wife. He once turned down T1's advances because she was an ex-girlfriend of mine. When he told me this, I emphasized ex-girlfriend, so perhaps ex-wives do not count or he is too ashamed to speak with me. What he does not understand is that his letting JH drink herself to death angers me.

Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 5. sch 8/14.]

Group Session Notes: July 2026

Another sign that procrastion remains; it is my oldest vice.

7/3:

Self-assurance or inner peace.

Steps to:

1. Think of yourself less often
2. Live according to values. Integrity plays a big role.
3. Get good at what matters to you.

[Ah, values. Nietzsche trashed Western values over a century ago. Nihilism rises out of their lack. Integrity dissipates when values are shown to be worthless. When society values hypocrisy, when society values the grifter and the performance over the substance, then integrity must be able to subsist in the desert. Nihilism leaves only destruction of one's self, of the world, as the only thing that matters. The only way I found to get out from under my nihilism was to have a complete breakdown, a return to the consolations of philosophy (starting with Aristotle and David Hume), reforging a will to live my life on my own terms, and ended with me entering the Eastern Orthodox Church. sch 8/15/26]

Live with integrity makes life better, not being ashamed.

[See Albert Camus's The Rebel. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. sch 8/15/26]

How to get out of your head -

1. grounding
1. form of attentiuon mindfulness - goal is to be present in the moment.
2. mindful eating (been here before) 
2. Actuall practicing gratitude 

6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2 sch 8/14/2026]  

I spent most of 1988 licking my wounds over T1. There was an encounter with Cindy—a wonderfully erotic and tender pair of encounters - but she would not go out with me again. There was a bit of shared history from college that she could not get over. She never knew that she had just to snap her fingers. Delicate, sweet Cindy married in 2008 or 2009. I wish her well.

And there was an encounter with Shelly about then. Questions raised since high school got an answer of sorts. Having dated what seemed like all my friends. I was curious about her charms. She proved TJ's theory that great sex requires love, passion. I would go so far as to say that good sex requires affection for one another. Never go to bed with a woman who does not laugh.

 Then I spent a considerable time mooning over LAH again. She would invate and then push away when I got too close.

And then I met Paula of Bloomington while working for a bill collector. Her wit led me to ask her for a date. She possessed all the energy and loveliness of TJ. Sandy-haired and buxom. Wonderfully energetic in bed with a habit of scratching one's back. Her two children were her life. If I had the nerve then to become a stepfather; it would have been an interesting marriage. I lost track of Paula after 1998. She shared another quality with TJ: the world was with her in it. Perhaps my affection for Bloomington has a lot to do with Paula.

I think time has come Regina. Another on/off relationship with her for a few years.  I lost track of her between 1993 and 2008. I saw her at the Madison County Government Center. She was even livelier than when we dated. Like T1, she was about 5'10”. Of women I should have married, she was number 3. Regina had the temper to keep me in line, the brains to keep me from getting bored, and a sex drive to keep us both busy. Unlike any other, the end of our relationship was not primarily because of my emotional disabilities. No, Regina felt her being African-American would cause me problems. Not that she ever asked me how I felt. She would tell my friend JH that I was the only white guy she would go out with. Regina never knew how much I loved her.

sch

[When I returned from prison, I found out Paula died in 2010. She had health problems when I knew her. Regina was the onlyex-girlfriend to write me in prison. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4 sch 8/14/2026]   

6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 1 sch 8/14/2026] 

KH threw a New Year's party in Anderson to which he invited me and T1. Not as a couple, not as a matchmaking venture. I have not mentioned T1 was 5'10”, had light-brown hair; that night she wore slacks, an Oxford shirt, a pink sweater, and a thin black leather tie. We drank, chatted, and flirted. I could not resist reminding her about her seeing me on her back porch and ruining her fun at a party in the summer. She blushed as pink as her seater. We were both intoxicated when midnight passed and she suggested I follow her back to her Muncie aprtment.

She was 21, and I learned a lot from her. T1's favorite movie was 9 1/2 Weeks.  She had the novel as well. I got a hint of what was to come that first night when she told me to tie her up. Clueless, I wrapped the tie around her thigh. She taught me different in the following months.

The relationship stopped at the end of the school year with a couple of eruptions after that. I have not heard much from her since I married. Although T1 married a fellow who did not like me and has been married the second-longest of my friends, there were vibes given off that she disapproved of my marriage. I think like most of my ex-girlfriends, she did better without me than with me. I find solace in that.

However, she has a more current reason for being angry at me. T1 is the mother of my only son. He contacted me through Facebook; I expected a phone call and never contacted him before my arrest. She had opted for an open adoption, so he knew who I was. His birth ended my sexual relationship with T1 and the start of our friendship.

What followed was a bit more muddled. 

 sch

[I looked up T1 this year. It was a bit surreal. Yes, it had been over, or about, 20 years since I saw her. She did not recognize me. She had no interest in speaking with me, but was not outright rude. About our son, she made it clear that they had not spoken in years. Our son knows how to reach me; he has not. I do not think it would be good for him to be associated with me, so I stay silent. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3. sch 8/14/2026]

On Writing: Interiority

 [Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]

Lincoln Michel's Counter Craft on Substack has been a source for ideas and instruction. Do check out his The View from Inside: On Adding Interiority to Your Fiction.

In fiction, interiority is relating the internal world of a character to the reader. Their thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, anxieties, memories, motivations, and so on. This is a simple yet consequential thing. Every one of us lives simultaneously in the external shared world and our own private worlds. These two realities are constantly colliding, separating, and distorting each other, whether that’s something as small as snapping at a friend because you are “hangry” or having a life-altering epiphany at the image of, I dunno, a dove flying over a lake that symbolically completes your character arc because you are a protagonist in a literary fiction short story published in a university literary magazine.

I kid, a bit. Still, it is true that our interior worlds are as vast as anything outside of them. If your fiction is missing interiority, it is leaving quite a lot out. This is true in a grander, philosophical sense yet also in a very practical craft sense. Readers tend to connect to stories through the emotions and desires of the POV character(s), and interiority provides that connection. The simplest story structure might be a character wants something but obstacles get in the way. This is a classic and powerful story, but only when the reader understands the character’s wants.

Interiority provides far more than just desires and goals. An interesting character will typically have a gap between how they act or speak and how they think or feel. Here’s an old CW class chestnut: In every scene, you should know what a character says they want, what they think they want, and what they really want. This can be applied to anything from prize-winning literary novels to pulpy superhero films. In this scene, the villain, Dr. Evilguy, says to the security guard that he wants to just use the bathroom but what he thinks he wants is to steal the blasto-ray 4000 omegagun prototype and conquer the city yet what he really wants, deep down, is to please the daddy that never loved them.

sch 6/3 

 

 

Indiana Thieves - Old and New

We have a history of criminality in Indiana that we hide in a closest.

But reading The problem with going solar in Indiana (Indiana Capital Chronicle) makes me think we still have plenty of theives hanging about:

In most states, if you deposit 20 kWh of power during the afternoon (as is usual on a typical sunny day), you get a full 1-to-1 credit to withdraw those same 20 kWh later that night. While states like Florida, Ohio, and Iowa protect 1-to-1 net metering as a matter of property rights and energy freedom, Indiana’s Senate Enrolled Act 309 created an artificial government price control that penalizes Hoosier families for investing in their own homes.

Passed in 2017, the law allows electric companies to harvest those same 20 kWh of afternoon power from you and immediately sell them to your neighbors for $3.00 (the full $0.15/kWh retail price), while crediting you just $0.70 (the discounted $0.035/kWh wholesale rate). When you pull that same power back out of the grid that night, they charge you $3.00 once again. That leaves the homeowner getting back less than 25% of the energy value they deposited just hours earlier.

 I am surprised no one has litigated this. 

sch 8/18