PPR

One of the blogs that I have listed over there on the left has a message that it is suspending publication for a while. The author says that she needs time to evaluate her life so as to find out why things are generally dark and unsatisfying for her. I was a little surprised to see it, because, though this person's blog generally has notes about why she seems to have great difficulty in finding a partner/mate/friend, I didn't get the sense that things were desperate. Now, apparently, they are, and she wants to take time to herself to figure out why, and what she can do about it. I felt sad for this person, and I hope that she can bring herself to a point of happiness, or at least one of contentment.

When I was writing the post about the person who works with me getting terminated, I wrote an earlier version that I then retracted, wherein I mentioned that I often have great difficulty in empathizing with people. Not with my wife; I care a great deal about her, and I care a great deal about my daughter. But as for others - yes, I find it tough. Somehow I tend to see what happens to other people as abstract. I can recognize that it -- whatever 'it' is -- is painful or unsettling, and I am sorry for them, but my empathy doesn't go much further than that. Its as if they are the classic 'people in a typhoon on the other side of the world'. I'm sorry about their problems; okay, time to turn the page. I don't know why. I think of myself as a caring person, but it might be more accurate to say that I am careful about whom I care about. I don't commit to other people, as a rule. I don't even visit relatives very often, or urge them to visit us. They're there; we're here; that's fine. I don't feel that I need them. I envy people who do have close-knit families, even as I shudder slightly at the idea of being close to anyone else. I don't know why that is.

I'm surprised, sometimes, at how open I can be in this blog (I think its a function of being unknown, though there are three people who read it on occasion who do know who I am, but even there, we've never met or talked, and only occasionally exchanged emails). And even with that openness, I sometimes remove or redact what I've written, because its too open. On the other hand, this forum does give me the chance to think about things that I think are useful for me -- even if its boring to those who might read it. What a self-absorbed idiot!

Oh, and that title? It stands for Pan-Pan Response, a reference to the title of that blogger's post.