life experimentation

Yesterday, I spent the day trying to channel the wisdom of simone de beauvior, by (finally) getting around to reading the second sex, and then discovered this blog about two friends who decided to date each other for 40 days to work through their toxic relationship tendencies (he is a serial avoider of commitments, she - photos in post below - falls in love too quickly). Both participants are very attractive, stylish, and candidly perceptive new yorkers (sort of the girl/guy you wish you were in the cooler, edgier version of yourself) and they’re both designers which means the blog is not just a blog, but a curation of typeface and contemplative GIFs in multicolor quirkiness. Which naturally, got me thinking about the frustrations of a moderately artistic person in a decidedly non-artistic career path, and how I need to find ways to insert more of this into my daily routine. But it also triggered a number of observations about my approach to relationships, and what we each bring to our own relationships.

I think the structure of their “40 day project” accelerated the “getting to know you process” and made me realize how important it is to notice our differences with others and to internalize lessons learned through expanding our worldviews. Its also interesting how learning about others necessarily teaches us more about ourselves.

 

For me, being with someone who is cerebrally logical and an engineer by nature as well as by background reinforces how much I love philosophy and words and abstract ideas. I have always been a bit insecure about the fact that I am bad at math and was a failed engineer in college. It took me a while to realize that the world would be a dull place if we were all good at the same things.

 

A memorable line to take along - “life is a series of experiments…when nothing goes right, go left.”