Today I leave for Georgia, so it’s not just a clever title. Back in January, one of my resolutions was to travel to conferences. Hell, it was more like: I need to leave this chair and this laptop sometime this century. In December, when I look back on the year, the fact that I have been able to travel when so much has gone wrong will be a bright spot. For me, this means I am going as far as the headlights allow; I’m on the right road,but it’s just a bit dark and I can’t see what’s up ahead.

And then there is the whole terrified of flying thing.

I’m 50% stoked to be leaving the basement and equally scared shitless that leaving the basement may cause my untimely death due to crappy luck.

So, I did what anyone with control issues would do when faced with absolutely no control: I asked over on the Blog’s Facebook page what would you include on an Atlanta-themed playlist? And then I went and made it based off of the stellar suggestions. If you use Spotify, you can listen to it here.

A few days ago, there was also a relationship revelation. Quite frankly, I have been too busy to write about the goings-on of separation.  From the quick move, to getting settled, to creating a new website and writing an intense amount of words, there wasn’t time to go over the ebb and flow of limbo. In general, Slasher is off limits. Even before the separation, I rarely wrote about him because he didn’t want me to and I respected that.

There’s a fine line between telling my story (which does include my child and my partner) and  journaling for the sake of voyeurism.  I don’t journal here, I tell stories. I journaled back in the early days of the Internet in another place and one day I will properly archive them over here. I don’t want to be “known” for anything except my stories and the words I can string together. So, putting every tidbit of my life on display has never appealed to me in the way that it appeals to others.

And it’s okay if it appeals to you.

Just the other day, however,  I received a style guide of how to write and before that I attended a conference with a session on how to write for magazines. You mean I could have saved 60 G’s and just had a style guide teach me how to write and get published? What in the flying fuck did I go to college for? But I realized last week and in the summer that a whole host of folks are learning what I already know, which is why I will probably never call myself a blogger again.

But I digress.

Back to Slasher.

The story of our relationship armageddon has cooled because he has come to some hardcore revelations about himself. I shall call this the Slasher vs. Slasher Revelation. He realized that, essentially, there are two hims: the one that sucks and the other one that’s a pretty awesome guy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hand-holder or a pat-on-the-backer. If dude wants to change, hop to it. Show some real progress.

And he is, but he needs to take it to 11.

Just in case you were about to anoint me with wings and a harp, I have problems too. His far outnumber mine as I think his ah-ha moment amounted to resentment. Through counseling, maybe he’ll be able to work on saying it and, finally, grow up and put the toys and teenage behavior and tantrums back where they belong: nowhere near me.

If not, this will never work. And maybe – even when he does all this work – I may have done my own work and will say: I’m over it. Again, to the headlights, I can only see as far as they take me.

But this week, before I left on my mid-day plane to Georgia, Slasher and I got somewhere deep. To the core of everything that’s wrong. For the sake of rebuilding what we had, I hope it’s different this time.