👏🏼

Let’s fucking go.

♫ What do I actually want (and need) in a relationship?

Not just what do I want? Not just what sounds lovely. What do I need, what do I want, and what am I willing to build and participate in?

I want to plant and nurture a life I want to stay in, rather than building something I eventually feel the need to escape (♫ If you like piña coladas, and gettin’ caught in the rain).

A relationship with room to explore, collaborate, make noises and be quiet, be strange, be vulnerable, retreat, reconnect, and build something together.

§Fucking In The West Wing

Sexuality and kink, for me, needs to have room for curiosity, play, communication, safety and the possibility of discovering things about myself.

I want:

• To let go of my inhibitions and embrace the animalistic space of primal lust
• To feel wanted and to want
• To explore exhibitionism more
• To explore sensory intensity and focused sensation
• To discover what kind of freak I am (♫ Freak me baby, ah yeah, Freak me baby)
• To be asked what I want, even when I’m finding it difficult to say
• To explore pleasure and control
• To be able to explore without already knowing exactly what I like

There are things I know I want. There are things I can feel enough to know I want to investigate.

But I’ve not been able to explore kink much. That means I need to feel safe and accepted as someone who is still new to some aspects of this.

It also means there may be dead ends.

I might be incredibly enthusiastic about exploring something and then discover it isn’t for me. I need that possibility to be okay.

The things where our freaks match? Those are going to be fun.

I want something that can feel feral and primal without actually being unsafe — a deep sense of being uninhibited, untamed and fully present in lust.

I need to feel safe saying an actual no. My no needs to be respected. That safety is what makes saying yes — and exploring the edges (and beyond) of yes — possible.

§Laughter And Joy

Are we laughing at the misfortune of people who have less than us? No thank you. Are we laughing at the absurdity of life? Then we’re in my sweet spot.

I need some shared joy.

I don’t need us to be the same person. In fact, I expect we won’t be.

There’s beauty in differences.

I want someone who can meet me in the ridiculousness of existence — including the parts that are deeply nerdy, strange, obsessive or incomprehensible to anyone else. Be weird, and let me be weird. Love my weird and let me love yours.

§Found Family / The Village

Family is made up of people who show up, care, participate and keep choosing each other.

Family is created.

Family is chosen.

I want a relationship that exists within a village, rather than pretending that two people can or should meet every possible human need for one another.

I want community.

I want chosen family.

I want to contribute to building this village whilst surrounded by other people doing the same.

§Reciprocity

Perfectly balanced…

Not necessarily equal at every moment, but according to our shared understanding of balance.

Sometimes I carry more.

Sometimes you carry more.

The important thing is that neither person quietly becomes the permanent giver while the other becomes the permanent receiver.

Reciprocity means noticing and responding. It means knowing that we’re better together and shared resources benefit everyone involved.

Editors’ note: That’s some bullshit hypervigilance! It’s not your job to notice; it’s the other person’s choice to invite and your choice to be the guest. (♫ Be our guest! Be our guest! Put our service to the test).

It means caring about whether the relationship is working for both of us.‌

§Communication, Comprehension And Collaboration

I want a partnership, not a pedestal.

I cannot go back to trying to be perfect. I have done that. The cost was too high.

I want someone who sees me as a whole person: flaws, scars, contradictions, mistakes, weirdness, strengths, tenderness, and all the parts of myself that I still struggle to love.

I will make mistakes. I will own them. I will repair where I can.

I want to be loved as a person, not admired as an ideal.

I won’t always know what you’re thinking, feeling or needing. I am not a mindreader, and I don’t expect you to be one either. We tell each other things.

I want you to bring things to my attention that need our attention.

Not because something has gone terribly wrong, but because communication is how we notice what is happening before it becomes something terrible.

I want a noticing that something feels off and being willing to investigate it together.

Not, “You should have known.”

But, “Something feels wrong. Can we look at it?”

I don’t need either of us to have the answer immediately.

I need us to be willing to notice.

To ask.

To listen.

To stay curious.

To work out whether something is a you problem, a me problem, or an us problem.

There are many you problems. There are many me problems. But what about the us problems?

I want us to be able to identify those together so we can decide how to deal with them.

I want us to be conscious that words shape the stories we tell about who we are, and they can become labels, identities, weapons, excuses, or invitations.

Editors’ note: This looks a lot like the beginning of negative self-talk. Do you think that’s a good idea?

I want us to speak about each other in ways that leave room for complexity, change and repair.

I want us to be able to say, “This is what happened.”, without turning it into, “This is who you are.”

Because I am not an ideal or a collection of my mistakes.

And neither are you.

§Mutually Assured Preservation

I need a partner who won’t simply stand by while I bully myself.

Ultimately, my self-worth is my responsibility. I know that.

But negative self-talk is insidious, and it often disguises itself as self-awareness.

I want a partner who can say, “That’s bullshit, and I think you’re being cruel to yourself.”

And I want to be able to do the same for them. I want a relationship where we do this to each other because having a hard conversation is infinitely more important than not having it at all.

Not policing each other.

Not rescuing each other.

Calling each other in.

§Safety & Self-Awareness

Are you willing and able to face yourself?

Are you willing to heal? (♫ I’ve borne all your sufferings, I know how you feel)

How vulnerable are you choosing to be with me?

Can you recognise when you actually need to take a fucking break from all this therapeutic work and just laugh at the fact that “death comes to us all.”

Are you willing to hear me, when I call you in, and say, “that’s bullshit”

If the answers aren’t like mine—Yes, Yes, Very, Yes, and Yes—we’re not gonna be able to meet each other. (I know, I know, so many yeses)

I am working on myself.

I am a messy work in progress.

That may be true forever. You get to be a messy work in progress forever as well.

I want to be able to invite you into the battles I can face. I want you to be able to invite me into yours.

I want us both to be able to say, “I cannot deal with this today.” Some days I simply don’t have enough spoons to deal with everything at once. I need to be allowed to pick my battles.

I want to hear you when you say, “I cannot deal with this today.” You are allowed to pick your battles too.

§Commitment To Effort

I want us to deliberately protect our relationship from becoming nothing but logistics and the roles we play to others (see Parenting).

Go out for an evening. Go away for a weekend. Go away for a week. Spend a month on a beach in Barcelona.

The exact format can and will change.

The principle remains, “We deliberately make time for us.”

§Learning And Change

Change will happen.

We will grow.

If neither of us is growing, then neither is our connection.

And sometimes our connection may stop growing in the same direction.

That’s okay.

Our love for each other shouldn’t be frightened by growth.

I want love that sees us bloom into the fullest versions of ourselves.

Those future versions of us will eventually have a different relationship than the present versions of us.

That doesn’t make what we have today less real.

§Autonomy, Self-Agency And Dignity Of Risk

I need autonomy.

I need self-agency.

I need the dignity of being allowed to make reasonable mistakes.

Dignity of risk means recognising that self-determination and the ability to take reasonable risks are part of dignity and self-esteem.

I know I’m being a honey-baby-dumbass sometimes.

I need to be allowed to be.

I don’t want a partner who asserts control and calls it love. I don’t want to be this kind of partner either.

I want someone who trusts me to make choices (see point about Bullshit tho), learn, fuck up occasionally, and remain a whole adult hooman being.

§Sensory Needs

Almost all my senses are dialled to 11. This is like being Spider-Man (♫ I am so high, I can hear heaven) but without the Disney money.

I have a strong sense of smell.

Environment, scent and sensory experience matter to me. Most things which proclaim to be unscented are, in fact, very fucking scented. The smell of coffee is a great tool to help me re-regulate when other smells are overwhelming.

Everything’s so blurry (♫ And everyone’s so fake, and everybody’s empty) but also somehow too bright. My eyesight isn’t great; in fact, it’s medium shit (I have myopia). Sometimes I need to wear sunglasses (migraines) in a dark room; I’m not trying to look cool, but I will accept that I sometimes do.

I am almost always warm, on the verge of being too hot. Or just, like actually, too fucking hot. I need a cool space to live, or I will always be on the edge of overstimulation. I need a bedroom that is, well, a crypt (or a coffin if you’re vampirically reclined); cold, dark, and quiet (+ white noise).

I register all/most sounds with equal importance and struggle to filter them out. The sound of the fridge, or a car passing by gets the same attention as the person in front of me whom I love. This means that sometimes, I need quiet space; sometimes, I need a loud song to bring me back (♫ How can you see into my eyes, like open doors).

Sidenote: Spider-Man likes to shoot his webs 😏 in the West Wing.

§Music

Music isn’t optional background noise in my life.

I create music.

I listen to music.

I sing.

I use singing to regulate myself.

I need music in my life — not merely my music, but music as a whole.

I want a relationship where we sing together. Sing with me (sing for the year, sing for the laughter and sing for the tear).

§Religion / Spirituality

I don’t believe in any particular god. I don’t believe there’s anything after this. No judgement, no afterlife, no pearly gates, “when we have shuffled off this mortal coil.” Instead, I believe this life is all we get.

I’m somewhere between “yet-to-be-written theories of quantum physics” and “ah, the universe, she be mysterious (🤷🏻) aye”.

My philosophical starting point is roughly, “Nothing inherently matters. I will be dead well before the heat-death of the universe; in the grand scheme of existence I am a speck.”

But what an amazing speck I get to choose to be.

We have the freedom (see Appendix B for Systems of Oppression) to choose what matters.

And choices have consequences.

So I want to move towards consequences of my choosing.

Towards kindness.

Towards connection.

§Leave It Better Than It Was

The world isn’t particularly good right now (see Appendix C for How Capitalism and Racism Support Each Other).

So whenever I can, I try to leave things better than I found them.

I want to see people as human beings worthy of dignity and respect.

That doesn’t mean everyone deserves my time, attention, or energy.

We don’t have to give assholes access to us.

But in the paradigm where I believe in both, Hell is other people. Heaven is each other.

I want to nudge towards the latter and spend my time with someone who does the same. Because when we don’t, the world becomes more of the former.

§Devotion To Systems

I like inventing systems to help myself.

But I don’t want those systems to become monolithic punishments held together by discipline.

I want devotion instead.

I am devoted to the systems that serve me until they no longer serve me. And perhaps that point is when a me system has become a we system. (♫ random tiktok song begins)

The point isn’t obedience to a system; we will change it.

When this means I have to let something go, I will probably grieve a bit (or a lot), and then I’ll ask us to build something different.

The world has enough oppressive systems; let’s make sure we’re building ones that help us.

§Parenting

We’re raising an inquisitive adult who is willing and capable of doing critical thinking. How?

If we’re parenting together, I want us to think about who we’re actually trying to guide.

Not simply, “How do we get them to behave?”

But, “What kind of adult are we helping them become?”

I cannot and will not be the only parent in a room full of adults. I need to co-parent with someone who brings their own parenting ethos and is willing to figure out what our parenting ethos and expression looks like.

What values? What autonomy? What responsibilities? What support? What boundaries? What does good enough look like?

Understanding that the better we are at parenting, the harder it gets because we’re giving a smallish human the safety to be themselves and themselves might be an inquisitive critical thinker/talker.

§Habitability

If we’re living together, I want us to think about what who are home supports?

What does our home look like?

What does it feel like?

What does it smell like? Perhaps “home” isn’t a place, but I still have to exist somewhere that’s gonna have a smell. Fün fact: The smell of Schmeschemca’s house makes me physically ill.

Can we actually habitate it?

I don’t want merely a place where we store our possessions.

I want a home that supports the people living inside it.

A place where we can exist comfortably.

A place that accommodates our sensory needs, our work, our rest, our mess, our people and our weirdness.

§Spacetime To Decompress

Sometimes, I need space to decompress.

Togetherness shouldn’t mean constant access.

I need to be able to retreat without it meaning: “Something is wrong.”

Sometimes I need quiet.

Sometimes I need solitude.

Sometimes I need to regulate before I can reconnect.

Space isn’t rejection.

Editors’ note: Are you giving other people the same grace?

Space is what makes reconnection possible.

§The Central Question

Ultimately, I think I’m asking, Can we build a life that neither of us needs to escape?

Not a perfect life.

Not a frictionless life.

Not a relationship where nobody ever changes, gets things wrong, gets annoyed, needs space, loses their libido, has a bad week (or year), or discovers something new about themselves.

A life where we can say, This is ours.

We built it together.

We keep choosing it.

We keep tending it.

And when it stops working, we don’t quietly abandon it — we talk, we adapt, we repair, we change, and, when necessary, we let it become something else.

We also recognise that some things were only ever maladaptive coping mechanisms. And we don’t need to fix the wrong tool. Let it go (♫ Let it go, can’t hold it back anymore).

Because the goal isn’t to preserve a relationship exactly as it is.

The goal is to build something so full of love and life that it can withstand the change in both it and us.

I’m also taking a bit of a hiatus from this blog, apparently. Things haven’t been this quiet here since 2008—where you know, I only wrote 1 measly entry.

What I’m not taking a break from however, is music making and all of its various forms.

By which I mean, I may have accidentally stumbled onto a 1960’s Winfield Audition Electric Organ in a vintage warehouse.

And then perhaps I accidentally haggled the price down to £15 because it didn’t work—functioning ones in good condition go for £150 on eBay.

I may have then, quite possibly, completely unintentionally opened it up and fixed it in less than 10 minutes—because I’m actually quite handy.

So, now I have fully working 1960’s Winfield Audition Electric Organ and it sounds amazing—It’s a free reed aerophone where the only electrical part is a small fan motor that provides the air needed to blow through the reeds as you press the keys to play the notes.

Honestly, fucking love it already. So I’m going to have to figure out how to sample things—that’s a thing people do, right?—so that I can sample it and use it in future songs.

Oh right, songs, yes, still doing those.

I have rough demos for all the songs. I have laid out the entire first album. I’m currently, well, sort of building a guitar so that I can get the guitar sound I want.

“But Carlos, didn’t you buy a guitar like a while ago?” I hear you ask.

Why yes, dear reader. I did. How lovely of you to remember.

It’s basically a cheap Stratocaster style guitar and I’m not feeling the sound of the single coil pickups.

So I may have also accidentally, totally not on purpose—but obviously completely on purpose—bought a second-hand, in pieces Epiphone Les Paul Special II 1997 Sunburst Indonesia—that I will also fix. I haven’t fixed this one yet, it only arrived this Friday, and this Friday was snip snip day, so no guitar building for me.

I’m optimistic though and I’m hoping, based on my early research, that the humbucker pickups are going to have the sound I’m looking for.

Although, as a side-note, I did also buy some after market single coil pickups so that I can swap out the Stratocaster ones.

And no, I’m not going to talk about tone wood. Don’t worry.

I’m quite excited to enter this new era of adulthood. Bring on my forties—which I’m already in—I’m loving it so far.

Where, by “you” I, of course, mean a Future Carlos who might look back at this before pressing delete in another yet-to-be-written Tales From The Archive cull.

Yes, it’s suddenly June.

And in about 2 weeks, give or take—it’s give—it will be my 41st birthday.

But I’m not worried, or lost, or anything like that.

Nor am I surprised by it suddenly being June.

This year, as all years tend to do, has brought with it plenty of interesting detours along the way.

Burnout being one. Realising that I need to find a new job is another—in an industry that currently burning it all to the ground by shoving AI into everything.

Unless it was already clear, allow me a moment to make it clear: I don’t hate AI but it’s not going to solve anything. The CEOs of various AI companies are deluded little piss-babies who yearn for a time when slavery was still legal. And I don’t want any of those fuckers to be in charge of anything. So, kill all billionaires.

Parenting a toddler, is another. Now, I want to be clear again. I love all of it, even the hard days. I’m getting the opportunity to show up and be calm in a way I don’t think I ever received as a child myself, and I can see the positive impact its having.

Like I said recently in a conversation: having a child is piss easy, parenting is hard.

Oh, and I’ve also—in my spare moments—have been building Warhammer terrain and chipping away at my debut album.

The first requires flexing my crafting muscles, and I’m really enjoying the multiple media aspects of it all; from cardboard and hot glue, to grass and brick, and windows boarded shut with wood, every little details adds up to the level of fidelity I’m looking for.

The second requires learning an entire suite of professions that were once divided across an music production company and label, or something to that effect. Now, I can get a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and do everything myself.

Except I don’t know how to do everything myself. And, more importantly, I don’t even know if I want to know.

I don’t think I want to be a music producer. I think I’m more interested in being a musician, but I can’t afford to pay someone to do the parts I’m not interested in and I have more time than I have money, so here we are.

I mean, I don’t hate it. In fact, after trying a few DAWs, I’m quite liking Logic. But, but but big BUTTS! I want to be a musician, not a music producer and no DAW is going to change that.

I’ll figure it out. I have already laid out the scratch tracks, and the rough tracks for the whole album, so that I can play along to it with my guitar and it feels great. I’m sure I can figure out the rest so that I can make it sound vaguely like it already-sort-of sounds in my head.

So there you go Future Carlos, enjoy reading this, knowing that next week you’re seeing the doctor about a vasectomy.

Snip snip motherfucker.

Peace up.

A-town.

I had no desire to return to work this week.

And despite the fact that the Occupational Health Team did include this in the Management Referral Report, it seems to not matter much to the people who make these decisions.

I’m obviously not one of the people making these decisions.

So here I am.

On a phased return that I couldn’t feel more indifferent about if I tried.

Don’t worry, they won’t read this blog. Even if they did—as we’ve established—it wouldn’t matter anyway haha.

Question is, where do I go from here?

So, although I have actually done my reflection on the list of directions I wrote at the start of the year. And I’ve written down a lot of Why and Why Nots, I’m currently struggling to muster the energy to make this into a coherent piece of writing.

So, there might not be a year-in-review for you read this year and now you know why.

Perhaps a week from now I will have more energy and finish what I have already, mostly, written. Perhaps I won’t.

I really don’t know right now. What I do know is that Future Carlos enjoys reading my reflections but since I have actually done that bit, he’ll be fine, even if I don’t publish anything for the rest of the world to see.

I also know that I’m going to have to take a break, or else a break will be taken for me.

So I’m taking a break.

Maybe building some Warhammer terrain?

Yeah, that sounds like “not work”, which is what I need right now.

And after years and years of you have to endure seeing my feet, I think it’s high-time we try some other body parts for this year’s Christmas card.

You can start looking forward to next year’s card already where we’ll somehow use our elbows to make a card.

Only 12 months until you will find out if I’m joking or not.

Katy, Lucien, Jude and I wish you a peaceful Christmas and a rejuvenating New Year!

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Except they’re not, Of course they’re not.

They’re instead from a self-help book from 1998.

But here’s the thing, I still like them. They resonated with me, so here we are, writing them down so that I can find them easily again in the future—when I stumble on some ancient Sanskrit that just feels oh so familiar.

1. You will receive a body.
2. You will learn lessons.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
4. A lesson is repeated until it is learned.
5. Learning lessons does not end.
6. “There” is no better than “Here.”
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
9. The answers lie inside you.
10. Your answers lie inside you.
11. You will forget all of this.
12. You can remember it whenever you want

From If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott.

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