Enjoying Singledom

I’m doing a bit better without Azreal around now. The first night was difficult, as expected. To not be greeted with a warm hug and to cook dinner for one was lonely, although I did get to chat to him via messenger as he had a 10-hour stopover in Singapore. I don’t get to see him for long in the morning anyway as he leaves for work before I get up (normally just a sleepy goodbye kiss).

But I quickly began to enjoy cooking up big dinners for myself (which resulted in many meals worth of leftovers), enjoyed with an alcoholic beverage and my favourite album of funk-acid jazz or funk/blues inspired dance/pop which I don’t often listen to (as Azreal isn’t really into that kind of music). I’ve been doing that this week while I have the house to myself and next week when our housemate gets back I’m sure I’ll be hitting the computer room for some gaming and viewing of our many TV show downloads.

I read an article today about the importance of developing separate interests in a relationship, and if you share some interests then great – but pursue what you love in order to maintain your individuality, the same thing that brought you together in the first place. So I’m making a special effort this month to reconnect with those things I used to do before we got together but have since given up.

I work in an area of town with a lot of bars known for their live music. I might go out after work a few nights and absorb the culture.

Azreal left today

Azreal left today. I thought I was doing pretty well, being very strong and focusing on the positives in the situation. We went for a walk late in the afternoon yesterday and he started to get a little sad – the first time I’d seen him sad to be leaving me. Of course he’d been upset that I had been sad but this was the first time his feelings hadn’t been triggered by my outward display of emotions (he’s not much of an “I display my emotions” kind of guy).

And last night when we were brushing our teeth together I just lost it. Of course I ended up laughing – do you know how hard it is to cry and brush your teeth at the same time? Pretty damn hard.

This morning when it came to waiting around for the taxi and then saying goodbye, I restrained myself enough to just a few tears and choked words. But once he left the sobs started. Not a lot – I hate crying and by then I was sick of it! But I fought back tears on the train to work, and I bought myself some flowers to cheer me up and when I brought them into work people asked me why so my voice was a bit shaky as I told them about Azreal (and tears threatened to come out!). But I’m pretty good now. A sad sigh every now and then as I think of him but I think there may be more tears when I arrive home with no one to greet me. And a cold night of TV and an empty bed.

Don’t be so melodramatic! He isn’t gone forever! There’s a girl I work with whose boyfriend is on a temporary contract in London for 6 months, and is likely to stay on after that – she will probably move over there if he is offered the permanent position though.

Wireless home

I now have an Eee PC and a wi-fi setup at home. I love being able to sit on the couch, watch TV, surf the internet or play with my budget spreadsheet and run in and out of the kitchen whilst cooking dinner. It's so cool.

And the Eee PC is great. Sure, the keyboard is a little small but I have tiny hands so it's taken hardly any time at all to get used to. The size of the 8.9" screen is perfect and although I intended to buy the black version, I'm actually glad the store I went to only had the white ones left, as I really like the colour.

Azreal and I have been playing with Skype and messenger on our PCs and his mobile as he gets prepared to go to Europe. Ah, what an age we live in.

Preparing for a month of singledom

Azreal leaves for his boys trip to Europe in two weeks. I’m not particularly looking forward to being left on my own for a whole month, although it will force me to get out more and spend time with my friends that normally I only see once in a while. I also think I will appreciate the amount of stuff he does around the house a lot more once I get a taste of doing it for myself for a month!

This weekend we did quite a lot of housework and while I spent many hours washing, vacuuming, mopping and scrubbing, he certainly pulled his weight AND still cooked dinner at the end of the day. I was exhausted after a day of cleaning and some one-on-one boxing training and I couldn’t face cooking dinner yet during the week Azreal spends all day working in a manual labour job, often does some cleaning or grocery shopping and most nights cooks dinner as well. While he’s away I will have to do the shopping, cleaning and cooking for myself. Funny how I used to do that for myself anyway when I was single and before we moved in together and it was no big deal but now that I’m facing it again it seems so daunting.

I have a few things planned to keep me occupied while he’s away. I’ll be catching up with friends on the weekends (and of course, cleaning and grocery shopping!). But Azreal has stocked up his computer with some goodies for me like Half Life 2 and Crysis to keep me entertained. We’re very much an insulated couple, spending most of our spare time together (mostly at home). When we do go out it’s usually in a small group and rarely apart from each other. We do have separate friends but generally we prefer each other’s company. And even as individuals we tend to be happy keeping to ourselves – playing games, reading books, going for walks.

I keep saying to myself that this time alone will be really good for me, I will grow as an individual and regain that individuality that I had before Azreal and I got together. And it will be good for us as a couple to learn to communicate better and perhaps not take each other for granted so much. But I will miss him so much! And why does it have to be in winter when I need his warm hugs so much?

I can’t wait for him to come home and we can spend our week at the Gold Coast.

Coming out at work

At work every few months we get together to share projects that we’ve been working on for all the departments to see each other’s work, as well as for the agency to see finished products of campaigns we have produced. Individuals also present interesting ads (of any medium – TV, press, internet, outdoor, etc) or campaigns to discuss and a select few are chosen to present on something a little more personal – their “hidden creative talent” or more loosely, their hobby or interest which takes up their spare time. I was lucky enough to be chosen this time to present on my hobby.

So I spoke about gaming of course. A few people around the place know about my passion, as I have various game promo postcards and (small) posters stuck up on my wall, and a Lara Croft wallpaper on my computer. When asked what I got for my birthday, the girls around me had no idea what I was talking about when I described my awesome headphones (“why would you have headphones designed for playing games?”), and I often reply, “I played games all weekend” when asked what I spent my weekend doing. But I think the majority of people were surprised with my presentation. Particularly the nature of the games I play, given I’m a rather shy and small 5’1” innocent looking young lady with good manners and I was showing screen shots of a sniper scopes in COD4 complete with blood splatter.

It was a rather entertaining presentation. I had Azreal take photos of me dressed up in outfits to highlight the adaptability of gaming platforms, so I was a tennis player on the Wii, an elite cop in Time Crisis (PS2) and a rock star in Guitar Hero 2 (PS2). I made light of our romantic evenings at home with a shot of Azreal and me sitting side by side at our computers, playing COD4 and some close-ups of us with our headsets and some in-game conversation. I also spoke about LAN tournaments and professional gamers (people love hearing about that stuff).

The crowd lapped it up – what a success! Of course now I have people emailing me those crappy games built in excel with really basic controls, asking me what I think of them.