If I have one regret about the last decade (just short of, but who’s counting?), it’s that, at some point, I stopped moving forward, and just started… drifting? Maybe a better way of phrasing it is that I gradually downshifted from living to simply existing, passing the days and binge watching the TV shows and counting the bottles. (The pandemic didn’t help much, of course, but I can’t place all the blame there — my downshift started well before that.)

I’m not sure that it was a sudden change — I might never have noticed it if the trend hadn’t reversed itself in the last month. And it’s not that I completely stopped — I still traveled (to see Russ and Melissa and my family, primarily), still occasionally went to eat good meals at restaurants I wanted to try or revisit, made trips to the Botanical Gardens. But most of these things too were just smaller pieces of my patterned life, easy and low-risk, low-energy, low-demand of me.

Enter Natalie (coinciding, happily, with the gradual adaptation to the coronavirus). In just the last weeks, we’ve gone to see Dwight Yoakam, the museum, the gardens, a couple of restaurants, and bought tickets and made plans to see more bands and some stand-up comedians, and to spend some time on her family’s land in rural Alabama, and to travel to North Carolina (and hopefully Pensacola, if that plays out). And it feels like that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

A lot of this is definitely attributable to Natalie — a lot of these plans were her idea, or spoken desire that I acted on (look, there’s a decent chance I end up seeing Garth Brooks in a few months, and we all know that’s not *my* idea). But maybe even moreso indirectly. I’ve written previously about how inspiring (not the word I’m looking for — maybe it’ll come to me later) she is to me. Or maybe that is the right word — she has this outlook on life that is infectious, and I find it nearly impossible not to catch some of her determination — to travel, to see live music, to open up and live.

And maybe, too, she’s reminded me that living and experiencing is a lot more when you can share it with someone.

Most of the worst moments of my life have come when I was single, and (at least in hindsight) that doesn’t really bother me. I don’t like feeling like a burden to anyone, least of all a partner. And so my periods of unemployment or financial strain, my dance with CIPD — I’m okay with having dealt with those alone. But (‘Everyone’s got a big but, Marge — tell us about your big but!’) most of the really great and memorable moments have been celebrated alone, too. Specifically, I remember (hazily) when I won the Sidewalk Sidewrite award for my short screenplay Muckfuppet — I was in the audience, with little expectation of winning (the screenwriters who participate in Sidewalk have always been a strong group, from the very beginning). And they called my name, and my friend Ann had to tap me on the shoulder, because it didn’t register that that name belonged to me. And being disappointed for the next week, the excitement marred and dulled by not having anyone to be excited with me.

But I find that even the little things become so much more involving and memorable when shared. I’m looking forward to seeing live music — my bands, because maybe I can turn Natalie on to something new and different, and her bands, because seeing her happy makes me equally so — and to doing new and different things (like pointing out the guy fucking a pig in a piece of artwork), and to flying to see my family, and long drives to Florida and elsewhere, and seeing new places, and more, because all these plans will be shared and experienced through two sets of eyes.

Two is better than one, after all. Except maybe in the number tumors you have.