After a long hiatus from noding, and a suggestion from a friend that this is an excellent point in life to start a journal, I am returning.

A year ago, I moved into an intentional community in New York City and got the job of my dreams - largely running a top-of-the-line thrift shop run by the commune. At first this appealed to my deep-seated desire for simplicity. I didn't have to go out of my way to acquire the most important things in my life - good coffee, an excellent job, good weed, good food and good company. There is no commute to work. My landlord and my employer are one in the same, so I only have one asshole to deal with. There is no commute to work. Other people shop for my necessities, cook my food and clean the common areas of my house.

But about a month ago it started getting very, very complicated. I slept with (but didn't have sex with) my boss' girlfriend. This is not quite as risky as it seems, in an environment where polyamory is a norm. But since it's not the basis for their relationship, it's not nearly as harmless as it might seem either.

The fact that I'm a fag, and moreover haven't had a sexual relationship with anyone but strangers in seven years, doesn't seem to make anyone less uncomfortable, let alone the boyfriend and his friends (who together have absolute authority with regards to my job and home), since it's clear to anyone that there is a sexual attraction.

The boyfriend has made it clear that he won't ask her not to do anything she wants to do, but that if he can't handle it he will leave her. His friends (the ones with absolute economic control of my life) take much more strident and moral positions on the issue. She is genuinely in love with him and therefore perpetually unsure and/or scared of what she wants to do. Complicating matters even further, the father of her child (who is my best friend, somewhat in love me but much more so with her, and to a large degree set the whole thing up) is consumed by jealousy at times. He's also unsure and/or scared of what he wants.

My reaction so far fits in with my desire for simplicity. I've pretty much sat back and let other people move at their own paces. Nevertheless, there is of course the perception that my actions are meddlesome. We do things that ordinarily are only done by people in a romantic relationship, and yet we adamantly maintain that we don't have one. She does not want to stop doing them, and she does not want to lose her boyfriend. I really don't want either of those things to happen either. Recording these events and feelings in a daylog will hopefully at least have the effect of helping me organize my own thoughts. Potentially I might even get feedback from the E2 community, although I'm not counting on it.

Now that I'm back into noding, I also don't want to make a complete turnaround from being an encyclopedic noder to a day noder - I never did understand people who were obsessed and don't want to become one of them.