You know how most people say that the first two weeks of their job is supposed to be the breeziest and simplest? Well, I’d strongly argue against that at my current company, and not necessarily in a bad way. I’ve had a number of very productive meetings my first two weeks, and not only that, I’m actually learning new, valuable information that will help me properly get up to speed on the technology I will be supporting, in addition to the company in general. It’s been a refreshing experience to be at a company that is striving to be as organized as mine is. And for better or for worse (and really for the better), I have to complete a certification exam on the company product and have been spending a lot of time reading up and studying for it.

It’s honestly a strange feeling to be studying again. The last time I truly studied anything seriously was in my last year of college, and that was almost nine years ago. I feel like I haven’t genuinely used my brain in the longest time, as work for the last 3-5 years really hasn’t been intellectually stimulating at all, and I spent most of my time putting out trivial “fires” over things that were not truly fires at all. I was respected at my last two companies, and people really looked to me for guidance and advice, but sometimes I felt so weirded out by it because I never though I did anything extraordinary at all; I was just being myself and getting my own work done. Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing at our jobs?

Every time I have a bad dream, Chris always says it’s because when I go to sleep, I subconsciously or consciously am having negative thoughts. “You need to think about happy things before you go to bed, otherwise you will keep waking up in the morning and getting mad at me for doing bad things to you during your dreams,” he admonishes. Well, I don’t always get mad at him. But he does often bully me in my dreams. It’s probably because he spends so much time making fun of me in real life.

Well, last night I clearly had happy thoughts. The first dream I remember, we were on a plane to some Scandinavian country, and we were exploring the rugged beauty there. Then, we were traveling somewhere else tropical. And finally, I dreamt we were sleeping, and he wet the bed. Hmm… I’m not sure that last one was “happy.”

I told him this when I woke up, and he said, “Well, what can I say? I had to go.”

Last week, I met a good friend, and we chatted about attractions felt to others while in serious relationships. She said that she and her partner were fairly open about these attractions, even though they aren’t considered conventional things to discuss or be open about. They even know a number of seemingly happy couples in “open” relationships where they either either together or married, and they and their partners sleep with other people. I’m not sure I could personally get on board with this (the mere idea of Chris having sex with someone else makes me want to claw someone’s face out), but I don’t see why society needs to judge other couples who are in agreement about this and are open about their external relationships from each other. What I’m genuinely curious about is whether the people who participate in open marriages are truly not jealous and are open to their partners being amorous and loving other people.

And then of course, Chris reminds me that the definition of marriage has evolved significantly over the last several decades. Now, for the first time ever, gay people can marry. People can divorce and be open about it, and there’s not as large of a stigma around it as before. I’m meeting more and more people in their late 20s and early 30s who are divorced, and I don’t really care. No one else does, either. Women are working outside of the home, and it’s considered completely normal and even expected, and with their higher level of earning power and independence from their husbands, they are leaving unhappy marriages when before, they didn’t have the option to do that, otherwise they’d be destitute and without a penny. Monogamy is really a religious idea that came from the Bible – devotion to your husband or wife until the end of your lives together. But I don’t think that many people think about that; we’ve been taught since we were children that we will get married and live happily ever after with one person one day.

The only very practical fear I’d have over open marriage is well, exposure to diseases. It wouldn’t be good to give chlamydia or gonorrhea to your married partner, would it? The other question I’d have is, what’s really my threshold for jealousy? You never really know until it’s truly tested in reality.

I’ve never liked the Super Bowl, and I will never like football — at least, the American kind. But one thing I have enjoyed in recent years is the Super Bowl Half Time performance (clearly, I am not representative of the American populace). I was especially looking forward to Lady Gaga’s performance tonight after reading that the NFL explicitly told her not to say anything political during the show. I knew she’d do something to make it political, and that the conservatives would probably be too blind to catch it.

From beginning with “This Land is Your Land” to the order of the songs she sang, it was very clear she was saying she was against President Dipshit’s poorly thought out travel ban, as well as just him as POTUS in general. I loved seeing all the commentary on Facebook after the show, where users are moaning on about people trying to make a non-political performance political. Wake up, peeps.

Tonight’s mentoring session was not going well. Our group of mentors and mentees played a long game of Apples to Apples, but my mentee was not having it. She’s 18 years old, and like all the kids in this small program, she has specific medical and psychological conditions and is part of the foster care system. When the session began, she had just returned from the medical clinic because she was experiencing bad headaches, so she told me she didn’t want to participate today but wanted to sit and watch. Instead, she sat next to me and pulled out her smart phone, checking Facebook every five minutes and texting multiple friends. Well, I guess we weren’t bonding.

The last session, she was super quiet and hard to reach, which I expected would be the case. I tried to crack some jokes to soften her a little, and she eventually lightened up a bit (she was visibly on guard, as her shoulders were very tense). She gave me a hug before she left, and at the end of that session, I wondered if she just thought I was just some loser who was going to leave her like all the other people in her life had previously.

But after today’s session, the lead of the program told me otherwise. “I know she’s hard to crack, but she really is a sweet person,” our program coordinator told me. “After the last session, she actually texted me on her way home and told me how much she enjoyed talking to you and how amazing you were to her that day. She looks like she really wants to give you a chance. She’s the kind of person who, if she didn’t want to be here, she would just never come. And she came and wanted to be here today to see you.”

I smiled. Sometimes it’s the words unspoken that may never get shared that mean the most.