our siblings are friends gifted to us by fate

1 Which work-related app or tool could you not live without? 

    it seems strange to say this: the Note Pad accessory. It is faster to launch, and bypasses a lot of the crankier Microsquish programs that are updating, needing updates, wonky, or mysteriously "down" when needed.  

 

2 If you had no choice about whether to do it, with whom would you most like to swap lives for a week? 

     one of the pets living in the household of a grade-school friend. Never has any living being been so utterly pampered.

 

3 Who in your family would you turn to if you were in trouble and why? 

    my brother. I went through something truly awful a couple of weeks ago, and he was the first person I thought of, to call for help. To say that he was willing and able is such an understatement, I'm in tears just thinking about it. 

    If I had to choose the one best aspect of returning to my hometown a few years ago, it's getting to know and appreciate my big brother in a whole new way. 

 

4 Who among your colleagues do you think has the best sense of humor? 

     in very different ways, it's a tie between Blackbeard (the ex-military, concert-loving, goofy and casual coworker) and Lord Farquaad (my almost painfully laid-back, low-key, easily-frustrated immediate supervisor). Blackbeard is in his 30s and all communications with him reflect that—no caps or punctuation, a little silly at times but mostly quite sensitive. Farquaad is in his 40s, more of a meme-er, and a lot like me in his habits and interests. 

    Blackbeard often leaves me smiling (at the time, and later when I recall our conversations). Farquaad makes me laugh.  

 

5 Have you ever ghosted someone you were dating and why? 

    first, let me be very clear: I did not ghost him, and we weren't dating.

    What is a relationship called, where adults are spending time together as time allows, not going places out together but staying in, talking about old times and what's new in their lives, sharing concerns and triumphs and ruminations? Where they are more likely to take up "their half of the couch" with a beer and a blanket than to wrestle about, dramatically? It's not exactly friendship, certainly not dating, and both more or less than either?

    I wanted the dating part, too, though. He wanted more immediate access, and was definitely more the talker than the listener. Neither of us quite got what we wanted, then—or, more accurately, each got what we wanted and wanted more of it, which was not feasible to the other. We genuinely like each other, which makes all the rest of this even more stupid than it would have been.  We persisted in hammering away at each others' nerves and resolve. It came to a head one day when he was particularly insistent, which was so totally the opposite of what I was feeling; for reasons I no longer recall, I was sobbing when I received his usual, playful message (ramped up 50% due to his particularly boisterous mood). I sat with the phone in my hand and tried to come up with a response that was not: a. melodramatic (since crying was not part of our communication repertoire); b. mean (because there was no way for him to have known that my world had just tilted); or c. incomprehensible (as, at times like that, language sometimes fails). Overwhelmed by whatever had me crying in the first place, overlain with the struggle to answer in a way that made sense ... I didn't answer. 

    Then, later, it seemed too late to explain.

    In my conscious mind, I wasn't ready for the arrangement to be totally over, but upon reflection prehaps my subconscious was standing up for my deeper emotional needs. I wish it hadn't ended, and especially that it hadn't ended that way.

 

6 How do you feel about the balance of give and take in a relationship? 

    it's not a fixed ratio. In the best case, it slides back and forth as things come up and circumstances demand. 

 

7 What do you think is your sibling's most admirable quality? 

    helpfulness. That's easy for me to say, given that I am often on the receiving end of it. It is his willingness to be available to our parents, though, that means the most. The two of us "share responsibility" to meet our parents' needs, as we are both local. I generally do the little stuff—bringing in the mail when they are away, troubleshooting technology, and joining extended family excursions now and then—while my brother takes care of the bigger stuff, like yard maintenance (they live on a ridiculous, hilly lot with loads of vegetation needing corralling), hauling & fetching, and for playing the Bad Cop as regards both parents' acquisition leanings. My job is busy and complicated, but nowhere near the amount of time or degree of involvement of my brother's. He also has a family. His openness to prioritizing our parents means a lot.

 

[from here, divided and adapted; the title quotation is by John Joclebs Bassey, from Night of a Thousand Thoughts]