I’m back home and already midway through the work week and looking forward to the weekend. Despite the scattered thunderstorms and stubborn clouds, we sat on the beach, hung out by the pool, and drank margaritas on the balcony. For the sake of his privacy and brevity, I will refer to my travel companion as “S.”

I found time to write! I started a short story based on someone I saw at the beach. I’ve got the basics down and about 1200 words so now I just need a little bit of action and an ending. Hopefully I can finish it in the next week. I wrote some of it sitting by the pool and while I was writing I got involved in a conversation with a young man who wanted to know what I was writing about. When I told him I was working on a story he insisted on telling me one of his stories. Turns out his story was that he spent eight years in the Navy and never got on a boat. When S found me at the pool he brought me a drink and then decided I would have more fun, and have a better story maybe, if he wasn’t there. I think the Navy guy had maybe spent too much time in the sun, and the bar, to really be able to contribute much to my story, and his friend, with his own cocktail bucket, wasn’t much help either. But it was fun talking to them.

It was also three days of (almost painfully) honest conversations, moonlit walks on the beach, a bit of quiet introspection, and morning coffee with ocean views. As we drove back home we were already talking about where we should go next and how soon could we get there.

It looks to me like I won’t be writing about “my single life” any longer. I’m not saying I’ve already landed in another relationship, but…. I have found someone that makes me smile, a man that makes me happy when I’m with him and miss him when he’s gone. S knows what questions to ask to make me really think about what I want and what I’m feeling. He’s opening up himself, and I love that he’s sharing more about himself each time we’re together.

I was listening to a podcast episode yesterday on my lunch break. The subject was relationship discomfort (episode #150 of Shaun Galanos’s The Love Drive) and what stayed in my head was the observation that discomfort in a relationship is normal, that there’s hard work involved. In my previous relationship, my spouse used to tell me all the time how easy it was to be with me, and I think that’s what he looked for in his next relationship, after ours was no longer easy. I’m not looking for things to be easy anymore. After the last year, I do hope that things will be a little bit easier, of course, but I don’t expect my next relationship to be a walk in the park. I welcome the tough questions and hard conversations. I want someone that will make me work hard at being the best version of myself, a great partner, and just a good person. I expect to make compromises and expect them in return. But I want to have fun while doing all this hard work.

So that’s my plan: enjoy the time I’m spending with S, which is very easy to do, keep doing the hard work, and just be happy. We’ll see what happens.