In the Polyamory community, we talk about NRE - New Relationship Energy. The idea is that when someone gets started on a new relationship; when they are in the first stages of flirting and figuring out if they are compatible, there's usually a lot of mental energy focused on this new relationship. If you are a partner or friend of someone in a new relationship, you may hear a lot more than you'd like about this new potential person - what they look like, how they've answered questions, everything they've said... And your friend/partner may be less available to you because they are spending all their time & energy on this new relationship. I mean, you're happy for them to be so excited and happy, but also, it can be overwhelming, when it's someone else's New Relationship Energy (NRE), and not yours.
Of course, hand-in-hand with talking about NRE is reminding ourselves to be patient with this person who is radiating the NRE. It will ease off when the relationship is no long quite so new. Jealousy can easily crop up when your partner is full of NRE and you... aren't. Feeling like 'yesterday's news' can be a problem for the existing partner, and we have to remind ourselves to enjoy our existing established reliable partners as well as the new exciting unknown.
But I'm actually not here to talk about New Relationship Energy (NRE); I just wanted to establish what it is for those not familiar with the concept.
I'm here to talk about New Project Energy (NPE). Because it's something that is very much a part of my personality. When I get to working on a new project, everyone in my world gets to be a part of it - whether they want to be or not.
I can be very focused in all my down-time on whatever this new project is, and I tell everyone about it. For a few reasons, actually:
- Talking about a project is how I work through what I'm doing. Hearing myself talk about my plans and ideas out loud helps me sort through them and refine those ideas.
- I'm surrounded by some bright people with a wealth of experiences. They often have really valuable feedback that either helps me avoid mistakes or improves my ideas.
- I'm just really excited and need to bubble over. Whoever's around may just have to take one for the team. You don't have to be excited; you can probably just listen and nod. And I'll probably tell you about it again later.
- My people love me and get excited for me, too. I assume they want to know what I'm working on so they can support me emotionally and be connected to me. Or at least have a reference for what has all my attention.
- The people I tell might want to be part of my project. For instance, on one of my recent projects, Scott was able to help by offering me some server-based solutions to what I needed to set up.
- Many of my projects benefit from word-of-mouth effects. By telling my people, they may tell some other people, and I get more authors participating in an anthology, or actors participating in a performance effort, or people buying something I've produced.
Of course, at any given time, I have multiple projects going on, usually related to different areas of interest for me. I'll tell you about some of my current ones.
Theatre
- I run a small kinky drama club, Baad Acts, that meets monthly. Right now we're meeting by Zoom, of course. Baad Acts has its own Slack group that I manage.
- Before the pandemic, Baad Acts was preparing for a night of one-act original and/or alternative works. When we're able to meet in person again, we'll go back to working on that.
- I try to contribute to awareness about Dissociative Identity Disorder by being open about being a multiple. One way I do that is to have some writings up on this blog about Multiplicity.
- I also have a Facebook page about being multiple (Multiplicity Of Me) I try to add useful posts at least weekly, either something educational, or a view into how multiplicity looks in our life in particular.
- My alter, Paul, is a leader in a Little Scouts group. This group also has a Slack group that I manage, and they are also meeting monthly by Zoom for now.
- As a Little Scout, Paul also works on earning patches & badges for his sash, and he's also the Badge Master and Social Media Coordinator for the troop.
- I am a member of our local kink community. Our community has a Discord and a Slack and a presence on FetLife - I try to keep up with everything going on there.
- I have a Facebook page for teaching Kink Education classes (Community Essentials with Meronym). I try to provide useful information there, at least weekly.
- I hope to teach more classes in the future to groups of people. I'd really love to teach to social work and healthcare workers, leading to better care for people in my community. I can teach by Zoom now, and later I'll go back to teaching in person.
- I have challenged myself this year to do Writing Wednesday, where once a week I share on Facebook some piece of my writing, either from this blog, my fiction blog, or even someone else's writing that I have something to say about.
- I'm working with a friend to publish an anthology of flash fiction erotica, Hot Flashes. Sales will benefit our local kink club's Benevolence Fund. I'm both the editor and one of the authors for the project.
- I am in the planning and writing stages of a series of Kink Education booklets, the Dungeon Essentials series. No clue on the timeline there, but it will happen someday.
- Somewhere between the Hot Flashes project and the Dungeon Essentials project, I plan to self-publish a book of my own erotica pieces - really as a project to learn how to do self-publishing, so that my Dungeon Essentials series won't suffer too much from my first stumbling efforts in publishing.
- My mother has written down some stories about her life that I am working on transcribing. I'm not sure where that project will end up, but it's precious to me. Maybe those get printed in a little booklet for me and my daughter.
- I'm playing in two Dungeons & Dragons campaigns with approximately the same group. We meet about twice a month to play.
- For my birthday later this month, I'm going to run my own one-off game, based on Christmas Carol!
- I do spend some time recreationally building characters or playing around on Hero Forge.
- My current big project (measured by the amount of energy I'm pouring into it) is Sigma Fleet, a Star Trek play-by-discord game. It's cooperative story-telling. In running this game, I'm also learning how to work with Discord and with the Wiki setup we're using.
- Lego - I still have a huge bin of Lego I'm sorting. And I usually have a set or two waiting to be built.
- Leatherwork - I need to clean all the leather boots and jackets and vests and stuff.
- All the usual adulting things...
Oh, and when I have a new relationship building, that becomes one of my projects, too. So I guess I then have New Relationship Project Energy (NRPE)
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