Joint projects and solo projects?

I got into a kind of bad headspace last night -- triggered, interestingly, by thinking about a work email thread where my input was being totally brushed off. Then thinking about relationships.

One difference (I thought, sleepily) is that at Zillian it feels like we're all supposed to be helping each other and working on the same side for a common good, so being ignored feels like being told I'm useless. In relationships, where's the joint project that would imply my input would EVER do any good? (It all feels very lonely though, if there is no joint project at all, and if we're just waving hi to each other without substantive effect... I don't think I would want to bother with that.) Eventually I got so sleepy that I couldn't figure out what a relationship was anymore, which was good because puzzling on that put me to sleep.



This morning, I thought maybe there are joint projects and solo projects. It can hurt quite shockingly to have input rejected when you've gotten used to a lot of things being joint projects, but maybe it'd be easier if people had a vocabulary to say "this is a solo project, I need to figure it out on my own and I don't want feedback right now."

Then the conversation could go on with "I thought we'd be exploring this space together" and then "Nope" and maybe it would all be awful, but the concepts would be there. Or maybe it would go on with "Mmmkay, well, let me know if you ever do want feedback" and that'd be it.

I do still think relationships need joint projects, but that's another post.