I’m terrible at telling when I’m over-stressed. I’ve started using my emotional vulnerability as an indicator and initiated a multi-faceted plan on Monday to get more sleep. It’s amazing in retrospect to look at all the battles I was fighting without realizing them. From another angle, just as I find peoples actions when they are drunk to be interesting indicators of their personality, it’s interesting to consider what is important to me when I just can’t fight any longer. It is an amazing acknowledgement of my resilience that I’ve been managing so well and so productively despite these stressors for almost a year now.

Word on the street is that the mayor is coming to visit one of my projects tomorrow. Also, Friday I met with some management types in PDX about starting a Seattle edition of the companie’s community involvement committee. These two events mark significant milestones. I’m unconvinced I have the time resources to take all of my plans to their proper fruition, but I’m glad they’re moving along.

I’m convincing myself to spend some money and take some vacation this summer. Some of the prospects are exciting, which is what is important. I need to be excited.

I have long lists of things to do right now, but I’m tired and uncomfortable. If I can’t read I’ll watch a movie or something.

From A’s journal:

good communication are paramount for successful risk-taking. And how it’s so much more beautiful and complex if both people are doing the risk-taking and not just one conforming to the other.

M noted my communication was vague, and I’ve been thinking about what parts of me were intentionally removed, for the good of mankind. J offered some tactics today for finding convergence between thinking I don’t care and feeling like I don’t care.

I just had a funny memory of M commenting on not wanting me to be at work being upset about her and this internal defensive kick reaction that amounted to “you don’t know anything about my day.” Heh. Life’s funny.

Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation.

• autonomy
• mastery
• purpose

facebook interface to my weekend:

Friday:
Fremont Powerhouse – honkfest volunteer meeting
Freerange cycles – jumpstarting honkfest
The Ballroom – bro-dinner

Saturday:
Georgetown Liquor Company – brunch menu!
Gatzert Elementary – more honk!
Liquor Store – East Union – buy booze for Colin’s bicycle blender
Red Cross
Georgetown Records – back in the neighborhood, somewhere about. – Honk
The Morgue – happy birthday octal!
Shell Georgetown – omw to hazard factory
HazardFactory – honk afterparty! flaming teatherball!

Sunday:
Full Tilt Ice Cream – meet bike sabbath
Bill’s Off Broadway – bike bike bike
Belltown Pizza – Scotts birthday
Bathtub Gin & Co – Scotts navy birthday
Cafe Metropolitan – Scotts final birthday

Internet, you distracted me there. Let’s see.

Happy Birthday Scott! Good times were had with your friends and the navy pilots, circumstances being what they were.

I can’t really remember what I was thinking about on the ride home, but it was related to M. Oh well. Perhaps some day I will have to start holding my feelings against myself? For the most part, nobody cares. Which is hard to say, because people want to care, or want to believe they care, but just don’t care anymore. And I have to wonder what they think of me if they think this is some kind of active choice that I think is a good idea.

Oh. So nearly fifteen years ago I had a conversation with my step father about dating. He was sure I was going to do more of it any day now, and I wasn’t so sure.

There will be someone and it won’t be M. But someone with the same type spark. Just hope you aren’t searching for her. You may miss an opportunity for something even more.

The combination of these two make for scary shit.

Usually isn’t, actually, but I do anyway.

but really, I’m talking about sleep. I think I got maybe a half hour. To drink coffee, or to try to recover?

Why is it that finding people cable of recognizing how they feel, and communicating about it is so hard? Fuck. I mean. I know. It’s just not that important, yet, to people my age. Bleh.

I’ll probably feel better if I put some miles on a bike and find the warm smiles of some friends.

what a weekend. squeezed in mowing the lawn, now I need a nap. more honk and alleycat photos to come later.

Brian from MSS and I were talking while driving to Snoqualmie yesterday about saving up vacation for ARC DROs. I use most my floating days off for HfH, and otherwise I’ve just been thinking about using other vacation for Remote Medical training. What is it about “normal” vacation that’s so boring to me? We loop back around to that conversation with M about just not having a partner in my life worth that time.

Worth. I guess that’s the hard part, not feeling valuable to someone.

In any case, I have a couple personal goals ramping up for when this summer gets settled. We’ll see. Just waiting now. Sarcastically chastising people for not actively listening, thinking they know what’s best. And waiting.

Volunteering trifecta this weekend. Honk volunteering has been super chill, and after hanging with Colin in the CD this morning I just arrived home to catch a call from ARC. The MFU had been up near Snoqualmie pass supporting SAR personnel looking for a hiker that been trapped in an avalanche and needed to be resupplied. A collegue from MSS and I met our lead at the chapter, loaded up supples and delivered them. As simple as it was, it was nice doing something useful. Which ultimately is probably why I volunteer altogether. Once home I joined back up with Honk in Georgetown, helped out some more, and organized the exodus to Hazard Factory. Tomorrow, more Alleycat Acres work on the farm on Beacon Hill.

Colins expanding his shop and the possibility of sharing some space came up again. Although this time it’s more complicated by M. After more initial “everything will be fine” thoughts, I next felt like blowing the whole thing off. I want to wait to absorb my feelings and talk to J, but I feel responsible to drop M an email about it before it comes up. I don’t think she’d be too upset, but I don’t know she’s really come to terms with her feelings and she’s more likely to be volatile and blow them off than really not care. I feel bad about the school year not being out. We’ll see.

I ran into S again tonight. She was quite friendly, but we didn’t talk again later. I don’t know where that is, and that’s fine. M’s friend mentioned her on the bike ride back from HF, and I just laughed. Oh well.

Anyway, I guess I feel good about the volunteering. And the other stuff? Well. Still out of my control.

yay, it’s here! I hadn’t really considered that the natural small talk with other volunteers would be how we got involved in honkfest. As much as Honk brings back happy memories, I didn’t expect to be talking so much about old flames tonight.

So an old friend from Maine got a job for a company that uses Chef, my name came up in the process. While a lot has changed, I’m still stuck on thinking of myself as a kid building treeforts in the woods.

You deserve to be with someone that you can know completely.

Anyway. Everything feels upside down for good.

Sometimes, when I need something to read while I eat or whatever, I browse the list of paradoxes or list of fallacies on wikipedia. Tonight is one of those times, as I sit at the former Denny’s on fourth. It’s now the 4th Ave Diner, still 24 hour, but a little more of a dive, without being as cool as the places downtown. Further, it’s just the right distance from downtown, as I can drink cofee and see downtown from here, filling my love for cities at night.

I tried to explain tonight how the more I think about the meaning of life, the more abstract and further away from meaning I get. She was a bit argumentative, missing my points, and I considered for a while if I was being arbitrarily stubborn. The more I think, the more possibilities I see, the more angles. There used to be some public television show I watched as a child that pointed out that “a point in every direction is not a point at all.” I’m still behind this thought. I feel like this is a blurry combination of logic and emotion that is forming into a connection to the world.

The headaches kinda scare the fuck out of me, as much as those things do. As much resolution as will come to that part of my life by July, it’s no fun that they’ll have no affect on this. I can deal with this level, I just hope it doesn’t get any worse.