Also, Coming back from the Monroe Feed & Seed, where I almost bought a house and settled when I pulled in the driveway, I stopped by Molly’s house to see her, Victora and Tara. They gave me gifts in thanks for all my bicycle help and snuggles and whatnot, in addition to dinner. Molly gave me an alphabike poster, which is AMAZING. I need to find a frame to fit it now.

Days ago, the bottom of my whiteboard acquired, “Everything I did today was Awesome.” Because, I’m reminding myself daily that not only did I do spectacular things, but that only I need to think so [anymore?].

I had mediation today. Blah. Long story short, we’ll be in trial in July. To provide an up to the down, I also bought chickens today.

I was talking to A about the demise of dating, about passion and action and how it is difficult for me to find in women. He made some implications about how most women want your life, not their own, and stood by this acknowledging the sexist tones. Right now, I ponder the opposite, the fiercely independent who are scared and only want their own. Balance, blah blah blah. Anyhow, months back M asked me about certain plans and why I wasn’t moving on them and I said because they were things I wanted to with a partner.

Someone told me today that I had made two really great financial decisions. One was to not get married, the other to [not have kids]. I got talking to him about my lifestyle, and my priorities, and how difficult it is to find people that I feel have similar desires. About how I had fully realized dating someone “nice” isn’t enough, how vital passion is to me, and again, how rare it is.

Two people asked me recently why I stopped drinking and I told them both because there’s so very much to be done and not enough time.

While giving up on dating is probably temporary, or at least its revival will surely be in a different period of my life than that in which it paused, much less is complicated than it used to seem.

Folks seem to find it easier to believe that I’ve stopped drinking than I’ve stopped dating. I suppose though, one is funnier than the other. The whiteboard has proven successful for reminders and not forgetting ideas that rustle through my mind.I look around the room at photos and realize most of them are of family; parents and grandparents. There’s one of a seaplane, N4345M, Craig’s super cruiser we used to fly into camp when I was young. And the last is a blow up of “mean something,” which came out pretty good despite having been taken with a terrible camera-phone. I should have gone back with the DSLR.

Well, thinking consumes a lot of time. Need to catch a bus now. I think about this a lot now.

Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer’s deep affections. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as “not reciprocated or returned in kind.”

So much energy seems to sink into a desire to be understood. J and I talk occasionally about how I felt like M did, acknowledging this may be pandering a bit to wanting to her to have, and being able to since she isn’t around to prove otherwise. I look back at the range of technical comprehension I exercised today, a bike ride to a four year olds birthday party, an AA organizational structure meeting, dinner with a roommate, and some work in the bike shop. When I think about it, the magnitude forms negativity. I feel like my day puts me further and further from other people, from connecting with them. Maybe that is purely baggage from M. Today was awesome, and amazing things happened.

Everything is prepared to change. Well, not everything. July is almost here though and I foretold epic happenings. There just isn’t any room for running any more. There is Good to be done,  and my life awaits.

It is far too simplistic, but this is why I stopped drinking. Which is funny, because doesn’t this sort of shit look like a lot of fun? Drinking is fun, or perhaps the absurdity that ensues is fun.

Portland felt like everything has changed. Some of it has. Visiting PDX and not drinking heavily, and staying in a hotel with a bed so wide it felt sideways, were weird enough. Socializing with strangers was another challenge, but worthwhile. Visiting Puppet Labs was a reminder of the social chasm that seems like no good deed will bridge. My life in the open source world is so far removed from the rest of my life. I suppose this is the quandary others have of having an academic and a social life.

Riding the recumbent tandem to Portland with Colin was epic. And once there, being social, again. Huh. The chickens make me excited that I’m getting my own soon.

Well, Kyle is here to do bike stuff. Bike stuff. It’s nice to be producing.

A week ago:

Nearly a week of not drinking and going to sleep before midnight means I’m dreaming every night again. I’m really not sure which is worse for my sense of reality.

The hardest part of getting enough sleep isn’t being groggy in the morning, it’s slicing the memories made during dreams off before they settle permanently into my sense of reality like barnacles on a boat.

J kept mentioning how happy I looked at the AA fundraiser, yesterday another friend said:

I’ve been seeing the stream of constantly happy tweets and kind of enjoying it by osmosis because it’s clearly causing positive vibes for you

I try to imagine what graduating from college and entering the “real world” would be like. This is difficult, because professional and educational lines were always blurred for me, I think my first part-time internship was in 7th grade. By the time I dropped out of high school I had graduated from computer repair to systems administrator; a title I still usually hold today although working with quite different technology. It has to be more epic than changing jobs, perhaps like moving to a new city and changing careers at the same time. Once again, my experience is broad and smoothly fades from hat to the next. I sometimes talk of “former lives,” usually when I’m referring to my time doing electronics salvage and driving a truck around the east coast.

I once drove a leased truck for a month and had to keep track of mileage. I drove over 10,000 miles that month, and yet, I was only driving part of the time. The rest, I was leading two salvage crews and handling most of the local logistics. Once a year or so I end up driving a few miles for work to pick up an air conditioning unit or take furniture to the transfer station and I’m reminded of those times. It’s nice to think that everything was so much simpler then, and perhaps it was through the lens of driving. While I was doing quite a bit of work and had significant responsibility, it doesn’t compare to now. I think the most significant factor was the manual labor that left me exhausted every evening such that for weeks at a time life was mostly sleeping and working. That’s okay though, I’ve always enjoyed working.

Chatting with people about work and projects, thinking about my amount of free time and its limits.

I suppose the reality is that I’m going to be doing something interesting. It isn’t that I’m all that whimsical and get distracted easily, on the contrary, if I am not engaged I’ll look for something more. It is interesting how this applies to both projects and personal relationships.

My appetite has flipped. I had two dinners, and I’m still hungry. There’s still breakfast I suppose.

As I approached the bridge in the rain, a blank man in a purple suit walked in my direction on the sidewalk as the bike lane merged. He was an older man, short curly hair, mostly gray. He stared me down, giving me the finger the entire way, quite sternly. I wondered for a while what part of me that was directed at. It doesn’t really matter.

As I washed my spoon that I keep in my messenger bag, I chuckled at the course of events that brought me here. Considering that most people convince themselves they are good in some fashion or another, and I’m stuck looking for validation from ghosts, it’s a bit ironic.