As I sit listening at a table at Velocity conference with eight or so awesome individuals, I smile at the course life has taken.

I met Denny for dinner in San Jose at my favorite restaurant here, Good Karma. He’s a riot. I meet him on a sidewalk near a house I think he’s just been crashing at. He’s got a top-hat with half a plastic alligator head pinned to it, all covering bleached + green dyed dreads, with a pile of ties hanging out of pockets. He walks like nothing else really matters and I have a hard time comparing this “Dennis” to the Denny I first met so many years before as Jim’s (James…) younger brother. We talk about what we’ve been up to. He’s been spending the summer traveling, hanging out with musicians and producers, going from one event to another and rarely going home. When I talk about quitting drinking and moving away from people who aren’t doing anything (producing?) he admits he’s mostly having fun. I defend him and say at least he’s having fun doing new things and that each day is not regrettably a copy of the last. He tells me a story of a trip but can’t remember when it last was, and says it all blurs together. He speaks of how incredible it is to have the resources he has access to.

I finished Unfinished Business and continued to marvel at the convergence with Hindsight, albeit via two different works. Still, I picked up Free Culture immediately, which may mimic this aforementioned trait a bit in regard to The Public Domain. The other day I was reading while watering at BH while waiting for H to come by and thought pretty seriously about what it would feel like to take better stock of my free time.

I was talking to J about quitting drinking, about the costs of alcohol, and in another thread I got talking about living in the present. She connected the two and commented about how much more present she thinks I am now, partially due to being sober. We spoke of the avoided costs of relationships, like Lee Kravitz’ discussion of emotional energy and how every bad interaction saps a little bit of what’s available to you in the course of a day, the stress of dealing with other people is a cost.

On Tuesday I had two waiters refer to me as buddy. Both were hispanic, but one was at a Dennys in Bellevue over breakfast, and another at a late dinner at Original Joe’s in San Jose. Flying to San Jose made me think about coming down on the ‘southbound train’ last summer and thinking of M, of taking responsibility for some feelings that were solely mine to sort through.

Approval? Identity? Theres a concentrated shift toward what I do. It may have always been this way to some degree, but there’s effort behind it now. A less expectant or desiring love.