This place is not real. (This keyboard blows) I’ve been helping out quite a bit outside of the tech work. A half-dozen shifts of perimeter I suppose, but mostly working long hours at the gate, ignoring shift schedules.

I see from fb that J is having a going away party for her move to europe. I’m full of mixed feelings. Our relationship has none of the unknowns of my relationship with M, of course, it is wholly different. Communication with J has always been clear, even when we haven’t known exactly how we felt. It is wonderful, but completely different. While I can take everything one day at a time with K, I have history to consider with M + J. I’m reminded of my excitement for my relationship with B or G, only to be let down by my expectations.

I sat in the truck and listened to music for a bit tonight. In between napping I imagined long-term relationships with those people whom I have loved but didn’t work something out with. They’re all such different people. Then, I remember M commenting on a photo of me from the loft and how little I looked like I had changed. Yet, completely, many times. Is who I am really a constant? Surely if you zoom back far enough you can find some consistent(ish) values.

I completely feel my age. A friend here described me as having prior ‘large event experience’ in response to my help at the gate. I thought back to working traffic/parking at MOFGA. What was I, twelve? I don’t have any point of reference. And so reality, I realize as I feel no desire to socialize, only to work or rest, is entirely mutable.

We stopped to chat with friends of friends and as they talked of getting accustomed to the nudity I thought about ‘normal.’ In a way I can’t describe at the speed of this keyboard.

I remember M leaving one morning as I thought about building a two story bike rack in the garage. I built it that afternoon and she later commented on liking that I did the things that I talked about. I suppose, that’s what I do, that is the constant, I produce.

J commented on me being a “good man.” That seems, expected. That’s my character, where I come from, my lineage. I suppose that whatever happens, whoever becomes part of my life, that’s what they remember me for.

Walking around last night from the Black Hole to the 3:00 keyhole to look for a friends camp, I wandered through suburbs of RVs. I wouldn’t be the type to be all “back in the day,” even if I had been coming for years, but it felt too clean to me. I have to stop and consider hypocrisy, as working the event for two weeks straight means I have three hot meals a day from the commissary and I hear there are even showers somewhere that I could use if such was important to me.

I’d guess it was about 3am, and I was chuckling about comparing the past to the present. I have distinct memories of going to parties in Dedham ten years ago and ending up wandering around alone as everyone got drunk and hooked up with each other. I used to plan to either stay sober enough to drive home, or ensure I blacked out. Now, I’m in a place where I can’t go an hour without being offered a drink, from a beer or a shot to a whole bottle. Endless booze. And I’m still not drinking.

M called me remarkable the other day. I’m still parsing this. It feels like the warmth from flirting with a cute girl, but so much more lasting and good. I’d simply call this love, I’m sure, but I’m still conflicted over this. There’s the two-sided shoulder argument, on one I should embrace this and be happy, on another, the shoulds of moving on. The former feels so meaningful, the latter is totally shoulds, and externally influenced. So, my assumptions of labels, monogamy, “its not complicated,” from what feels like a sheltered smalltown youth steps in. This is cheating to some degree of course, as I realized a couple years ago I had never really thought about much of the structure of intimate relationships and specifically what I wanted one to be. Everything is much grayer now, and that’s okay. Relationships have dropped labels and blur from acquaintances, friends, sexual partners, short term relationships, long term, partners. Which are all labels, but you have to let them flow from one to each other.

Hmm… Gotta work.

In less than twenty hours I’ll be on the road toward BRC. Like counting summers, tonight’s sleep will be the last in Washington for around seventeen nights.

Dad mentioned being brought to tears recently. I caused this once, years ago when dating M. Fuck, I need to get home to spend time with him. J asked if I thought I would change anything, I don’t know. I’ll regret it if I don’t.

An incredibly meaningful letter from J today. She mentioned letting things stew, and I’m tempted to share that point of view, but I feel more like giving my own feelings a big hug. I feel like I can either focus on life being possibly very complicated, or having great, strong, relationships with people in my life. I’ll take the latter ma’am, thanks.

I imagined the possibilities of my life ten years from now, and then meeting up with M and her making a comment about being glad things did not work out between us because it wouldn’t have been the life she wanted. I imagined kicking the dirt and asking if she really thought that, if she thought our lives would be anything like what they were if we had worked out our problems.

Meh. The dreams about the ambiguity… Don’t get me wrong, I love M, but I’ll take the people who reciprocate love and want to be a part of my life.

Something terrible should happen soon to balance things out. A couple great weights are off my shoulders, the prophesied July rolled into August, but it’s coming to a close finally. September will be a month of new beginnings in many ways, and in between, I’m going to check out and head to Burning Man for 18 days. I’m disappointed M isn’t back in Seattle, I had hoped to see her in August, but I leave tomorrow. Tomorrow! So much to do.

When I deposited my settlement check, the bank cashier asked me what I planned to do with it. I told him I’ll be paying off all the medical bills, of course. The branch manager came over to verify everything and asked the same question. I felt like George Clooney in a bank heist movie. Day by day I feel like identifying as a tree fort building boy is being picked apart slowly, but I figure the spirit will always stay. As I grow up, I face new problems, heavier ones, moral dilemmas, the acceptance that I can change the world, and that I affect it every day.

Great conversation lately that centered around alcohol has lead into talking about goals, and the realization that we have them…. the strength to admit them and offer them… the vulnerability. I had a dream about M last night. I believe we were in my fathers bedroom in Maine and I was trying to ask her about how she felt. She was shifty, avoiding the difficult of answering by physically hiding. I recall finding her in the closet near the rifles and my mind briefly shifted to recent conversations with my therapist about suicide in the family. I realize now that I need to talk about this more.

Well, the fluids in the truck aren’t going to change themselves.

Four years ago, there was motorcycle camping. The promise of adventure. Off the beaten path where not even my suburban could go. Yet so much more in touch, in a way a cager could never appreciate. This ended abruptly three years ago. Some time later, I discovered bicycles. Another period has drawn to a close. And so it begins.

I was talking to G the other night about how my last trip to Burning Man seems unbelievably long ago. She said it didn’t to her, if you just counted summers. I can’t count summers though, where do you count? What exactly? It’s long ago because not only has everything changed since then, it has multiple times. The acquisition and now changing jobs. The multitudes of dating, some successful, some heartbreaking. All the volunteering and advocacy I’ve gotten involved in since.

I often think back to talking with M about how I didn’t think I, nor we, could ever really settle down, as I always seemed to want to be up to something. But that was me a year and a half ago. I barely recognize that me now. I trimmed the hair on the back of my head a little this morning, taking some time for grooming as I can enjoy these little things since I’m between jobs. I hadn’t done a great job here and I was starting to grow a bit of a mullet. Sitting outside with a mirror in the sun, I thought about my gray that is solidly beginning to take over. This year… something about it made me move on from so much, grow up even. Who was that man three and a half years ago? five years ago? Christ, so young.

My God! I’d only seen him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He’s got his whole life in front of him and I’m not even a glint in his eye.

C and I had a talk today about what I think about drinking while at Burning Man. I’m three months sober, and I’m really unconvinced I need to stay sober. It seems easy to make an exception for BM, especially since I’m not there to do much else than relax and not die from heatstroke. But that brings into question what happens thereafter. I know I don’t want to ever be a regular at bars again, at least to drink. With my predisposition to alcohol, is it safe to drink at all? Not in a “will I fuck up and ruin everything” addict way, but in a way that is just too difficult to discern because of where and what I come from.

Everything is working out right now. What is that. It’s change. Strange. What I’m afraid of is still strange. the list of what is “just hard” but achievable is so much longer than what is painful and unachievable. Does the latter contain anything other than M?

This morning seems to have left me distracted. I just want to sit in the woods on the side of a mountain in the drizzle reading a book under a tree wearing a warm hoody. How specific is that?

I woke up early, and managed to a while and get back to sleep. (soda?) Then the dream kicked in.

I went on a .83 ride, not drinking, on my fixed while towing a large trailer. At one point it looked like I had an underbody storage chest from a truck under the frame of the bike too, however implausible. I stayed overnight at this bar (hotel?) making out with someone. Another couple came into the room and I didn’t mind. Apparently we fell asleep on a bed, but in the morning the bar owner said we looked cute and didn’t want to bother us. Later, a girl who worked there who made some kind of love potion was apologizing. Ken C showed up. The girl and I left to have sex in the woods, but my strange contraption of a bike needed major repairs which I started trying to figure out. I got enough going with tie wraps. I found DSLR cameras attached to the trailer and gave them to their respective owners. I ended up inside another building. At some point I slept with M. I found the girl with some photographers who had been up to some project. They didn’t like ARC for some reason. They were going to pay for a new bike + new camera for me. When I went outside someone had removed my frame and left everything else. I went toward another bar to find how who had done it, M2 came outside after having a fight with her partner and wanted to talk to me. At this moment, I saw the girl again and she said she wanted to “do me.” M2 was upset, but I had to find out where my bike frame was. Inside, someone took responsibility and I literally threw them around the room until they showed me on a map on an ipad where the dumpster was they had hidden it in. M2 and I went to go find it, it wasn’t nearby.

That’s all I remember. It seems crazy that there would be more to remember. This is why I don’t like dreams. I need to go back to working too much maybe.

This weekend produced the most drama I’ve seen in a while. Mostly, I’ve taken no responsibility for it. Not mostly. Relatively? How do you say, not my problem, in a way that doesn’t make you sound like a dick? J described it as giving her room to take responsibility for herself. And so it goes.

While discussing Oktrends latest data, when I mentioned iphone users having eleven partners by age thirty she exclaimed, “thats how many people I’ve had sex with this year!” I can’t keep track of what’s cool or acceptable or anything anymore it seems. But yet, I do. I guess, sometimes, I’m still surprised.

But yes, life is changing. I called my lawyer today, but spoke to my paralegal and said that I had a time-sensitive investment opportunity and needed the status of my settlement. Really. I said that shit. While preparing my 401k and my health insurance for my upcoming transition between workplaces, I realized I’m all sorts of fucking grown up these days. Sneaks up on you. Next I’ll have a meaningful long term relationship or something, you watch.

I was reading Here Comes Everybody this morning in the small grocery tucked under Puget Sound Plaza and I hit a passage about the Birthday Paradox. I’m slightly familiar with it, due to my wanderings in security circles and the Birthday Attack, but I guess I never really thought about it.

The birthday problem asks whether any of the people in a given group has a birthday matching any of the others — not one in particular.

The part that surprises people is that they fail to take account for the exponential factor, wherein if you have three people in a room, there are three possible combinations. Yet, with twenty three people in a room, there are two hundred and fifty three pairs, which presents a fifty percent chances that two people in the room will have the same birthday.

Something clicked when I read about the birthday problem this time. First, I’m always laughing with friends about how we tend to know the same people. This would be expected in small social circles, or even larger scenes like bikes, but when I know someone through say, online dating or computer security, but a bike friend knows them through coops, it continues to feel odd. Yet, extending this same logic, the likelihood that in all the people we both know that we’d have some overlap, even in a city of over 600,000 people, doesn’t seem all that small.

Similarly, I’m a fan of C. Northcote Parkinson, coiner of Parkinson’s Law and Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, the former being “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” and the latter being too long to quote here. As a tech dork, the latter is expected, and we sometimes call it the “[color of the] bike shed problem.” However, the book is worth a read if you’re at all interested in meetings and committed; why and when they suck. In any case, while this has been presented to me many times, it finally clicked today that the difficulty in getting large groups to agree is the number of pairs of individuals that you have to get to agree or compromise. The math behind this is certainly a bit different than the birthday problem, and I recall seeing it laid out in Parkinson’s book. Yet, this realization made it all more clear without having to go back to college for the math background.

Yesterday Eric and I went down to the lobby Starbucks for an afternoon coffee and while returning we shared the elevator with a rather anxious girl. We were bullshitting about one thing or another and she interrupted and apologized, asking if we’d mind riding up to her floor with her. As it turns out, she was there for a job interview, and had at some point in the past been stuck in an elevator before and had a bit of residual PTSD about elevators. Her underlying anxiety about the interview wasn’t so bad without the elevator as a trigger. She much better when she stepped off it. Of course, elevators are awkward for those who prefer to be doing something anyhow.

Speaking of Starbucks. I laughed the other day when I realized that Foursquare has a “Barista” badge that you earn by checking in at five Starbucks. I didn’t realize this because Starbucks are so commonplace in Seattle that we treat them like 7-11s. If you’re ever going to sit down at a coffee shop, you go to a decent one, of which we have no shortage. On the other hand, Starbucks just serves as a convenience.

This week, which seemed empty until recently, is filling out nicely. I’ve got two receptions/parties to go to tonight. First, New Edge New Blood, where the AIA Seattle is honoring ten groups for, well, something, including Alleycat Acres. Something to do with sustainable landscape I presume. Then I’ve got to find a place to call in to my ARC Comm Team meeting on my portable, and make it to a release party for my new company. Interestingly, my old company, which I leave on Friday, has a big meeting today about how we’re acquiring another company. I only know what the twitter knows about this.

Tomorrow I ditch a physical ARC Comm Team meeting to try to finish up the AA CD Shed, then dinner and a bicycle wrench party with a friend. Thursday I’ve got to run over to Ada’s Technical Books to scout out the venue for the upcoming Bikestravaganza on Saturday. Then ride back to Pioneer Square for a Chef Users Group meetup.

Tori and I joked about how Friday was open, until we remembered that it was Gia’s birthday, and Mom will be here for dinner as her old friend Candy will be flying into town for a week of vacation with her. Saturday is, of course, the aforementioned Bikestravaganza. Meh. And I’m still working this week too! Almost done. Alright, I have to write overdue real blog posts now.

Getting letters from M is a treat. I mean that in a way I cannot express. It’s like going to see a moving documentary, but someone made it just for you. It makes me feel special and reminds me of what is out there beyond the craziness of always doing that I’m caught up in.

It’s been a crazy weekend. Saturday was eaten by a Red Cross course. I’m running out of those, this one was the official training required to be a supervisor, and was actually quite good. K and I took advantage of the fact I was wandering about in the truck and went out to the Issaquah Alps to wanted around the woods in the rain. I was up early today to cook pancakes for J, something I had promised a long while ago. This was unfortunately cut short by having to make a large expedition to Home Depot for supplies for the Alleycat Acres CD shed. We’re getting there. It needs to be done in a week.

There was some unexpected drama too, but I’ve just been too busy to really get close to it. A friend recently said,

it seems like, as i get older and am surrounded by people with more and more life experience, most people are just so gosh darn thoughtful and reasonable and good-hearted.

Yes! I want more of this. More good hearted thoughtful people. Definitely.