"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

In Which I Enumerate What I've Been Doing Instead Of Blogging

So, what's been going on? Clearly I'm not doing a great job of expressing myself in the written word, and aside from what you might intuit from Twitter there's been precious little to go on in terms of my life and times. If it's any consolation, I've been similarly vague and opaque in real life too; when conversation turns to me and myself these days I've been full of noncommittal generalities.

The truth is, a lot is happening, so much and so constantly that I'm not really keeping up with the processing. The spiritual backlog is growing, technical debt to the soul.

One big thing that's been happening is that I met a woman. When I've revealed that to my friends of late I say it with italics — "I met a woman" — and with a kind of level eye-look that tells them I'm serious. She's out in New York City, a Lawyer by trade, double Ivy, South Asian, whipsmart and gorgeous (natch) and loves to dance. Her name is Rina and she's inspired some quality prose and two weekend visits back East this spring thus far.

It's geographically improbable, but I'm uncharacteristically sanguine. We have passed beyond initial worries that spending 72 hours together might become unbearable — that we won't actually like one another upon close examination — and into the subsequent worry that oh hey we actually do, and so now what.

Did I mention she's moving to London? Oh, yeah, she's moving to London, but again I'm uncharacteristically optimistic. However, it is beginning to dawn on me that this may actually be kind of unpleasant. Time will tell. I play the long game.

Other big news is that I'm in the process of uprooting myself from Westhaven and Humboldt County, the place I've rambled to and from but called home for the past four years. Longest I've had any one address since moving out of my Mother's place back in '97, but my time in the woods is up. It's time to be back in the world, so I'm subletting in SF for a couple months and looking to spend the balance of the Summer in the Cornell Club again.

A big driver of this is the transition of what I affectionately call "my day job" into it's latest chrysalis incarnation: we're up to 22 people and counting, ensconced in professional new Downtown SF offices, organizing 3,000 person conferences, rolling on larger projects than ever, and basically have decided to shoot the moon. We're trying to turn it into a real business, something that could outlive our selves, stand on its own, grow beyond what just three dudes might dream.

Turns out this is really fucking hard. We're up against all sorts of challenges — technical, financial, social — that we've never had to face before. That makes it stressful, sure, but also makes it an adventure. The groove we carved was good, but it was also getting boring, and we're collectively more interested in breakthrough success than easy comfort. We're young yet, and now's the time to move boldly. It's who dares wins.

Ultimately this all makes me somewhat unsure about my future. There's a large and growing part of me that needs to Get Away From It All for a while, to get some perspective on my life and times and Figure It All Out. That's hardly probable in the next quarter or too, but could happen come the Winter. I need to chart some goals, longer term. Set some sights for myself personally.

For now I'm just happy to be surrounded by good people who inexplicably care for me, healthy, romantically tingling and everbusy with worthwhile pursuits. It's a charmed life, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

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