Monthly Archives: June 2020

I don’t really know what to say, the existentialism has been so incredibly heavy. I don’t remember a time it’s ever been this bad. The worlds on fire, apocalypse bingo feels as much a reality as it does a joke. I’ve never simultaneously felt so insecure and sure of myself. How is that even possible? Pending actions… pending decisions. I don’t want to be hasty, they may not even be necessary. There’s a difficult gray area between not wanting to make a decision too soon when you can wait it out and see how things unfold vs. using that as an excuse to not take action at all. My shits so trivial compared to the real problems in the world. All I know is right now my hearts aching and I don’t know what it needs.

I’ve been bad at managing all this accumulating stress and haven’t been able to sleep more than 4 hours at a time for weeks. Now I’m dealing with the lovely SLE symptom of ulcers in the back of my throat and it’s painful af. I’m run down, I need things to change.

I’m half asleep in bed thinking about this last weekend. After all this isolating I’m glad Adrian and I figured out a safe way to spend time together on the weekends again, I’m still wary and understand even mitigating to the best of our abilities isn’t a 100% guarantee but I’ve already mitigated and accepted the risk of going out and picking up food or scripts in masks and sanitizing whatever comes into the house. Our corporate offices are doing what they can.

This last weekend I took a rare long weekend and we spent a lot of that time cuddled up and enjoying each other’s company, played with rope and shiny things, binged scifi, enjoyed dim sum, burgers, and then sushi the last day (it had been a while since I banned non cooked food for the last couple months). We watched the protests unfold in Seattle, we didn’t know how to process it, friends posted their first hand accounts locally. Friends across the country got maced, tried to provide aid when possible, and got out when it was their only option. I’m worried about a huge spike in covid cases due to the protests, but I understand why the protests are happening and support them. I’m too weak physically and in health to participate, it makes me feel useless in this situation, but all I can do is try to pay attention and share info when possible.

Saturday morning we watched boats move across the sound through the fog. I was tearful, then I ugly cried. I mourned Jösh and I never making it to Seattle. Acknowledged the irony of him wanting to originally move here, but meeting him because his gf chose SF. Adrian knows I love him and Josh very much. I love you both very much. He said he was sorry I couldn’t be with someone I cared for so much, and would be sad if he couldn’t see me. He understood the situation and why I walked, and why there’s still a little grief inside me. I mentioned the last time I really reached out was due to an earthquake in Hokkaido, and apparently there was an earthquake in Hokkaido this last Saturday but I didn’t know until I checked my work email yesterday. Some timing.

This morning I wondered if I hadn’t gone to Vegas, if I’d skipped that and went from Phoenix straight to tech in Seattle if we’d ever end up meeting. Then I remembered you took a photo outside my apartment a year before I moved in there. Maybe I would have already been established in the company here, maybe I would have ramped up faster when the company was younger before the people who gave me trouble ever had the chance to mess with me. Maybe I would have been more invincible and wise navigating this corporate bs, and maybe I would have seen you speak at that conference across the street from my apartment. Maybe I would have sought you out after and hit you up for a discussion. I might have invited you to one of my favorite happy hour spots to continue to conversation and would have eaten up all your time, only to discover all the things we had in our past that made us who we were and made us realize there was something more than just superficial small talk. Maybe you would have invited me back to your hotel in Seattle, like you did in Vegas. Maybe you were at the Westin, or Andra, or Grand Hyatt. I don’t think Hyatt Regency was built yet in 2015. We might have been up all night talking about Arizona, music, anime, food, I would have showed you my Spotify instead of an old iPod touch. Maybe I would have stayed the night, or maybe I would have suggested you walk me back to my apartment instead since it was a couple blocks away and I wanted to show off. You might have done your best to practice restraint, or you might have kissed me, unless I got to you first. You know I have the worst impulse control, but you’d just be figuring this out first hand here. You might have suffered through me making tea, and black sesame pancakes and bacon the next morning. Or depending on how late we slept in we might have walked a couple blocks to my favorite brunch spot for unlimited mimosas and waffles. These were all things I wanted to share with you when I moved to this city and got to know it. Do I believe we would have met in a different location in a different year if I had skipped an entire state? I can fantasize about it for a morning. I used to think we missed the mark in Arizona, maybe not. I wondered if Vegas was just a disaster, but I gained so much during that time. I have a lot of people I’m grateful to have in my life from that time. I got 6 years of hacker summer camp in due to proximity and sheer will, and I reconciled with a parent. It’s not worth trading off and losing, as much as I feel getting here sooner would have been an advantage professionally, personally, and financially (especially with the housing market).

I almost met Adrian a year earlier than I did because I was supposed to be at a Beats Antique show downtown. I can’t remember why but I didn’t make it, and my wifey recognized his wife and they all connected. It’s probably best I met them at their house party, I’m not sure if we would have had the same opportunity to connect this way if it had been at the show. The polycule had a very different dynamic then and was fairly new. How are we all from Arizona, or have ties to that state? Adrian caught my pause when I first saw him, it registered and he likes to bring it up sometimes. I say that someday I’ll meet someone else who makes me pause and then they can make fun of me and laugh about it together. He’s not really making fun of me, I think he finds it endearing. He was the second person to see it happen since he was the second person to have that impression on me, and he knows you were the first. I don’t know if you caught that too when we met, or if I did a better job recouping since it was in a professional setting and I could at least try to focus on talking to someone next to you.

I don’t think any of this really matters or know if any of this would have changed outcomes. It’s a little wishful speculation. I had three states to meet you in, and even if we’re not in each other’s lives now, I feel like something would be missing if we’d never interacted even if I didn’t know what it was or why. I still wish circumstances were better.