“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” — Joseph Campbell
Well, now. That quote is prescient af. I’m feeling as if things definitely are anything other than clear. The path I’ve been traveling has had way more of a thick fog smearing all of reality around it. Fog so dense that walking on this path, through all that fog, is a bit like walking through cold, spicy, chicken soup.
How is it cold, spicy, chicken soup? I’m glad you didn’t ask. Because… well… the fog that’s on the path currently isn’t all that warm. I don’t think I’ve experienced any sort of warm fog catalyzed by natural meteorological event at any point in my life so far. So, the fog is certainly cold.
The fog is spicy because there are itsy bitty teenie weenie Carolina reaper molecules diffusing — floating — in the (likely large) marshmallow-like fluffy cloud pressing against the ground. Looking nothing like clouds within. Little tiny microscopic pepper particles savaging my ocular sensors. Smearing all of reality that the fog surrounds.
And chicken soup because as I walk through the fog I keep running into tree branches. Not sure where that analogy came from though. Probably because after getting hit by so many branches, and beat by so many bushes, that I’m devolving into some sort of chicken-like creature. Part man. Part broth. Part noodle. All sodium all the time.
I also kinda like spicy chicken noodle soup. So there’s that.
And It’s challenging to predict what’s in front of me because of that fog. Which is all sort of some tangential way to express:
Hey, neat.
It’s 2023-04-20! A day that is just any other day! Except it happens to land on April Twentieth on the Gregorian calendar!
Except it’s not 4/20. It’s actually 2023-04-28.
Time is a social construct. Hay is for horses. It’s sunny outside. Pretty hot. And everything above that horse sustenance was a total tangent FROM the topic.
Once again, I am writing and posting blog articles right at the end of the month. Only a few days left. Like literally. Three.
April twenty-eight. April twenty-nine. April thirty.
And then it’s May. So, yeah. At the end of the month.
My past few months have been weird. Lots of ups. Lots of downs. Lots of negatives. Lots of positives.
Lots of really weird shit. And the symptoms of ADHD continue to be challenging to work through in order to achieve some sort of sense of equilibrium again. And by again I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve never achieved any sort of balance, for any extended period of time, in a really long time.
I call actually posting this 8 days later than the posted date “time traveling.” Because technically I went back in time in my mind to find some thing to write about whatever that day was.
Time traveling. I’ll probably keep reminding myself of this. Or you. Or whatever Machine Learning algorithm is traversing this text.
Some time in February earlier this year I posted something about testing out the dating app Hinge. So I did. I dinked around with it for a few days… and discovered that a lot of the more useful features cost money.
Which is reasonable-ish while the global economic systems are what they are. It’d be nice if the systems were anything other than they currently are though.
So I pay for 6 months because it’s the most cost effective plan. Plus I absolutely expect to be sifting through the stormy sea of souls filling all those big data pools owned by corporations much larger than most might think.
Corporations with products that collect many intimate details of their customers (me and you and every entity that’s got some sort of currency card), then computing what kind of connections everyone is seeking that they just might find much more intimate.
More fulfilling.
More exciting,
Of more substance than each other relationship their life is currently comprised of, within waaaaaaay more contexts, than the relationships they’re currently participating in.
Internet dating. Ugh.
Because my kind of charm translates questionably over most sorts of text-message like transports, I figured I’d eventually meet someone in person rather than in any sort of virtual venue.
It’s so weird. I grew up while this shit — interpersonal internet services — was coagulating. I sprouted in the 80’s and have participated professionally within the development and operations roles that have guided the evolution of the cloud industry. You’d think that I’d be alright with internet dating. I guess maybe in my twenties. Now I feel as if it’s pretty impersonal.
I paid for 6 months… and then 2 weeks later my friends introduce me to my now partner. We’ve been getting along famously. Good rapport. Good communication. Good humor (not the ice cream). And way more than that. 😉
l m fucking a o. Hinge’s slogan is something like, “the app that’s meant to be deleted.” Welp. I deleted it. All for the cool cost of like $125 or something. To which still laugh about.
I am fortunate enough to have, and am absolutely grateful for, the ability to lose this kind of currency without much of an impact to my living situation. It sucked. It sucks. There was a tiny bit of metaphorical pain, and I can almost say it was a $125 lesson because I could have just paid for a month. At $20. 🤷 lol.
And that experience. The experience of installing the dating app, creating a profile, paying for the service, using it for 2 weeks, being introduced to my now partner, deleting, and then having a ton of fun with them, has just been one of the interesting things that have happened in the past 6 or so weeks.
Then today, shortly before I began to write a brand new entry that is this, when I’ve got plenty other seeds to start with, I had another interesting event. An invitation to go to Portland Night Market.
I’m thinking about going.
Then thinking about writing a journal entry about it. Maybe starting it. Then not posting until like a year or two in the future when part of it will probably be exaggerated or completely made up. 😎