I haven't been poking my head much around here lately. I drop by, look what's up, consider cooling something, disappear again. It's amazing how much having a job you enjoy that is challenging and engaging can usurp both your on-clock and off-clock time. But it does. The slices of pie in the chart of my attention left after programming all day are very few, sliver slices that I tend to just put away in a bread basket for a rainy day.
What's even more rare is me, talking about me. Or writing. I'm not doing much of that lately. Marissa wakes me from sleep sometimes, usually I mumble to her something about matching up the interval IDs with the occurrence and cross referencing by user. Do Programmers Dream of Relational Databases? I guess they do.
But there is news. After almost six years of living with Marissa, since back in the days of San Francisco, I have finally, formally (rather than implicitly) asked for her to marry me. One thing has followed after another and not two days after the asking we have a date, a location, and a wedding to plan. On June 11, 2006 I will be a married man.
It's exciting. Terrifying. Most of all, it seems normal. It drowns out the coulda's, the woulda's— even the shoulda's. There is now only the "is" -- the purity of "yes, it's going to happen, and yes the rest does not matter." Meanwhile, I'm hoping that love does not lead to a building on fire. But I am not a building.
I once had a Plan. And though the parameters to that Plan have changed, I might still be on the Path. I need to look harder for it. Another, possibly more papt metaphor]— I can see the path, but unfortunatley I'm on a river by its side, going to fast, unable to pull the raft over and put my feet on the path again. Oh well, I'm not only mixing my metaphors here, I'm mixing the things I'm actually talking about.
Artistic Life != Wedding Plans. I'm happy about the latter. Unhappy about the former.
Here's to love and where it gets you. Here's to work and what it takes you away from.