But no matter what I try, that ain’t gonna happen.

See, the problem is that Epoch ain’t Mojo’s. Understand? The scene is completely different. Back during my Mojo’s heyday, I usually found myself surrounded by enough of the kind of people I appreciated, respected, wanted to be with. Even on the quiet nights, there was still a familiar face here and there.

But not so much at Epoch. Even though there are clumps of people there with familiar faces (old Mojo’s regulars notwithstanding), thing is that I find it difficult to want to be with these newer faces. Make sense? The taste, the consistency is far different, and for some reason, I just can’t think of myself asking names and seeking out their company. Y’know?

Maybe this is what getting older is leading me to: settling on a dwindling subset of my waning social life.

So, what do you people who’ve managed to move on do to keep your social circle fresh and growing?

The coffeeshop is not the destination. It is the journey, the waystation, the pit stop. It is the refreshment break on the way to somewhere else where I’m actually doing something with my life. I should’ve picked up on this years ago, but I didn’t, and I’m a stupid dumbass for not seeing it. Most of the people I know through hanging out at coffeeshops have actually gone on to do great and interesting things. Yet I am still here, bored, alone, and unfulfilled.

Sure. I carry my laptop with me. Sure. I can work on my projects. Sure. But only if I’m not distracted. But only if my projects can be fully-contained in my laptop. But only if I don’t burn out. You know what I miss? I miss putting my hands on stuff. I miss building models. I miss making music. I miss working at the printshop because at the end of the day, I had a tangible result in my hands. I can’t hold a website. I can’t touch a raytraced picture. But I can touch a welding. I can touch a drawing.

And I can touch a friend. There are no friends here. There are people I know, people who know me. People I want to know, and people I try to avoid. But there are no close friends. Because what kind of friendship can you build while sitting on your ass around a table? There’s only a finite amount of stuff to talk about before you find a topic to piss each other off. You know how you build friendships? You stand up and go do things. What things? ANYTHING. SOMETHING. You exit the door and leave. You make a plan and see what sticks. You head up a posse and see who sticks around. That’s what you do. That’s what the fully-actualized, self-motivated people do.

That’s not what I’ve been doing. I’ve been treating the coffeeshop as the high point of the night. Thinking that if I get dressed, comb my hair, and go down to the coffeeshop to see who’s there, I will find someone to hang out with and have an enjoyable evening. That happens rarely, but often enough to keep my hooked into that thinking. It’s like lottery; sometimes, you match a few digits and get three bucks back, so you reinvest that money into three more tickets and then get nothing back. But there’s the possibility that you could win big. And I’ve been playing this cafe lottó for far too long.

My old friends have moved on to have careers, lives, families, success in art, fellowship in communal projects, have increased their minds through further studies and solitary, quiet contemplations in private. I have a laptop, a half-empty cup of joe, and the psychic burden of letting my life decay.

The coffeeshop is not the destination.

Not really. It’s work, coffee, Ruby on Rails. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.

I really should’ve had this Ruby on Rails project finished long before now. It’s supposed to be simple with RoR. Shit simple. But I keep making it difficult. Keep adding stuff like “secure database queries” and “input validation”…and I’m not even started on the Posts models yet! One of these days, I’ll do a proper writeup of my RoR experiences, but there’s no time for that, what with my staring dumbfaced at code and drifting off to play minesweeper for 3 hours before bed.

I need a break. Really, I need a break. I guess part of my fascination with the latest U2 album is that the band sequestered themselves to a villa in Fez, Morocco while they wrote the album. It’s the idea of being someplace else for a while and finding my voice again that appeals to me. I don’t travel, and I typically don’t make plans to leave town for the weekend. So I end up being here, doing the same ol’, for months on end, with little variations in the pattern. It’s no wonder I’ve grown old and inflexible.

I feel like leaving for a while, but going to Texarkana this weekend for 48 hours will have to do, I guess. I won’t have the time, energy, or space to throw myself to the muses; trips home aren’t for that. Travel isn’t for me; that’s my feeling. Travel is for people who have accrued vacation time and have managerial approval to spend it. Travel is for the unemployed who have friends in distant cities. Travel is for people who don’t have to worry about supporting themselves or paying rent on a place to store their stuff. Working stiff contractors like me can’t travel. Time worked is time paid, and I am running broke.

Maybe I should just sell all my stuff and roam. Eh, I’m too old for that. At my age, that kind of behavior is just two steps away from being a homeless bum. I dunno, maybe it’ll be therapeutic, or maybe if I throw myself at the bottom hard enough I’ll bounce up higher than I am now. Maybe I actually flourish in the face of change. Who’s to know?

Behind me, as mentioned, is a hillside. The night air is coming down off of it and the neighborhood behind it bringing its night moisture and the scent of nature in spring along with it. It’s so amazing; it’s like I’m able to smell for the first time in my life. I love this season. It’s all so incredibly fragrant, almost unbearable. The other night I came down here and hung out, tried to work on a little code, and kept getting sidetracked by the scent, the strong floral scents, of the trees, bushes, plantlife finally coming out of slumber. And here lately, excepting the seasonal sneeze fits, I’ve been smelling more of the things that I haven’t paid attention to in years past.

I had heard that this happens, but I didn’t expect it to be like this; but a month and a half of non-smoking has returned the ability to smell back to me. The olfactory area of the brain is nuzzled against the hippocampus, which is the part responsible for the initiation and recall of memories; memory is strongly tied to the sense of smell. Perhaps that’s why much of the past eight years of my life have been a blur; there’s been little to tie those memories together, little to make them shine. Now? Oh my god, the memories of my life pre-smoking are coming back in fits, spurts, landslides. My times at Ouachita, my days and nights out on the river bottoms, the back fields, the forest, the football field, hanging out near the river, the gazebo, the night walks around town — it’s all coming back. And it’s so incredible. So peaceful. So caused by the simple, intangible ability to smell.

Don’t ever take that for granted.

With it being springtime, and with my making an attempt, and actually desiring, to live a better life, I’m strongly wanting to get a bicycle. There are times when I want to walk, or run, or move forward very quickly under my own power. You may or may not understand the personal empowerment that happens when something so simple as walking happens; imagine how biking feels. As I remember, from when I rode regularly, I feel better, my outlook is better. I’ve been making efforts to find myself a bike for riding to work, around the neighborhood, to any of my coffee shop hangouts, to friends’ houses, etc. I will still have my car, definitely, but I won’t be totally dependent on it. It has its uses, and I totally love my car, but there are days, especially here lately, where I want a bike, and I want one real bad. Y’know? I’ve been without a working bike since 1995, and it’s high time I got my lungs, and my legs, back. This sedentary lifestyle, literally, is killing me. I have to do something about it. Any suggestions on where, what, and how much for a bike will be appreciated.

Lately, I have been going through a gradual reevaluation of my life. I don’t have a ten year plan, let alone a ten week plan. Those aren’t a goal of mine, but I do have the future to look at. I hate to feel my own mortality when I look down the road, but it’s there; anything I can look at to get my gaze off of that end is a welcome relief. But the reevaluation: somewhere in the past three years, things went south. When I moved here, to Austin, I was so totally full of hope, full of peace, full of the knowledge that I had done The Right Thing by moving here to this city. I know, in my heart, that I’ve done that. I’m here where I need to be, where I can make a difference in a larger group of people’s lives, where I can make my own life just that much better. Well, somewhere along the road, that stopped happening. I fell out of love for life. I started having panic attacks in September of 2001. My health, my heart, my head, they all started going south. My Joi de Vivre disappeared. This is wrong. This is so wrong. So I’m knocking around some ideas, making some considerations, bringing back some memories of the way things where, they way they were going to be, to see if I can get some good perspective on this. It’s going to take a little while, going to take a little inner drive to do it, but I’ll get back there. I’ll get back to the hope that I had. Stayed tuned in.

Right now though, in the room to my left, past the huge picture window, is a local band. I don’t know who they are, but their music has a kind of country feel, a very Texas feel to it. Still, it’s rather nice. Once I heard it, the particular sound of it, I had no choice but to take my headphones off to soak it in.

I think I just found a piece of that perspective I’ve been seeking. Live music; written by people who feel, played by people who care. Joy of life.