#backpatting

We had 53 threads dedicated to past events. The website hasn’t been active for a full year yet.

Today, I was hanging out on the 41st floor of the new Woodward's building in downtown Vancouver; the cutting edge of Gastown's gentrifi... ahem, revitalization.

This evening, I had dinner in the basement of an East Van house with an old friend whose been on and off the streets in his life.

I have friends who are farmers, tech entrepreneurs, engineers, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-primitivists, world travelers and dedicated change makers.

I'm grateful for this. It's a lucky side effect of a very diverse career, and a direct effect of being interested in (pretty well) everyone I meet. 

Being born under the sign of Cancer, the one part of my horoscope(not something I'm big on) that about rings true is this almost chameleon like malleability.

It can be confusing, to feel at home in such different spaces. Always a bit of an outsider even while being an insider. 

I started going back to school while I was working full time. As an undergraduate, I worked two to three part-time jobs at a time, dealt with ongoing health issues, got married, did martial arts training regularly, and managed a 3.987 GPA and graduated Summa Cum Laude (I got a single A- that kept me from a perfect 4.0).

I went to grad school and worked 24-32 hours per week throughout, dealt with a slew of new anxiety and health issues, hit the weight room for an hour 3-4 days weekly, applied for and got an actual career job, helped my pregnant wife, then became a father. I managed a solid 4.0 through all of it.

I've been treated like an imbecile for most of my life, and had such terrible ADHD as a child that I was seldom treated like a self-aware human in elementary school, and rarely was able to get anything better than a C-average until I left my hometown's school system.

I've had existential crises and panic attacks and periods of hopelessness where I think what I am doing is useless.  But in the words of one condescendingly intelligent fellow I know, "You have to at least fucking try."