OVERconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet is done; now to move on to the next book, or, perhaps better yet, actually finish that painting I’ve been sitting on for two years now.

I still need to clean up my apartment; everything that I’ve brought home from the office (and it turns out; I had brought a lot) still needs to be put away. For example, the Vornado fan… Dietz’s wives (don’t ask). The extra tea that I bought; other miscellaneous office supplies and items to make office work easier and more efficient. I now have an excess of smartphone stand-chargers, and I probably need to buy shelves for Dietz’s wives to sit on. This isn’t a problem I anticipated having.

July’s goth picnic was cancelled again, due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I’m getting increasingly antsy about getting my GoSwag flask back. Yes, I have a spare, but it’s not yellow, and I am unhappy that my flask is possibly occupying valuable space in Alice’s abode (whatever that may be).

I REALLY want my flask back.

This span of unemployment has given me the mental space needed to think about how I want to arrange my life. I’ve spent about a year now exploring various scenes in Minneapolis… Which biking clubs interest me, which don’t. Several of the dive bars and live music venues here. Unhappily, there isn’t anything comparable to the Icehouse here in NE. But biking down to there or Eat Street Crossing isn’t a huge burden to me.

Music, dance, biking—that’s what’s important to me. Live music more than anything else at this point. (And I should also really make it a point to visit the MIA soon… I haven’t been there in a while.) I like biking, it’s important to me. But as I explained to her earlier, and which she and my former supervisor understand very deeply—biking is my walkies. You don’t talk to me when I bike. Well, I don’t have extended conversations when I bike. Pointing out something, discussing a landmark, sure. Going over our careers and hobbies and children and other current affairs? Hard pass. Biking. Is my walkies.

So I’m not really that emotionally close to the various biking scenes here, even though I’ve made a reputation for myself as that cool guy who brings good music and who’s a good conversationalist over the table. People like me… and it’s still very strange to me, how much they like me. I suppose because I always bring something to the table, I should expect that sort of affection—I have very little experience with such social relations. Nothing in how I was raised—the first 18 years of my life—prepared me for this. And after that? It was mostly work, isolated… No social life. Video games, reading, art. Not an entirely empty existence, but.

Almost completely lacking in that human contact that adds texture and depth of flavouring to one’s days.

Now, in Minneapolis, after about a year, I’ve made interesting acquaintances: every outing has been a venture into new, unfamiliar territory. But I suppose that’s life. I suppose on Tuesday, I’ll go back out to Grumpy’s, spend more time with the burners and burner-adjacent—it’s a nice crew that I really like. I vibe more with them than with some others whom I spend more regular time with; I ought to spend more of my Thursdays with Venture Bikes, too. Their slow rolls are… slow. But the community is unmatched. I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to find my tribe here in Minneapolis—it turns out I have a bunch, but there are some tribes that I’m closer to than others.

Navigating all these relationships, all these communities. Finding out “who you are” isn’t a singular, lonesome atomic process, but also a question of “Who do I want to spend time with?” Nobody had taught me that. I didn’t learn it from movies, music, stories, TV. Games like Persona focus only on individual relationships, not tribes or groups of people. The World Ends With You showed the embryonic stages of what I’ve undergone this year. Do people not know how to tell stories about cities? Do people not have them? Not only the stories, but the city?

I’m a lot calmer now than I was before. Got news from Sandy, Joe… …I can’t say much. Haha. Here, on the Internet, I can’t say much. Maybe no one will read this, maybe everyone will, who knows. Maybe it won’t matter in ten years. I don’t know.

My anxiety is gone, I can rest easy and focus on… reading. Relaxing. Swimming. Exercising. Doing everything I can when I’m not searching for jobs and applying. Man, is it tedious to have to tailor EVERY single CV for each job opening. I even got off my ass and updated my LinkedIn. Which I doubt I’ll ever really use. We’ll see how long it takes for me to get a new job. I’m in no hurry, though.

Some people nearby set off fireworks ahead of Fourth of July. It was beautiful. I’m looking forward to going to the Freedom From Pants Ride tomorrow night, and swimming with other people. It’ll be a nice way to celebrate the summer.

I don’t have much else to say, not at this current time. …I do have a lot to think about. But life is going on, at its easy-going, steady pace. Everything is going fine, even if in unexpected directions. Another year will pass… Eventually, I’ll marry. And I’ll be further entrenched in some kind of stability as the entire world around me goes off the rails. Wow.