So, there's this guy at work whom I have a crush on. I want to say "crush" is the wrong word, but it's sufficiently light-hearted enough that it works perfectly to describe my emotions towards him. Which is to say, I simultaneously want to meet this person and don't ever want to meet this person.

Oh, didn't mention that part?

Yeah, I haven't met him, haven't said hello to him, haven't sent an email to him, haven't been in a meeting with him, haven't had any interaction but a small smile today. I am fairly certain he has no idea who I am, and I am not only okay with that, I also have every intention of keeping it that way.

See, this crush scares me. It scares me because this guy's personal representative is, as near as I can tell, pretty much everything I wanted to be, a physical manifestation of my idealized self.

In reading about his adventures, in seeing his works, in watching his talks, in noticing him interacting with his coworkers, you can see what drives him, what inspires him. You can see he works to make the world a better place with an idealized definition of "better" that nearly hurts in both its purity and its impossibility.

And my curiosity of him has caused me to reflect more and more about myself. To finally begin questioning what drives me, what inspires me, what motivates me. I've started looking at my goals, my choices, my decisions. I dug up and dusted off the buried rationalizations I've made for the things I've done, brought them out to the light of day and actually looked at them.

Looked at them and come to the conclusion that, against the measuring stick of my idealized self, I pretty much suck.

And this is why the crush scares me: because it is so much easier to be lost in the deep black hole of depression than it is to reflect honestly on your life and realize that the person you disappointed the most is yourself. That the years of self-hatred weren't because you were actually incapable of being a better person, but because you never moved beyond being that small frail child who craved love and acceptance. That it's okay to work towards an idealized version of the world: even if it is unachievable, even if you fail, the effort moves the world just a smidge that much closer to it, and that smidge can still be worth it.

Without having met him, without having said a single word to this person, he has inspired me to be a better person.

Problem is, I can't tell if my desire not to meet him is a fear of losing my idealized version of him (because let's face it, reality is dirty, and no one is perfect), or the fear of looking deeper and, instead of finding the strength to become a better person, giving up on myself.

Because, well, I really want to meet him and ask him a billion questions.

Yesterday, it was seeing graffiti written in shit.

This morning it was a steaming pile of dog shit.

Literally.

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that San Francisco is a city covered in shit.

Tonight is my first night in San Francisco.

Mostly.

I've stayed up here before, night here, night there, and a bunch of times way back when Kris and I first started dating when he lived up here. It seems a lifetime ago, actually. I hated the commute then, I hated the commute now. Having a ten minute walking commute sounds fantastic.

So, here I am, walking home.

In the City.

And I feel desperately alone.

Moving up here is the right decision, but walking back to the apartment, on my own again for the first time in a decade, I feel sorry for myself. I think of the changes in the last few years, I think of heading back to the apartment carrying my clothes and a box of toiletries, and think how this just feels completely right and completely wrong at the same time.

I think about my little brother, and his move to Portland last year (yay me!), and how he gave up his entire world to move a thousand miles away and start a new life. He moved with one friend, no job, and only a six month head start to get his feet under him.

And he did it.

He's happier than he has ever been (I think, that's the rumours I hear coming from his mouth). When he returns to his old city, his friends look at him and exclaim he has become the person he was meant to be, but couldn't quite manage in the closed town he was in, but now, now! he has blossomed, and they all love him more for becoming the person he was always supposed to be.

And as I sit in my room with my laptop balanced on my lap, thinking about how I'm willing to sacrifice this year of my life with the faith that I'll be in a better place at the other side, I take hope from my brother's strength. I'm not really alone, I'm just moving from one place to another, with an adventure along the way.

One of the features of ultimate that I really like is the giant undo button built into the game. When an infraction call is made by one team, the other team has an opportunity to consider, then accept or contest the call. Discussion can happen, or, if neither side can be shown the other side is correct, the disc goes back to its location before the call, the field is reset to the point in time when the call was made, as well as the players can recall, and play begins again.

One giant undo button.

During my day, undo is a part of my work: I can undo a coding change I made. I can undo an edit, or undo a system change, or undo a data manipulation (assuming it wasn't a lossy change).

Playing games, I can save progress in a game so that if I'm unable to continue or my character dies in the game, I can restart back at my saved location. With my newly gained knowledge I can try again.

I can shake my phone and undo the typing error I just made.

And it's all an illusion.

There really isn't a giant undo button in this world. Time goes in one direction, and it's the direction of learning, growing, being, stressing, aging, forgetting, death and chaos.

I kinda rather want a giant undo button, or maybe a big loop. Let me go back and redo parts, try again with a little more knowledge and a bit more experience.

Won't get to.

Really want to.

A typical evening routine years ago would be Kris would head to bed between 11:00 pm and midnight, and I would head to bed between around 12:30 am and 2:00 am. Bella would either have spent the evening snuggling one of us on the couch if we were working on the couch, sleeping in a dog bed on the office floor if we were in the office, or, most recently, sleeping in her bed in the Blue Room, having gone to bed around 9:00 pm or so.

Annie would be on the couch, ignoring all of us, sleeping until around 4:00 am. Invariably around four, she would wander back to the Blue Room, find the bed Bella was sleeping in, boot her out of the bed (at which point Bella would walk around the bed into the other dog bed on the other side), and fall asleep.

There used to be slight variations on the eventual location of the dogs, with Bella being in the bed snuggled in the crook of my curled legs, and Annie jumping onto the bed. Or Bella at the foot of the bed and Annie landing on her when she jumped onto the bed.

What didn't vary, however, was the 4:00 am shift. Annie never slept in the bedroom unless explicitly placed there by me or Kris.

With Bella's passing, Annie has shifted her sleeping habits. She now heads into the bedroom when Kris heads in. She starts the night sleeping in the dog bed on his side of the bed, and at some point shifts to the bed to snuggle with him.

I've always thought of Annie as the annoying dog. I will grudgingly admit, however, that she seems to sense Bella's absence and Kris' needs. She's not the emotional support doggie that Bella was, but she's doing her best with her limited skills.