The Robot Co-op

During today’s lunch at Ballet, Bob lost again at CCR. Whereas last night, at our first SCUBA class, he won second place in the six-lap pool snorkeling exercise. I hadn’t noticed this achievement, but he informed us of it over lunch. Go Bob! Thing is, it wasn’t actually a competition. So I informed him of that over lunch as well. I’m hoping Bob doesn’t invent another race tomorrow, because I’ll be his novice diving buddy in the cold, vast waters of the Puget Sound. Did you know that I coined my standard username to combine “Puget” with “fugitive” and refer to being a solitary transplant to Seattle? This was circa 1994, but I’ve still never been in the Sound. Did you know that it was Jacques Cousteau’s second favorite place in the world to dive? True story. I hope Jacques knew what he was talking about, because it’s going to be cold as hell down there, and damn lonesome if I can’t keep up with Speedy McScotlandbound.

Fresh back from Alaska attending my 20 year high school reunion and fishing with my brother Conrad I find myself reflecting on crazy social dynamics and the book Status Anxiety which I finished reading in AK. The good news is that the reunion was a total blast—but it wasn’t without a fair amount of self-reflection about the state of my life. My fellow classmates likely had a similar state-of-the-union speech being composed and revised in their own heads.

I chalk a lot of this up to the question “what will people think about me?”. Which is kind of a crazy question in retrospect as everyone was simply happy to see one another. But somewhere between reuniting with old friends, fishing on the Kenai River (do this before you die, by the way) and finshing off the stellar Status Anxiety, I came to a new view of how much energy people waste on thinking about what other people think about them. Myself included. In the end, though, the fishing and friendships are most important. A special shout out to Xavier for some unexpected late night reunion chats about the state of our past and present lives and moving beyond past perceptions of ourselves into a brighter future.

While I was reuniting, Todd was busy Landmarking. I believe that we had parallel experiences using different methods. Todd?

Hello, Daniel. Thank you for quoting Peaches & Herb. See how open and communicative I am being by answering you via this blog post? Chalk it up to my $425 journey over the weekend. While you attended your reunion, I attended a nonlinear, authoritarian-driven weekend of intensive introspection. The Landmark Forum did have a lot to do with the absurdity of social anxieties, how strongly they dictate our lives yet how baseless they are, being universal. (Why feel judged by everyone if everyone is feeling equally judged by me?) And, although they never use these terms, the Forum has a lot to do with living life from an existential perspective, not worrying so much about where you come from or how you’ve been or what stories you’ve carried with you since high school, but deciding how to be right now and where you want to go from here. Personally, I want to be open to the idea of lunch, and then I want to create a future where we go and eat some.

Hodel lost the lunch gamble and purchased Korean food for us yesterday. We explored how dual-government taxation works when a U.S. citizen is working overseas for an extended period, as Bob will be doing when he skirts off to Scotland. We dreamed of a world in which everyone who wants one can have a network-hosted music collection. We covered the latest developments in Rails. We also celebrated our half millionth 43 Things user, who created his account on Tuesday to notify the world that he endeavors to watch every single episode of Law & Order. To which we can only respond a) to each their own and b) best of luck.

Without gambling a penny on advertising, we are halfway to Leroy’s folks.