What a packed week and weekend. I worked on a seemingly endless rotation of web projects, thankfully mostly of my own rather than the web agency's, which normally move on the most painfully glacial work cycle. I managed to squeeze in some solid music-making as well, recorded a few new tunes with the band in my newly acoustically-treated practice space, which now sounds clearer and cleaner than it ever has. There were a few good salads, too -- greens/spring onions/grilled summer squash, and an Armenian cucumber/bell pepper/snap peas/sliced almonds deal. I'm all about salads these days. I'm very fond of the spring onions, slicing them long-wise into elegant wisps. The squash is quite good right now, waxy and lustrous, and variously odd-shaped. Though the Bay is gray and chilly right now, the vegetables definitely say summer.

It's been one of those stretches where I feel slightly more conscious of couplings; perhaps it's the grayness making me more introspective. Not that I feel lonely or envious or unhappy about myself -- in fact, I feel better than I ever have in my life -- but it's hard not to notice that so many around me have a someone else, not to mention I'm at That Age At Which I'm Supposed To Begin To Worry About It (Though Arbitrarily Capitalized). It does linger sometimes, though not nearly as bad as it has in the past. I'm comfortable with who I am, and have accepted the unpredictable reality we all share as free and imaginative individuals. It's a wonder that anyone finds love at all; we're frivilous, emotional, prone to mistakes and irrational glorifications, subject to our practical and physical limits, but also irrepressibly idealistic, and full of desires of limitless scale, and, if we're lucky, empowered by our ingenuity and energy to fulfill them. You're extraordinarily lucky if you find a complementary someone, and it's worthy of celebration. As for the rest of us, we're not unlucky nor less loved -- we're just strong and beholden by different measures. This is why online dating is so unhealthy, especially post-breakup. It pummels us with the notion that we need to prove our worth when our worth is implicit, and portrays everyone as freely floating, simple and at a fingertip's reach -- a saccharine fantasy. I'm trying to be great by no specific standard, and face romance squarely head-on. There's always that cute girl or boy who passes by, who in that brief moment you think you know and wish you could and seems to carry a universe of feeling, though you've never spoke. I enjoy that moment, and will continue to enjoy it, along with everything else, outside, amongst a hundred thousand other moments.