Moonraker

Hey. Not raining today but the fog is wetter than usual. Spent a lot of the last few weeks with old friends and new friends. These days I feel comfortable around other people in a way I haven't for at least ten years. I've been writing a lot as well but I threw all of it out because none of it felt right. It was too.. formal? controlled? like I'm pretending that I walk around in expensive sneakers and keep abreast of the latest trends when the truth is that I live my life in fraying jeans and shoes that literally have holes in them.

Yesterday I visited a friend who owns various elements in the form of cubes. He showed me a cube of magnesium (do not lick) and a glass cube containing bromine, which is an ominous red liquid at room temperature. Someone passed me a tungsten cube (heavy) and my friend requested that he kindly do not do that above the bromine because if the glass breaks we'd have to evacuate the building and go to the hospital.

I applied for a role as an engineer at an AI lab studying unconventional approaches to intelligence and in the interview of course I couldn't help but expound on my own unconventional ideas about evolution and self-organization. Now they're considering giving me a research position to work on my own project. I'm very excited about this possibility. I've wanted it for a long, long time.

It's been about a year since I started meditating seriously. When I started to see real effects I swore up and down that I would never become an evangelist like that one guy on twitter but I'm allowing myself just this paragraph. It works. It really, really works. A year ago I felt like acid was flowing in my veins. Now, and especially in the last month, my default state of mind suggests adjectives like "stability" and "peace." I don't react when people are rude to me. I don't worry about the vast majority of things that used to concern me. Sometimes I'm driving around and I feel sudden, brimming joy that the world exists and that I get to live in it.

I've been thinking more about money. I used to believe that asceticism and frugality were noble, but now I'm starting to realize that wealth can be earned through fair means. For a long time I was incapable of spending much money on myself; I would regularly walk an hour at night instead of, like, getting a $20 uber. Now I want to live by myself instead of with roommates, I want a place that's big enough to host parties, eventually I want a greenhouse and a machine shop and a huge library with those ladders that roll around. At some point I would love to provide for a family. Money is a tool.

The last five years have been challenging and confusing, but the storm is clearing, our colors are billowing on the masthead, and wind has filled the sails. The unknown waters softly beckon.

---

A moonraker, also known as a moonsail, is a square sail flown immediately above a skysail on the royal masts of a square-rigged sailing ship.