I went to get a haircut. It was the middle of the day, and the warmth of the sun felt so unexpected against the winter I was living in. I guess I hadn’t been out of the house in a while. It was mild enough to drive with the windows down, and The Alchemy Index (Air/Earth) was on but I felt nothing. The coming of spring has always lightened my mood, but warmth wasn’t enough to reach inside me.

This numbness haunts me. It’s like my emotions have died, and I can’t tell if I like it or not. You know in Fight Club when the narrator says, “After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down.”? This inner struggle has definitely put my life on mute. Sometimes I wonder if I’d jump out of the way if a car came barreling towards me, whether my reflexes for self-preservation are still working.

People have been supportive in very creative ways. Passing on music, notes, recommendations, personal experiences, and other acknowledgments of the pain. They walk around me as if on eggshells, unsure of what to do. I’d tell them if I knew myself. I feel guilty and undeserving of the attention, but touched at the same time.

I’ve been staying away from everyone because it’s getting harder to keep up the façade. I’m too tired to pretend like everything is fine. I don’t talk to anyone but John, who acts as if nothing happened because the whole situation makes him uncomfortable. I’m not working from home anymore, so I hide in my office at work. I wear the same clothes every day and no one seems to notice. I can’t remember the last time I shaved but I think it was over a week ago.

The hardest part is trying to accomplish things when I’m so uninspired. My calendar has filled out to the middle of April — projects I took on and plans I made when I needed a distraction — but now all I want is a nice chunk of free time for some hedonism.

I feel fragile and stable all at once. It’s not like I’m in a crisis, but nothing’s been resolved either.

For about three days last week I couldn’t stop writing. Now I don’t know what to say anymore.

I’m free again after my training, and Dave takes me to his favourite restaurant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girlfriend. It’s a small, family-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appropriately accented waitress.

Over dinner, we compare our regional differences. I ask them what it means when someone says “A quarter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quarter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (sometimes, depending on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house¹. I ask them if they have bubble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restaurant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves poutine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, contrasted from their “huh” used at the end of a sentence to emphasize a point.

Dave and I drive to downtown Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave organizes the Collective, a group of creative people with a certain energy, and a void in their lives when it comes to someone with whom to discuss their endeavors on a practical, nonthreatening, philanthropic level.

I repeat a person’s name after being introduced to them, a trick I learned from the client specialist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each other, and Dave explains, along with a story:

When my sister and I were kids, we imagined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we needed an older sister and a younger brother to round out the sibling experience. As the oldest brother, I needed to know what having an older sister was like. And we also chose personalities to go with them. I think the older sister was a heavyset, strong girl with a determined, mothering tendency toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hockey or lacrosse when she went to college had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger brother would be a slender, artistic type that was a stylish and careful dresser; “metrosexual” was the term we’d have used, my sister commented recently, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yesterday, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s wondering if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of brilliant conversation and exchange of energy, we go our separate ways. These are my people, and I feel the need to start something similar in Ottawa.

I take a picture of us because I leave tomorrow, shortly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but certainly wishing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was another kindred soul in the world.

1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange. [↑]

The training is light and relaxed. I avoid wearing my name tag, but not the awkward round of introductions everyone has to make around the class. We finish early for the day, and I wonder if there’ll be a test at the end as part of my certification.

I vaguely remember that Dave Seah, my online mentor and personal coach, lives in New Hampshire. We met four years ago when I joined 9rules, and immediately developed a connection. His writing, ideas, and achievements have always inspired me, and he’s been the only person to make a guest post on my blog.

I call him, and as fate would have it, he lives 10 minutes from my hotel. For years, I’ve wondered if he had a New Hampshire accent, and I finally find out he speaks just like me.

Dave picks me up and whisks me away to Factory 99, an open artist studio converted from an old factory, to meet Sid. Sid is a photographer trying to turn his passion into his living. I see his photos, and pick his brain about off-camera flashes, exposure, post-processing, backdrops, and lighting for much longer than I should have. I can’t even explain how many questions he’s answered. I feel like I’ve been through a workshop, and leave with an urgency to try everything I’ve learned. It’s easy to see why Dave is such good friends with him, and the synergy continues.

From there we take a stroll to downtown and onto Main Street. It’s only sunset, and many stores are closed, a sign of the economic downturn. It’s a small city we’re in¹, and there’s almost nothing of note, save for the triangle manhole covers.

We make a quick stop at his house, nestled among evergreens and a cosy part of town, to check on a turkey he’s been slow cooking. I finally get a chance to see his studio in real life. I recognize the laptop he purchased for his project. I see his handwriting. His gun vault. His OLPC laptop. His cats. All the little details I’ve glimpsed from his photos are in front of me now.

We look for a place to have dinner, and decide on some Asian food. He takes us to a Korean/Japanese restaurant. I let him order everything for the both of us. Just from hearing him describe the unagi, I can tell he’s one of the few people who analyze and study and appreciate food the way I do.

Over our steaming bowls of rice and tea, we talk as if we’ve known each other our entire lives. I realize just how similar we are, how we’re at the same stage in life, both self-aware, emotionally intelligent, wondering the same things, figuring out the mysteries of life, and trying to sustain ourselves on what we love doing.

I don’t feel so alone anymore.

1. Compared to Ottawa, at least, at only one tenth the population [↑]

I pack light. A single lens, and only carry-on baggage.

This plane takes me to a more central airport. Every seat has a USB plug, a power outlet, and a video screen that lets you choose what you want to watch. I make a note to fly Air Canada from now on.

In stark contrast, my connecting flight has two propellers.

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“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song during a recent transition, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — contentment, sadness, lonliness, morning, mourning, and moulting.

In a way, I’m forcing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my therapist recommended, it explains “Change requires willingness to experience pain”, and I’m going through this exactly. I’m constantly stepping out of my comfort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trepidation than excitement. It’d be so much easier to fall into old mental habits, as unhealthy as they are.

On mornings like this, I sit in my living room with the curtains open. It makes me self-conscious to be sitting there with houses across the street getting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that someone else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibrancy, and people just like me.

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The second Cranium Party went exceedingly well, even though not a single one of my core friends was there. In fact, aside from Jess, it was an entirely different group from last time, and none of the four groups of people knew each other, but that didn’t stop it from being an awesome party and everyone got along famously. Through the night, I heard people asking each other, “And how do you know Jeff?”

People brought all sorts of snacks, but more importantly, they also helped me eat them. Of note was Audra bringing a tub of green tea and honey vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which I had never even heard of before.

To make it interesting, I told everyone that the losing team would have to perform a talent. Some came prepared, others came with the attitude that they wouldn’t lose.

Audra’s talent is speech writing, but since she couldn’t perform that, she did a rendition of a song she wrote with Jesse three years ago about their cat Zoey. And the song wasn’t just a short jingle, it was a full piece with proper song structure and clever rhymes. If only I wasn’t laughing so hard that I kept shaking the camera.

Sergei didn’t have a talent prepared, but since I knew that he used to study martial arts, I asked him if he could demonstrate what he knew. He suggested that he could blow out a candle with a punch, and no one was left unmoved.

Shawn brought his beautifully carved didgeridoo to play as his talent. Even though he didn’t lose, people were still intrigued enough that they wanted to try it. And, of course, Jesse added his own flavour at the end.

My therapist has the curious habit of pushing his lower lip into his upper gums when thinking. He also has a very particular way of talking, and sometimes I wonder if I could imitate him.

I went into my session feeling great, and left with a little more modesty than when I started. I may pride myself on my self-awareness, but he’s always there to remind me that some problems are rooted in my subconscious. While my feeling of emptiness has disappeared, there are still a few underlying issues, such as why I started to feel that emptiness in the first place. He said that when we meet again that it should be on a regular basis, and I shouldn’t wait for a crisis to begin fixing issues. I agreed, but wanted to give things a chance on my own first, armed with this new-found enlightenment.

He approaches my situation from such a perpendicular perspective. It’s always a view I’ve never considered before. When I first went to see him, it was for my anxiety attacks. Not for the other deep-rooted emotional problems I had (and was unaware of). Sometimes, I wonder if we’ll ever get to the point where he’ll say to me, “You know what, Jeff, I don’t think you need to come here anymore.”

Before getting on his train, Jason asked me if I was a hug-person. It was the right question, because I’m most assuredly a hug-person, and we embraced before he stepped out onto the platform.

We grew up at the same time in the same neighbourhood — a small suburb somewhere in the middle of the 500km that separates us — but never had a chance to meet until he gave a presentation in town for the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector. Until now, we only communicated through blog comments and e-mail exchanges.

When I first met him, it struck me how much tall he was, and how much deeper his voice was than I expected.

Jason is like me in so many ways, something I find extremely rare. We share a strong self-awareness and a penchant for self-improvement, as well as the same views on love and tastes in women. Perhaps it could be said that Jason is an extroverted version of me. We could discuss things we normally reserve for our close friends, and continue as if we had already known each other’s stories for years. He’s a true kindred spirit, and many times I felt like believing in him meant I believed in myself as well.

Brunch was filled with such stimulation that I forgot to take a picture, so I settled for this one when I went to see him off at the train station. I’m so glad I was able to capture his perpetual smile, that same smile I see in his pictures when he traveling the world, in Budapest, Ghana, New Orleans, and other places with names too foreign for me to remember.

I’ve been living the strangest existence lately. It’s been a life without structure or meaning. I wonder what I’ll think of this phase of my life when I look back in five years.

Some days are easier than others. Sometimes, it’s a struggle just to find a reason to exist.

I have to admit that every pain, every sadness is inspiring. It may make my fingers bleed and my lungs ache, but the pure emotion that comes out of it is worth it, because that means I’m feeling something, instead of the numbness that scares me most.

My one mistake was trying to forget someone, when instead I should have been trying to forget life in general. I’ve always had the habit of thinking too much, and not doing enough. I’ve been trying to set goals to get somewhere, when it’s working toward those goals that’s the important part.

I made an appointment with my therapist again¹, because something is definitely wrong with me right now. It feels like I have the world at my fingertips. I have so much time and opportunity on my side. I laugh at the right jokes. I dance at the right songs. It’s all staring me in the face, but everything still feels empty.

I’m not looking for answers. I just want to stop asking questions.

1. I haven’t been back since last October [↑]

I spent a great deal of time looking for Heather’s blond bob among the sea of dark hair.

I stood by her print, titled “Upper Pisang”, to hear what people were saying about it. An hoary old woman and her effeminate nephew (to whom she was sure to introduce me) enjoyed the colours and the glimmer. She decided to make a bid on it, and I took this shot.

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We cover a lot of ground on the drive, stuff I wouldn’t admit to just anyone. It’s good to have a set amount of time for some one on one. We see each other at parties, but it’s never time by ourselves.

We get there a few hours early because it isn’t so much about the game as hanging out with the two friends I don’t see enough. There’s a cooler full of snow and beer, and the food is coming in protein; pigs-in-blankets, ground beef nachos, chicken fingers, crab dip, meat balls.

For a night, I’m with guys who punch arms, exchange verbal jabs, and laugh at blue collar jokes. Two little girls run around, and no one ever lets that change them. Now they’re fathers, but they’ll always be real men.

Cause stuff like this can happen any time.

(I love Audra’s laugh. Conversely, I hate mine.)

(+50 bonus points if you get the song reference.)

I’m getting a haircut today. I tend to look a great deal frumpier when a month has passed, which is also around the time my hair starts to piss me off, in a “WHY WON’T YOU STAY LIKE THAT?! NO, LIKE THAT. AAAAARGGGHHGH” kind of way.

My last one was on Christmas Eve, in the middle of a rushed holiday schedule, and I remember exactly the frame of mind I had when I went for that haircut. It feels like I’ve been through so much since then; emotional changes, personal epiphanies, and life experienced. It’s only been a little over a month.

Sometimes, I wonder if it would be scary to be my friend or lover, because of how much transformation I can go through in short periods of time. Julie once said I had changed a lot in the year that I knew her at the time. I wanted her to quantify that for me, but I didn’t, hoping it was generally for the better.

I can only hope it’s always an improvement.

Modest Mouse used to be the best kept indie rock secret. Then they let Gravity Rides Everything be used in a Nissan commercial. Then they did Saturday Night Live. Then they did The O.C. (Really, Modest Mouse? REALLY?). Then they appeared on Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, and now I wonder if they were just sellouts doing it for the money to begin with.

But before all that happened, or perhaps as it happened, they came out with Float On.

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This was the song of 2004. It defined the year for me. I was picking myself up off the floor after a torrid relationship, and settling down alone, finding my own little bit of peace.

That was six years ago, and I’m back there again. I had an odd moment of serenity as I left the staircase to the Tai Chi studio tonight, and walked into the frigid, calm air. Sort of like I had no hope, but that didn’t matter because I didn’t need hope; I had my hands, my senses, my wits, and my camera, and that was good enough.

I’m sure the fact that I’ve starting working from home four days out of the week has something to do with it. I can work on projects with my music loud, and my pjs on. I don’t get interrupted, so my productivity is great.

Okay, so I’ve been avoiding any movies or TV shows with dating or romance. I’m sticking strictly to Babylon 5 and The Sopranos. It’s been working, because I’ve been feeling better about myself and my current situation. Thinking: “Maybe I’m a nice secret right now”.