My mood lightened when I went over to learn contract bridge, which soon had my head swimming in details. It's the most complex game I've ever tried to play, perfect for geeks, with card-counting, reading tells, and intuiting stuff. It's a lot to keep track of when you're trying to learn the mechanics as well as not suck.

The third guy was a professional opera singer I'd met before. The fourth was an older gentleman, who, with his first name, seemed kinda familiar, and since his profile was unusual--age, general mannerisms, profession of being a musician and musical manager--I eventually asked his last name, and it turns out he managed the House Jacks, and I know him from my past adventures around 1995-1999 participating in the pop a cappella scene. I guess it's a smaller world than I thought.

I'm restless, so life feels dull. It's true that I don't have much, if anything, challenging me right now: work is more iterations of the same problems, not really broadening my skills at the moment, certainly not in any direction I'm interested in. Aikido is just aikido, a spiritual practice and, yes, a challenge in its own way, but not what I'm thinking of. My emotional life is calm, without newness or risk, deepening connections with my horde of old, already-trusted friends. If I can stop being paranoid about money for another forty dollars or so, I can finish buying the bare minimum of gear to make silver chains, so that's something, but man. Something's gonna give: I can't stay this unfocused and twitchy, and my life can't stay this boring. This has happened before, of course, but this time around I can see it happening, I see what's really going on inside me, and I can be aware of the choices I make, unlike in the past, when this sort of transition in my life resulted in unsatisfying, failed, and sometimes excruciatingly painful relationships with women. *grin* I'll take whatever improvements I can get...