I've never gotten into Halloween as a not-little-kid. People have always asked me why; I think it freaks them out, much like the way I don't really enjoy sunlight, and even a lot of the offbeat tribe secretly thinks there's something wrong with me. If there is, and I'm not always sure and I don't usually care, it's definitely not what they think.

No, no. I'm just different. I'm just me.

I wonder if it's time for me to go away for a while. Find my fortune, learn some new languages, get a change of venue. I'm sort of guessing Europe, since I'd have to work to support the multi-year being-away that I'm thinking of. I'm sure I'd end up back here eventually, but I'm thinking that in order to find new parts of myself and enter through new gateways, mayb I need to be apart from my beautiful friends who know all the old parts. I liked Germany; I liked Paris for the short time I was there; never saw the rest of France, never visited Barcelona. Do they need software engineers in Belgium?

I have some stuff to do first, I think: get my black belt, and get this level of my career well enough established that it will be waiting for me when I get back. And, um...huh, that's it.

My first blacksmithing class tomorrow night! I expect to be sore and satisfied.