Pre-Trip Jitters

I sit here burning my last stick of incense, hesitating before making more progress on the packing and preparation.
I have miles to go before I sleep, or really, not all that much, but I can make it last miles. Squeeze out the marrow of life, they say -- is this not a way to do it?
"I love deadlines -- especially the sounds they make as they go whizzing by" のよう
A cat joins me on my lap and pushes his face into my arm. His nose is cold, as are his ears. He's not going to see us for another week and a half.

You won't either, at least not in person. Maybe that's good, a change of pace, the Bob isn't lurking over every corner, listening intently in case something you say is relevant to him.
Bob isn't going to be there, confusingly not trying to make plans or conversation.
Maybe Bob needs to learn again what it is to be intentional, yet to not overthink. He has a black-and-white thinking problem sometimes, and a thinking-his-voice-and-very-presence-is-too-loud problem. Even though he has plenty of people in his life who affirm to him fairly regularly that his voice is wanted, and in fact it needs to come out more.
Bob has an ileism "problem". Make the first person third, and we can feign aloofness. Not truly needing to distance himself from the subject matter, he does make a joke out of it, but maybe there's a hint of truth in there, too, that he is a little uncomfortable with his level of confidence and intentionality.

I shot myself with my finger-gun today -- my finger-gun which has been run through a series of social experiments, and which has been found to be significantly more threatening than a nerf gun -- after I made a careless "joke" about a genderfluid cat whose name was a portmanteau of a traditionally masc & traditionally fem name. I shut up after that, and made myself small. The joke could have been worse, but it wasn't in any vein I want to continue. Self-correction, self-censorship, self-editing, it does serve a purpose. But maybe I can still learn without "killing" an imaginary lesser version of myself, eh? I don't need to stoop to Delbert Grady levels of "correction". (footnote: The Shining, in case you haven't seen it as many times as I have, and have this scene etched into your mind - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIMtJo88NCM)

"There is too much of his mother in his writing style," says a callback to Star Wars. Perhaps there is some beauty in it, but it's tinged with anxiety that overspills its bounds and makes it other people's business.

How much of this is real? What we hold in our minds is more real than reality, in some regards. We only experience reality through our filters and sensors. (tangentially related footnote: People Watching - Star Wars episode, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhNCvkUK-d4)


What will the next sesqui-week bring? Untethered from work and the familiar things, wanting to return to them initially, I also want to be even more untethered from any plans, and just sit right here and do nothing, intently. But the trip will happen, and there are VERY GOOD people on the other side of the trip, and there are VERY GOOD people going on the trip, and the trip itself should be amazing. Yes, lots of driving, but I mostly don't mind driving, even fairly long distances and hours. We will see a tiny fraction more of this great world than we usually see. We will see natural wonders and we will see things that people decided to put up because they made some sort of sense there, and we will eat good food.
And we will find a glimmer of glamour.