White and Nerdy

View LA Social in a larger map

Because I am a nerd, I created a Google Map to approximate the general circumference of my life in LA, hopefully to help me discern where I should look for a new place to live. I am the big house in the middle, blue is work, red are my girlfriends, green is Ultimate. (If you live in LA and are not on my map yet, sorry! Doesn't mean you're not dear to my heart. It's an early version that doesn't account for anything not on my radar on a weekly basis). As you can see, basically I am at the hub of a non-trivially-sized wheel. Central to everything and close to nothing.

Now, perhaps, I need someone nerdier than I to write a program weighting the personal value and traveling frequency of each point on the map, accounting for negative values such as locations that would add traffic, and giving me a geometric weighted average location of where I should move, to maximize my geographic happiness.

Volunteers? Anyone?

Or, I could recognize that every decision involves loss... that to move towards something means moving away from other potentially valuable things (literally and figuratively)... and that eventually (though I'm not sure if I am there yet) I am going to have to just choose a side of town and get on with my life.

Upswing

Ah, finally. Getting a bit of my groove back after a long spring.

I became a part-time case manager, watched one of my clients come very, very close to dying at his own hand, went to Utah, went to Berkeley, injured my ankle, spent a weekend at a tournament with both of my exes, went out on a few dates with a guy who was 6'10" and drove a corvette, biked a century, went back to church, went back to therapy, went to an 80s party... and cried through almost all of it.

It's nice to be back on an upswing!

I think I'm realizing (again) how sensitive I am to social connection. Something as simple as my roommate being pretty much MIA for two months and counting has made a huge difference in my outlook. Coming home to an empty house, ending the day alone, doesn't do good things to my psyche. I'm managing work stress enough these days to go out and do things in the evening, which is helping immensely, but I think my long-term strategy needs to be to find some communal living.

Yes, your bad. Your very very bad.

I just had words with a hospital social worker who was supposed to get my client (who has a habit of wandering three cities away without shoes) into a locked facility, but sent him home instead.

Her response?

"Oh, sorry. My bad."