I left Boston last night. It doesn't feel as final as it should; there was
no ritual to close it with.
Last-minute crunch at work to finish a project; a rush to the gym to
complete that final workout (until I settle back in at UCI). Weighed in at
my best so far, -41. Cleaned out the office.
There was a W3C dinner that evening for the push workshop; I was idly
hoping to be invited, but I never heard back. I didn't get to meet and say
good bye to Sally or Jay or Robert or Deb or Donna or Keith (although we
should still talk about that, Dawson...). I didn't get to meet Laura or
Kakoli or Duck on the way either -- it was too late, Rohit streaking out
under cover of night...
And now? My life has changed so much in the closing pages of this chapter,
but it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. The reader is left to
wonder, what has really changed?
Coming back home, in the last twenty four hours, I've eaten a Big King, a
small McDonald's fries, a cake donut, a danish, a croissant, a bagel with
cream cheese, a ham-and-turkey sandwich with mayo, a bit of italian sausage
soup, tricolor cheese ravioli with smoked salmon, two corners of red
snapper, beef wellington, a sliver of chocolate mouse cake, a Snickers
ice-cream bar, one-and-half net chocolate chip cookies, half a brownie,
shrimp tempura with buckwheat noodle soup, and just for good measure
because my dad guilted me for not having dinner at home, another round of
lamb curry, a tandoori chicken leg, and another cake donut (on my own).
And I didn't even realize it.
This isn't a 'rebound' excess reaction. This is how I eat. I eat because
things seem tasty, because I *might* be missing out on something life
offers, and if I do, I damn well finish what I took. This is not new. It's
been my entire life except for the last thirteen weeks. It's not stress,
it's not unhappiness... in small part, it's boredom, since that's how I
entertain myself, in very large part it's how I react to opportunity:
greedily living life to its fullest.
And I'm not backing down from that philosophy one iota!
(I just need to learn not to apply it to food :-)
Even after acknowledging the emotional issues tied up in food, it *IS* like
holding your breath for the rest of your life. I'm not quitting here, by
any means, but I haven't had to really test myself yet, either.
And yes, DanK, vanity helps... but that's a dangerous feedback cycle to
harness, since that feedback can be very rare, and inconsistent to boot!
Anyway, I came in to say that I'm not sure what I've just stepped across.
The boundaries are so smeared, so vague between chapters, places, people,
jobs. That's the double-edged sword: except for two people, everyone I love
from Boston is still here in cyberspace; even in physical space I'm no more
than a click of the heels and 7-15 hours away. In the FoRK universe,
there's no passage left to celebrate...
Onward,
Rohit Khare
--- Rohit Khare /// MCI Internet Architecture (BOS) /// khare@mci.net Voice+Pager: (617) 960-5131 VNet: 370-5131 Fax: (617) 960-1009