You Seem Genuinely Happy Now

Only 4.5 hours of sleep. I could feel it from the moment I woke up — that low-grade tiredness that doesn't go away just because you've gotten out of bed. I went to my brother's place anyway, sleeping gear in tow because I thought I might stay the night there instead of coming back to Jordan's. Got some cleaning done, worked on the app for a while.

At 5 PM I called Eitan.

Eitan's one of my college friends — one of the only ones I've actually stayed in regular touch with. He's a wonderful person, great conversationalist, the kind of person you can just talk to for a long time without feeling like either of you is performing. We covered a lot of ground: work and AI, the One Piece live action, imaginative worlds (he's been deep in The Wandering Inn lately — he mentioned it's something like 100 times longer than the entire Harry Potter series, which made me say damn; also, a date I'd had previously had told me about it, so now I've heard about it twice, which probably means something). We talked about the current D&D campaign — he thinks I could really lean into my divine soul sorcerer more, and honestly he's probably right. He recommended Slay the Spire, which apparently fits my brain given that I played Balatro. I updated him on the ice age life game, the whole thing with building it out using Claude.

Just — a lot of good wandering conversation. The kind I don't get often enough.

Near the end, he said something that caught me off guard, in a good way.

"You seem genuinely happy now."

And I sat with that for a second. Yeah. I think so too. Building something that's actually mine, a partner who's loving and present — it does feel like that. It feels like something has settled that was unsettled for a long time, and I don't always have language for it, but when someone who's known me for a while says it out loud, there it is.

He's on the east coast, which is the one unfortunate thing. We've teased each other about moving to the other's side, but that's a long-term tease for now. 😄

My phone died mid-evening from all the FaceTime usage, and my backup charging setup — through the Mac — wasn't working well. I spent a bit of time in that low-battery purgatory before deciding the practical thing was to just head back to Jordan's.

He was excited to see me. I slept well.