Crystals and RVs

Crystal festival at the Reno convention center today. I was not prepared for how much I'd like it. Table after table of stones and crystals in every shape and texture imaginable — the colors are what got me, specifically. Light lime green, bright blue, calm pink. Some of them just draw you in without explanation. I spent a while near the amber section: $2 per gram, which feels almost impossibly cheap for something that's literally millions of years old with things trapped inside it. The ones they had weren't that exciting — no recognizable bugs, mostly just cloudy inclusions — but still. Amber.

Jordan got overwhelmed pretty quickly and we left after a bit. Later he mentioned that the crowd didn't seem that attractive to him, which — I mean — yes, it's a crystal festival in Reno, the hippie contingent is going to be well represented. Funny that that's the detail he clocked. 😂

We snuck into the RV exhibition happening in the same complex. Jordan liked that a lot more.

It was genuinely impressive — sprinter vans tricked out into tiny homes, the kind you mount on the bed of a pickup truck, giant RVs, things that were basically two-story structures on wheels. A whole spectrum of mobile living. Jordan's been talking about a sprinter van adventure for a while now, and I could see it clicking for him in there — he was energized in a way he wasn't at the crystals. He's been making noises about putting a downpayment on something.

I'm intrigued. Life in the wilderness, moving around — there's something appealing about the image of it. But I'm careful not to dream too big about that specific future when my financial situation is so different from his. I'm aware of the gap.

Costco. Pizza, $10. Jordan's been waiting for the Costco-brand energy drinks to hit the shelves — not there yet. We made up for it with the free samples.

We came home and I worked on the projects. At some point there was a small tension between us — nothing serious, but it was there. It resolved itself the natural way: he went out to get something, I took Bear for a walk, and he caught up with us partway through. That was enough. We walked back together.

Later we sat in the backyard and watched the sunset. Jordan called his dad and they talked about the family visit last week — Steve had paid to fly out his two younger half-sisters (twin sisters, about twenty years younger than him) to come see the life he'd built here. Katie had been shaken by it too, but in a grateful way — grateful for how she and Jordan were raised, compared to just... letting your kids drift. One of the sisters has a son who's 26, doesn't drive, doesn't work, stays home all day. He wants to do game development eventually. Very stuck.

I thought about a family friend of mine who's around my age. Similar situation — tried working at a software company, didn't like it, stopped entirely, and has been at his parents' place since. His life feels restricted, like he's sealed into his comfort zone and the walls just keep getting smaller. I get it, genuinely. The corporate software world can feel soul-crushing in ways that are hard to explain to people who don't feel it.

He told me once that he doesn't play video games anymore. He feels guilty. And I was like — damn, I get the guilt, but not letting yourself enjoy the things you love because you feel guilty, that's a whole other level of self-entrapment. He feels like an INFP who's gotten very deep into unresolved feelings and tensions, unable to move through them. I'm glad I'm an INFJ. I feel a lot too, but there's usually some thread I can pull, some way to start untangling. Not always, but sometimes. That matters.

But I'm building something now. Something I actually find fun, something that feels like mine. And with Claude — it's a strange thing to say but the framing that works for me is: I'm the team lead, Claude is my developer. My visions, my direction. That feels true in a way that a lot of work hasn't felt true before.

At least I'm moving. That's the difference, I think.