4 57 pm pdt [ the distillery ]
I had lunch with an old friend today. It's been years
since we've seen each other, besides two occasions of bumping into each
other since I've returned to Berkeley.
We only had an hour -- her lunch break from work -- but
that was plenty to catch up on each other's lives. There is something
wholly comforting about the quick summary you can make of yourself when
needed.
"After I graduated I went to New York for a while, then
I went back to LA. I had a six month contract there, and then when my
next job fell through (because my client failed to pay me) I bought a one
way ticket to the Bay and here I am. I planned on getting a day job, but
I happened to arrive just when the market crashed and I do enough
freelance work to get by, so... I'm just waiting until we move, which
should be in July, and then I'll try to find a real job again."
I didn't quite say it like that, but there it is,
several hundred web pages, several millions of bytes of text and trillions
of bytes of images wrapped up. I've even covered the next few months of
my life. It took me four sentences.
I suppose I shouldn't get so miffed when I ask people
their life story and the balk. Perhaps the idea of reducing your lifetime
of experience to one paragraph is daunting, o perhaps it is depressing. I
distill each day into a single web page and never think anything of it.