“I am anxious for this car. I hope I get a chance to drive it around it once or twice,” dad said with a sincere smile.

I spent Valentine’s Day 2022 with A in Berkeley.

Come Valentine’s Day 2023, which I’m sure I spent with my family and sister, I probably dreaded it and buried myself in the false hope that she was coming back soon.

I also dreaded Valentine’s Day 2024, and feared she was with someone else.

This year, I have absolutely positively no fears or pain at all. I had no feelings around Valentine’s Day at all, really. Everything in my life is coming together. So many absolutely incredible things have happened. This job, Las Vegas, racing the super cars, receiving my Tudor Black Bay 58, BUYING MY HYUNDAI VELOSTER N. Once I fix my sleep, that will mirror in my life. No anxiety, no fear.

And maybe I needed to reach this level of unaffectedness for the path to be cleared. And that could only happen with time. But its not that it NEEDED to take a long time, but that the growth required time.

Seeing how literally everything in my life either has or is coming together for me, shows me what this will be like too.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, but especially this week while staying home from work. FINISH THE BOOK. You don’t have to be at ** for 2.5 years.

Being tucked under the blankets during the evening of a cold rainy day with my earbuds in and a meditation playing, must be the nicest thing ever.

On paper, you can go out with I, you two may hit it off and enter a serious and meaningful relationship. One where you’re in the 30s. The vibe is a more serious one compared to the connections in my 20s. The stakes are higher. You have money now, too. You travel, you grow together. She’s a household name with your family and friends.

“How’s Inaara?” The family asks.

Mom likes her.

“When do you think you may want to settle down with her?” Mom asks one day when its just us alone, cooking in the kitchen.

That’s on paper. But in reality, none of this was possible. Because the person I’m meant to be with is out there, and there’s only a little bit of growing left for us to join one another.

To feel what its like to have all the things you previously dreamed of, in the place you dreamed of them for.

“When I was a fighting man, the kettle drums they beat
The people scattered gold dust before my horse’s feet.
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine cup, and daggers at my back.” ^[1]

“Gleaming shell of an outworn lie, fable of Right divine
You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.
The throne that I won by blood and sweat, by Crom, I will not sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell.” ^[2]

“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft, and the lie
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing
Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king.” ^[1]

This is helping me a lot right now, because I’m growing tired of being told what to do.

A meditation in front of Gleason…

A Poltergeist pizza from Extreme Pizza…

Gladiator II

Monk: Monk and the Three Julies

And knowledge that this time tomorrow, I will be driving stick!!!