A friend asked me today, “What’s new with Zack?” and I realized I didn’t have an answer. So, Jill, here’s what I should have said over sandwiches:
I’m working and finding time to play — not writing, but at least thinking, experiencing, gathering mistakes for the future. My past is all mistakes — a recent visit from a long-time friend, bearing stories of people I’ve once loved, confirmed that — and so I might as well stockpile some new regrets.
But maybe there are some things that are new with Zack. I’ll move into a new apartment in July, and the fact that it’s far from my girlfriend’s place means I’ll probably need to buy a new bike. In August, they’ll put together teams at iO, so I’m devoting the next three months to preparing for that inevitable (a) failure or (b) success I’ll never be able to credit myself for.
I am, I suppose, finding success at work, but that’s just work, who cares; life happens between the hours of 5 p.m. and that moment you wake up screaming at 2 a.m. and see a black spider crawling on your bed and leaping into the air and swirling toward the wall, but then you realize it’s just a shadow and settle back down onto the shuffled pillows. Those next five hours, after the sweat cools on my face, are when I’m most at peace.
