Greentext

It is kinda hard to explain and grasp just how much I have and can adapt. Probably the best two examples are weight and religion. Only somewhere around 5% of people that are morbidly obese, and manage to lose that weight at some point, then manage to keep it off for over a decade.

Very few people ever manage to grow their self awareness to the point of taking action to move away from their religion they were born into. Many people have various levels of engagement, but to actually logically break down and reason upon dogma and tribalism to the point of taking action for moral and ethical reasons is rare. I was never run a foul, offended, or wronged in some emotional way. Quite contrary I was exceptionally engaged, did a good bit if leading, and was well regarded. I know the information better than anyone else I have ever spoken to. When I asked questions, no one had substantive answers.

When I get into a subject, or hobby I do so on a level that is very intense and unlike anyone I have met before. I may find a friend that meshes with that one interest, but I have never met people that cross different spaces. Like right now I am doing CAD every day. I make stuff that is very different than anything uploaded on thingiverse or printables, the two main 3d files sharing websites. I design stuff that is unlike anything I've ever seen elsewhere too. I mull over ideas for weeks. It is always on the back of my mind. I taught myself CAD and at an advanced level beyond what most hobbyists learn.

The overall project I'm working on is for a GPU water cooler for my laptop. That in turn is for my custom agent framework in Emacs on Linux where I want to push my hardware to its limits. I got into AI after hitting a wall learning some of the material from the second year courses in computer science on my own. The agentic AI framework is basically a system to augment the LLM outputs with the materials I have in books I bought to follow along with the CS curriculum.

Another major area I dive into from time to time is electronic circuit design. I know KiCAD well and have done some rather in depth reverse engineering projects with hardware too. I can design in analog or digital and have two tooling setups for toner transfer and photolithography etching to make my own circuit boards. Coding complexity is probably my biggest weakness in hardware.

When I lost the weight, I did so as the most hardcore cyclist I have ever met. I rode in all weather. My first bike shop job was 66 miles every day round trip and I rode that for nearly 2 years. I also lead a shop ride out on most Saturday mornings, rode there and home too making that a 100+ mile day. I never had a week under 400 miles back then. I spent a lot of time on a bike. That is a chapter of my life. These are the things that define me. Holding me back from that kind of change is what I'm really talking about.

I had a really bad heart issue in the middle of a Target store one evening around 2009 and decided I wanted to change because I was on the wrong path. Before that, I was the most hardcore car nut you would have ever met. I painted cars professionally, built motors, worked in a machine shop a couple of times, ported heads for nostalgia dragsters, and was into metal fab with mig stick and tig. I was very close to doing my own metal castings, and I got into making my own custom composite parts. I specialized in plastics and repairs on stuff that couldn't be replaced with reproduction parts too. I was so into carburetors that I was studying WW2 aircraft engines.

I can geek out about nearly anything. I have so many potential things I would love to explore but haven't yet, like sewing and upholstery, sculpting, ceramics, radio, further into astronomy, radio controlled stuff, robotics and automation, homelab, FPGAs, jewelry making, mosaics, metrology, reverse engineering silicon, glass blowing, chemistry, organic chemistry, writing more science fiction, more fermentation stuff. There are so many cool things to get into and learn. I don't expect anyone to have a list that matches mine. I expect someone to have a list in the first place. These things are exciting to me, they drive me, or rather the curiosity does. To some people I am tedious and boring, but that is how I feel about the stereotypical normal stuff most people are interested in or doing. I'm more than willing to do something like reshape my life because of stuff like cycling, but I would just as soon try something else with a friend or partner to better their lives in significant ways. I will gladly reshape my interests because there is no ego or narcissism underpinning any of this. I'm not naming stuff because I care how you perceive me. I don't even think in a space like that naturally. If anything I'm hyper aware of my limitations and desire to learn more. I'm just driven by the curiosity but not like super actively either. It is a slow churn, like an unstoppable bulldozer a snail could outrun. Stand still long enough and I might grow past ya.

So for me, meeting people is simply shifting my interests around. If I was not stuck with my physical limitations, pursuing any interest of mine that has a more balanced participation between the sexes will put me on a course that intersects with at least another long term muse. My problem is that I may learn pottery, but when that moves to sintering and metal casting followed by a deep dive into CNC machining, do they follow or complain about something tedious. What about when I decide to build an EDM machine to take it a step further or I shift gears and get into music for awhile building guitar effects or amps or some analog synthesizer stuff, or writing, or airbrush graphics, or get into criterium racing. I'm not ADHD or OCD at all. I spend months to years on these things exploring them in depth.

So that is why it seems silly to go looking for someone instead of turning inwards first. Of all of my facets, companionship is not a dedicated curiosity or interest. There are many aspects of relationships I find curious and engage with in practice, but this game of hide and seek courtship rituals with perspective strangers is not at all interesting to me.

The part that is hard to understand about who I am now is that I am limited by posture. Sitting up or standing hurts like lifting weights in a gym where you're going to fail. The moment I'm upright I have around 15 minutes of a clear head, 30 until I degrade significantly, and within 1 hour I'm unable to mentally function at competent levels and highly irritable. Anything over 1 hour will begin impacting my sleep beyond 24 hours. By around 3 hours, it will take me a week to fully recover to a consistent circadian rhythm. It compounds worse for subsequent days of activities or random injuries that occur around once or twice a month. I appear fine other than a little limp in my gate and I can fake that if I try. Sitting in a restaurant with a date, I am just not me. I can do a lot to mask just how much pain I am in but it is miserable, and conversationally I'm not myself. To speak my mind openly, I need to be lying down and without a lot of stress beforehand. So I exist in this homebound prison. I have nothing to offer anyone anyways. And I have had to come to terms with that. Most of me died, only a shell survived. I cannot change that so I make the best of what I have.