Now that the dust is settling, and I’m off to Oahu and not the Bay Area like I thought, I’d like to describe how I now feel after that crazy year:
- The taste is more bitter than sweet. It all comes down to the people. The people who weren’t directly involved or responsible for my livelihood were 100% awesome. All others were not cool. Emotionally and spiritually gawky and stunted. Sickly souls. Kinda ironic because everyone else made it survivable. Also makes sense, though.
- It seems like a hidden ocean. Like something that happened in another dimension. My memories of running all those days alone in Dogpatch and Potrero feel like they are so far away, like the blurry part of a tilt shift photo. What was I doing there?
- I tend to compare the things around me to the things in San Francisco. La Boulange vs. Waimea Coffee Company. Hawaii startup to San Fran startup. SF Facebook friends and their updates versus everyone else’s. In other words, San Francisco is my new measuring stick.
- I still freaking want to go back. I wasn’t done there, or anywhere on the Mainland for that matter. Going to Oahu feels like a very strange detour—I’m going back to the ocean right after breaking up with her. Shit—I still remember that really warm day on the back porch in the Mission when I declaratively de-waxed my board as a testament to the end of surfing. And now I’m moving to the North Shore?
- Humbled. I got steamrolled by the harshness, the challenge of what it really takes to be successful. I mean it’s cool and all that I faced it head-on like an effin’ kamikaze , but the story was not supposed to end that way.
Then again, the story isn’t done. It’s just the end of a chapter.