Triangles
2003-06-10, 8:09 p.m.

Sometimes there's advantages to being something of a pack rat. Sort of.

I was digging out the rear speakers that came with my sound card, when I happened upon a pile of floppy discs that I'd forgoten about. Most of them were blank (or at least no label - I'm notorious for having unlabeled discs) or had outdated software on them. But one was labeled 'Personal Journal I'. I pop it in, and fine some files done in MS Works format dated from back in spring of '96. Three journal entries that I'd completely forgotten about. Even when I was working on a journal back in 2000, I'm sure I wasn't remembering that I'd already tried to start one. Three whole entries spanning from the end of March to the end of May. Wow-wee.

So anyway, I manage to translate them into a readable format on Word and they're about, surprise surprise, unrequited love. That was pretty much a theme of mine pre-wife. Sad but true. (I am so glad that those days of yearning are behind me.) This got me to thinking about an old theory that I and a friend of mine cooked up, about opportunities. Windows of opportunities, like windows of entry for the space shuttle. Starts wide, then probabilites narrow it eventually down to a point, forming a triangle. Like when one meets someone new, there's a wide and optimistic line along which to manuver (which sounds cold, but that's not how I intend) to attain possible desired results. But as time passes, mitigating circumstances affect the size of the window; in the case of meeting someone new, this may be in the form of becoming 'just a friend', or outright losing interest or whatnot. Eventually it gets harder and harder to attain desired results until, finally, it's all but impossible, down to the point.

Sounds simplistic, but the concept appeals to me in some small way. I by no means live by it or anything, but it's fun to think about. It's like having one small piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and you don't know if it belongs to the puzzle you're doing, but you hang onto it anyway, just in case it fits somewhere in the future. I've got lots of puzzle pieces sitting around like that. If I were smart (which I am, certainly, not), I'd catalouge these things so I could manage to keep track of them or even at least store them away for reference one day. I wish I knew what it was that keeps me from obsessing on my life analysis. I often consider ideas like charting concepts on a big board in my basement and keeping tons of catalouged notes and pinning up significant pictures and whatnot. I think part of my fear is that, eventually, I'll be driven to the point where the wall will comprise itself of itineraries and maps and line-of-sight trajectories. I don't think I'm ready for the clocktower just yet.

As an aside, One of the people I discuss in my journal entry of the past I call 'Peter Keating'; it took me a while to remember that PK is a character in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. Then you'll know what the aforementioned person was (and sometimes still is) like.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

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