Tripping Out

Last week was a very odd conjunction of coincidence I’m still trying to understand. The aftermath of which left a reverberating melancholy and nostalgia, difficult to dispel, and all too tempting to embrace. It was one of those times where I question the entropy of the universe itself, as pure serendipity would be an impossible convergence.

And yet..

An Expert Opinion

I drove to Chicago on Tuesday to present a talk on the pg_timeseries extension to the Chicago Postgres User Group. I’ve been a fixture of that group since it was formed in 2011, and since I still live in Illinois, it’s not uncommon for me to present on one topic or another.

The CPUG has grown tremendously over the years. Based purely on membership count through Meetup, it’s easily the largest Postgres group in the USA. Henrietta has worked tirelessly to keep the PUG relevant, and I’m certain it’s mainly through her efforts that Chicago has a thriving Postgres community to this day.

So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at the level of attendance; it seems like Postgres still has its fans in the Windy City. The talk went well, I think, and I’ll be posting a follow-up based on one of the questions raised during the Q&A now that my benchmarks are complete.

All in all, it was a good beginning to an extremely strange week. Though there’s always that tiny shadow of doubt I carry with me to every event. That sliver of Imposter Syndrome I can’t seem to shake. Once I turn off the mic and retreat once again to my self-imposed isolation.

There were still two events to go.

Finding a Frog

A few weeks ago, a coworker from my first job in the Chicago area contacted me through LinkedIn and said they were having a reunion of sorts. Leapfrog Online was a customer acquisition firm based in Evanston, based around search engine optimization, ad buys, and other techniques to funnel users to various clients. I was their DBA from 2005 to 2010, meaning I haven’t seen most of these people in nearly 15 years.

So hey, why not? Purely by coincidence, this event was taking place on Thursday, the same week I just happened to be in Chicago for my Postgres talk. What are the odds? I’ll freely admit that I didn’t expect to do much socializing. I don’t keep in touch very well in general; it’s just not in my nature. But I could certainly Wallflower my way to learning how everyone was doing these days.

Rather than driving back home since I’d just have to drive back in two days, I used some saved hotel points and booked a two-night stay in Skokie. I actually almost forgot to drive to Evanston on Thursday night, but made it there all the same. Once I arrived, I kicked myself for not getting something to eat before arriving; the usual bar-style hors d’oeuvres were almost universally breaded and thus off-limits.

But I could still enjoy some conversation, no? Well… kinda. I’m just not that talkative, and the amount of people who signed up was vastly higher than I’d estimated. I figured maybe a dozen people would show up, but it was easily over 50, an amount that threatened to quickly overwhelm me. It turns out my tenure meant I was employee number 59 out of 460, so purely by proportion, I recognized perhaps 1/4 of everyone there.

I did chat with a few people though. It wasn’t easy orbiting the many groups of people and gravitating toward those familiar to me, but it was enough I didn’t waste the trip. I took at least one break from the ceaseless din, sitting alone to recharge and steel my resolve. While doing so, I couldn’t help but question why I was there. No self-respecting introvert would subject themselves to this!

Despite that, I’m still glad I went. I got to see a few old acquaintances, hear about what happened to Leapfrog after I left, how everyone spread around afterwards, the companies that acted as spiritual successors to the LFO crew. You never expect that kind of thing, but it’s such an inevitable story. That’s probably the first point where I felt the melancholy. That point at which I know life must go on, mixed with the disbelief that it has, and the sense I’ve missed something in the bargain.

I left around 9pm and drove back to my Hotel. Was that gathering a taste of what I was going to experience over the weekend? Could I handle that?

Misfits Assemble

While I attended Cornell College from 1996 to 1999, I spent most of that time associated with a club called Chess and Games. The name was more than slightly misleading, as the “and games” was clearly the more predominate feature of the group. I won’t say we were inseparable, as there’s always differences of opinion that sometimes become irreconcilable, but they were still my only friends at the time. We were all collectively considered freaks of some description, and well, I fit right in.

One of the C&G alums started planning biennial reunions some time after I graduated. I’m not quite sure why, but I refrained from attending any of them. Perhaps I wasn’t ready, or maybe I didn’t want to impose, or just knew my socializing limits. Regardless, I simply never went. This year however, it was going to be in the Chicago area, practically in my back yard. How could I resist?

So I signed up several months ago, paid my fair share of the meeting space we’d reserved in the Hotel, and booked my room. I drove north to Deerfield around noon on Friday, checked in, and waited for the festivities to begin. Once I had lunch, that is.

And there were many festivities to be had, but I didn’t partake in any of them. I wasn’t prepared for the fact that I knew few of the other people there. It didn’t send me into a meltdown, but I did have to find somewhere to sit and rock while I observed. I could see Justin, and while she’d changed significantly over the years, there was Jessica. Eventually I’d count Scott and Laura among those I knew, and while I’d never met Aaron personally, I recognized him from our interactions on Facebook.

But that was merely five out of 20+ people, and three of those had little to no overlap with my time at Cornell. I graduated 25 years ago, so that should have been something I expected. There has been an entire generation of graduates since I left, and yet shockingly aside from the actual children, I was the youngest person there. For whatever reason, most of the attendees were truly old guard, some going as far back as 1989. What happened to all of the subsequent years? I’m not sure I ever got a satisfactory answer for that, but again, that’s just how life is sometimes.

Still, I was out of my element, and the games everyone was playing were not something I recognized at all, or were hilariously complicated affairs with counters and tokens galore. I was expecting some nostalgic chatter, and maybe some Lunch Money, but alas. The Great Dalmuti came out at one point, but by then my battery was absolutely drained and it was past 9pm, so I had to call it a night.

I was an outsider here, just as I was before I slowly integrated into the C&G of my era. There wasn’t enough time to do that again, not in two days. So, as usual, I tried to stay out of the way and watched. I began to understand that this was a rare thing, these people all taking a temporary trip of nostalgia into the past. Some were old friends, while others were simply more accustomed to meeting new people. But all alien to me except one, and Justin is probably the only person I know quieter than I am.

Sunday came as a bit of a relief. I managed to catch Justin in the shared space after breakfast, and we caught up a bit before I said my goodbyes. We didn’t really have a chance before as he was always deeply embroiled in one game or another, but it didn’t take long. I left around 10am because I wanted to be home around noon, and that was that.

Alone in a Crowd

They say you can’t go home again. If I’d ever thought about the true implications of that phrase before now, I don’t recall doing so. It’s not just seeing all of these people I both recognized and didn’t thanks to the passage of time. It’s not just that everything has moved on, that the world itself is in a place that makes a true homecoming impossible.

It’s perspective. I’m both not the same person I was, and unquestionably so. Nostalgia is a terrible thing, as it’s a false promise, a yearning that can never be sated. Pining for a simpler time that knowledge, maturity, and understanding has transformed to ashes. There is no home to return to, including that naive teenager who simply wants to be in that place again, even if only for a day or two. I know too much now; my interests and agendas have changed; I’ve moved on.

But I’m also still that person who effectively eschews human contact. The same man who took literal weeks to integrate into a group of people I eventually embraced as friends. The man who stares into space and rocks when overwhelmed, who speaks robotically, too formally, misses countless social cues, and is painfully aware he is out of place. I’d give almost anything not to be like this, so I could just enjoy the here and now.

I did learn one thing during this strange convergence of aligned events, however. I need to find people in the area I can hang out with. As inconvenient and exhausting as it is, I’m clearly out of practice. I’ve allowed myself to stagnate. I don’t mind being alone for the most part, but when confronted by the presence of other people, my tendency to retreat is something I need to address. I used to rely on alcohol to survive those situations, but these days that just gives me heart palpitations and a headache the next day.

Still, I’ve recognized the situation, and I’m nothing if not dedicated to rectifying circumstances I’ve identified that require redress. I know I’ll never be a social butterfly, but I hope to at least reach a point where I don’t outright dread social gatherings, where I wished things were not as they are, and I was someone I’m not.

Until Tomorrow