Failed Olin challenge again today. Apparently Carmelle and a quartet of Oliners (Chris, Nancy) live along my route to the train station. We discovered this at midnight when we got off the same train - a pleasant surprise, especially since I was feeling somewhat lonely and bereft of peopleness that particular night after bidding farewell to the ILXOers at the Boylston train station.

I'm not sure how I would survive without friends. After discovering I'd left my wallet at Mike's house and that it wouldn't get back to Boston until Wednesday morning, Chris, Andrea, and Nikki trekked out to South Station to meet me, marched me to Allston and made me eat Real Food (I'd discovered 87 cents in my pocket, just enough to buy a small granola bar at a gas station - this is not, however, a good substitute for lunch and dinner), let me sleep on their couch, and repeated the process until my wallet finally did arrive on Thursday. They wrestle me out of the office and into the sun once in a while. They listen to my voicemail so I'll understand it. They proofread my resumes. They feed me. Last night when I badly needed to decompress, they opened their apartment to me when I called at close to midnight and listened while I stammered out the (trivial) things weighing on my brain.

I hope that I can do as good a job in watching out for them. Right now I'm doing a pretty miserable job of it due to constant overdistraction and intermittent overconfidence. I led us on a wild goose chase for lab equipment today only to get lost and find the donor lab late and already gutted of useful things, and followed this up by picking an unspectacular random Chinese restaurant for dinner. (The ice cream and movie, at least, were good.) In general, I'm not being that good at getting them the resources they need (notably funding and office space). They're my team. They should be my first priority. I'm trying; I just don't feel like I'm doing them justice and being as good about keeping them in the loop as I ought. They can cope with my occasional flub because they're brilliant, adaptable people - all the more reason why I should Do Better, because they deserve better from me.

On a side note: I'm aware that I've been posting less over the past week or so because I started to self-censor and feel obligated to write well, or to write this or that, when the OLPC portion of my feed started going to Planet Laptop (at my request). I'm trying to just Write Things - the same unedited braindumping as I've always done - and then tag them as OLPC if I want them to go to Planet afterwards.

Ending on a "people" note for the night before I get back to work - sometimes it's nice to have space. Sometimes it's also nice to have people around you. I'm the type of person who needs the option of free mobility between the two. Right now I feel lonely... but I also feel like I need to sit by myself for a little while, and that this feeling of empty space is good to touch on for a bit again. If it's still like this when I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to go hunting for people.