I was out of sorts a couple days ago and had no idea why, until I recalled two things: several weird dreams involving L the night before, and that January 4 is L's birthday also. A weird combination. I celebrated L's birthday the couple of years that it fell within our affair, but she never really celebrated mine as much. I think she just doesn't think birthdays are very important, and I tend to use them to strongly express my admiration and appreciation for the mere existence of people. The dreams I had were on her birthday, and I guess I subconsciously was in time's rhythm. They were harmless, asexual, ordinary event dreams, except for one moment where she stood in front of me, and I was holding her shoulders, and she had tears in her eyes, and we both knew we would never see each other again. Of course, that's fairly heavy. I had filed the memory away and not dealt with it for many hours, and when I recalled the image, and the moment, a lot of my mood was explained. Last year, on L's birthday, I had sent her a couple of photographs from Baja, via instagram messenger, with a birthday wish. She replied, "Thank you, dear man." And that seemed oddly phrased to me. I mean, of course I read into everything, but that phrase simply felt condescending, dismissive, almost pitying. It was in fact one of the exchanges we had that began an even deeper disentangling. At any rate, the past few days have been much more consumed with the practical realities of my teaching job, the heart opening of new love, and the weird experience of ordering groceries online and having them delivered to my door. I guess I show my age or my provincialism or something when I acknowledge that the whole Instacart/Ralph's grocery experience astonished me. I'm simply used to slogging my way through aisle after aisle of grocery items, and, during plague time, avoiding all other humans to the best of my ability. Since LA County is now at critical, uncontrolled levels of spread, I decided to give this brave new world of ordering groceries to be delivered a try. It was an incredibly easy process, and there were hardly any probs. The order was placed at 9 and the groceries appeared at my door, no contact, at 10:30. Wild. It's funny to me that they try to personalize it. My grocery shopper and delivery person was "Roger." I got a few texts advising me that Roger was substituting items. He made one mistake, which was delivering only 1 package of tuna, instead of four, but I also was only charged for one. Maybe Roger was trying to keep me safe from mercury poisoning. My apartment becomes more and more isolated and like a space pod. Open the pod bay doors HAL. I'm afraid I can't do that, "Dave." I am experiencing a deepening and intensifying of the feelings for M. I can't wait to see her again, which we have arranged for January 22-24. I might fly, or I might cancel the Southwest flight and drive, to Tempe, where we are meeting. It depends on how full the flight looks and whether Southwest can guarantee me an open middle seat or not. My motivation for revising the last article to be published out of the dissertation is at an all time low, probably because my co-author wants really extensive revisions. I just don't have the energy for it. My perfectionism has been kicking in big time, lately. Meanwhile, I have found a source for a bunch of Zoom CoDA meetings here in LA, and will start going, probably this evening. I am finally realizing that I really need to get back into a recovery community. My solo resources have been running out. I need that connection and reminder more often.