Today was a skip day to visit one of my oldest friends in Beverly, MA.
After over a year, I finally got to visit my friend Alen in Beverly, MA. We worked together in a video game startup in the mid-1990s that ultimately failed; that shared experience and mutual respect for have carried our friendship through the decades. We are foils of a sort: me more technical and methodical, he more improvisational and skilled. When we were at the game company playing the game Battle Arena Toshinden on the Playstation, you could see our different approaches in how we played: He would always win the first five or so rounds by finding the quick sure-fire way to deal damage, but I would use those rounds to understand how the game work and figure out how to counter them so I'd win the next five. And then he'd find a new approach, and the cycle would repeat. We reference this memory when talking about tackling our creative challenges, with me acknowleding that using one tool very fast beats methodical thinking a lot of the time, and he noting that he values the methodical approach when fast and quick doesn't work.
Alen had "accidentally" written a book 50 Ways to F*ck Up a Marathon. It's glorious, man. The very act of the books creation reminded me of Charles Bukowski interview in Poetry in MotionA CD-ROM featuring several poet interviews in the 1990s, back when video on computers was new and technically impressive. See this production page, which really impressed me as a young nerd who had never seen such a thing. We often refered to it when discussing daring creative acts. Inspiring.
When Alen became a runner, this was really surprising to me, but it's become his sanctuary away from his work running a successful mid-sized design agency. He's the most capable person I know that I can call a friend. We just caught up on what we were up to, me playing with his gassy bulldog mutt trying to avoid getting licked on the mouth. You know, just friend stuff. It was nice. I showed him the card design from yesterday to see how it "hit", as I trust his design sense implicitly---he found it enjoyable for the reasons I had hoped, which was a relief---and then we had a quick lunch in downtown Beverly so I could try the buffalo chicken eggrolls. They were pretty good, but a bit too greasy for me.
It was a good visit, refreshing old memories and fortifying my resolve to keep doing what I'm doing.
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