I found myself feeling a little sad and a lot unmotivated yesterday. I think some of it might have been connected to thinking about my old acquaintance, Robert Hobby, whom I mentioned yesterday. Bob is one of several oddball friends I have had over the years that have subsequently wandered out of my life. I miss them and ponder on how much responsibility I have for losing touch with them. Usually I decide that “life” has happened to us and our orbits have changed. This is when I’m feeling grown up. But sometimes I think about my attempts to keep connected to them and how they have been unsuccessful.

Besides Bob, there’s a flute player who stomped out of my kitchen angrily and never looked back, someone whose second marriage I failed to attend and never responded to attempts to contact him, another person who wandered back in my life after a solid friendship in the past but was too wounded to reconnect, a young guitar player/recordist who got married and started having a lot of babies, a man who was unhappy and brilliant with whom I shared a basement when we were both high school students who growled at me the last time I saw him at a book sale, and some others. Eileen tells me that they are all odd balls and she is right. I am definitely part of the oddball crowd myself.

I had a dream last night that seems related. I was working as a waiter at a convention. Most of the people I was waiting on were Hispanic. I remember making fancy coffees for people as I waited on them even though I wasn’t supposed to. The other waitstaff seemed surprised and impressed. Finally for some reason I removed a toilet from a bathroom and installed a shower. A Hispanic woman wanted to use the toilet to wash some clothes (!). I had to tell her that it was gone. Maybe she could use the shower stall instead. She was not happy. I apologized to her and to an elderly Hispanic dude. He accepted my apology.

Along about this time in the dream I noticed Bob Hobby was giving a speech at the convention. He was finishing up and it was time for him to leave. I tried to talk to him (get it?) but he had to catch his bus. I called after him that I had been talking to some of the Hispanics and things were going better than he might have expected. He didn’t answer but he seem to understand. His bus left. I walked back to catch my bus which I was concerned had already left.

Of course all of this sad mood might have more to do with the fact that I have been skipping my martini and wine the last few nights. My goal is to snack less. So far it’s working. However I do know my drinking is a weird mixture of habit, self medication, mistaking hunger for wanting a drink and the simple pleasure of having an evening cocktail. And that’s probably not all.  I can’t wait to hear what a therapist says about it (sarcasm).