Last night I went to a going away party for Darren and Julie, the only Vancouverites moving to Malta this year.
It’s a strange thing to be celebrating, someone’s going away, like a wake with the departed still there. Even a vast array of shrimp, cold cuts and scotch can’t fully soften that blow.
Maybe if it was your going away party, it would make more sense to invite all your enemies and every jerk you dislike to your going away party. Then the crowd would be much happier, and you’d be happy to be leaving them all behind.
Of course, this going away party’s gloom was mitigated by the fact that they’re moving to Malta, not, like, Bakersfield or something. (Bakersfield is my default armpit nowhere destination, ever since my old editor Mike Carlson went there for an early journalism job.)
And Susie and I now have a good reason to go to Malta, and a nice place to stay while we’re there.
Of course, when we leave Malta, we’ll have to have a going away party.
“I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.”
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