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The Chicago transit system is always packed during my commute. This makes little sense as I don’t commute the same schedule every day and routinely watch trains opposite to my schedule fly by empty as though a great plague has set itself through their hollowed shells.

As luck and some level of statistical improbability would have it, today I happened onto the same train, and - in point of fact - same car as one of my distant co-workers.

The company I work for is fairly diverse. On one side you have a very powerful marketing company that also just happens to employ a very sophisticated team of ninjas for in-house development. On another you have a cutting-edge IT resources company whose managed services are taking over the city (I’m not kidding you, yesterday I saw a billboard truck covered in our logo swathing a huge gape in the otherwise non commercial inner city traffic). On yet another side you have a public service provider whose client list includes everyone and whose potential for impact is at the very least absolutely undeniable. Tie it all together with a call center making so many waves that Cisco is our bitch and you have a fair level of diversity.

All of that was to point out that I’ve never really talked to this man before. Do you remember what I was talking about? I almost forgot myself. So, yeah. I’m on the same car as this guy; I’ve got a hoodie with a batman logo hand stitched to the center, a pair of jeans and some Adidas and he is in a suit getup without the coat. I look like a teenager and he looks like my dad.

He strikes up a conversation with me and all of a sudden reality shifts. He tells me that one of his co-workers told him I am building a robot. I nod my head. He tells me he went to school for electronics and has some experience in robotics. In a few sentences we are exchanging stories about things we’ve built; I’m going on and on about BEAM swarms and he’s telling me about modding the shit out of normal consumer electronics for nefarious and sometimes otherworldly deeds. We do that thing you do with someone who knows what you are talking about: that thing where you get through half of a sentence before the other guy jumps in because he’s got it.

While we chat I notice that the people around us have taken interest. The adventures of a clutch of photovores escaping the mindless rampage of robovores, the interesting things you can do with robotic christmas trees, what the insides of a cd player can be made into with a soldering iron and some ambition; these things entertained and enthralled those around us.

It was only after he departed, his stop before mine, that I was asked by a woman sitting near me if we worked for the government or for some secret spy organization. I laughed and told her we work for a marketing company. He debugs IT problems and I damage code for a living. A guy behind me said that we sounded “like those guys on Mythbusters.”

I realized that even in my workplace, I am lucky to have what I do. This is to say absolutely nothing of my relentlessly supportive parents or the girlfriend who couldn’t have been better if I’d built her. We were talking, this gentleman and I, in a manner wholly normal to us and pointedly alien to those around us. We sounded like something outside of the general norm and I am happy for that. I am happy that I have the opportunity to explore and experience those things so many imagine just happen on TV.

I feel sometimes like I am party to an inner circle; one whose admission I am lucky to have stumbled upon. I lucked my way into a caste of thinkers and makers and doers. I somehow managed to find myself shoulder to shoulder with people to whom the creation of my wildest dreams is not only achievable, but really could be improved in beta, or with Japanese components (they’re smaller, like Military grade).

My girl comes busting in as I write this. She’s all sweaty and glowy from climbing a local climbing wall. She is happy because she took an advanced route and didn’t once fucking kill herself. I am proud because I’m confident with a rare level of certainty that I’d kill myself thirteen or fourteen times just getting into a climbing harness; she owns her own. We talk about holography, we talk about art and the future, we talk about hard work and a bright path of infinite possibility. We talk about being happy, which is a state that I think defines me now.

More than code or music creation or film making or electronics or old reruns of Max Headroom, happiness is the agate from which all else in my life is hewn.

Tonight I am going to finish up a chunk of code for a client, make a home made pizza with Lex, watch a Zombie movie and start planning a multi-touch surface prototype on which I want to make music.

Tomorrow I am going to a Microsoft Developers’ conference and then coming home to strip Lex to her skivvies and make a plaster mold of her body. This is for her halloween costume. It will involve the creation of our own vacuform thermo-molding device, a few gallons or resin, about twelve pounds of sculpting clay and an Autobot symbol.

Saturday I am going to work on an awesome project for a client, launch an update for Coastertoast and spend 12-18hrs at a sci-fi festival with Lex. Robocop FTW.

Sunday we are going to gear up for a trip to my parents’ boat and I will work on a few interesting projects. Next week is packed full of a few days at my awesome job, a few nights on some awesome projects and about a week on the S/V Milliways, scooting about, chasing fish and watching the sun make pretty shapes all over Lex’s pretty shape.

Q: How does that not absolutely rock?
A: Shut up, it totally rocks.