So the other night I was writing in my paper journal, and I noticed that I was talking about my own life the way I do about work when I have my Project Manager hat on. My first reaction was that this was pathetic, but then I checked that and I remembered that actually this is natural, and I do the same thing when I'm in an "actor" or "activist" mode as well.

So I decided to embrace it, started an open-ended todo list that started with "California drivers license" and "medical insurance" and ended up at the bottom with: wife, land, kids.

Heady, brah. No doubt influenced by my thinking a lot about Frank and Laura's wedding this weekend.

But I'm embracing this exercise and so I start to try and build a timeline around these things, because that's what you do when you're a project manager. If I'm doing it, I gotta do it.

So the upshot is that I figure I should have met and started a relationship with my wife by 2009, after which I've got five years or so to wrangle the land and kids bit. Prior to that there's getting a car and a dog to consider.

All this is assuming I stay on a track to remain in California. This is far from certain, but it seems to be the direction I'm headed for the moment, so I figure why not take it as far as it can go.

Now that I've got a five year plan, all I need is to meet some of those college girls that would ask you about that sort of thing. With 2009 as a milestone, why, my wife could still be in High School. Ho ho ho.

Kidding aside, meeting the women is perhaps the greatest challenge/unknown up here. I'm single again after almost a year of relationshipping. At the moment I'm not quite ready to really get back out there and mix it up, but it's going to have to happen sooner or later.

This is a bit of a blind-spot. I done almost all of my romance in New York City, and aside from some stuff when I was young, all the rest was in San Francisco. I don't quite know precisely why or how this matters, but it does. There are different rules and expectations in different social environments. Different norms.

I'm also a picky bastard when it comes to this. I can be easy too, but being easy doesn't get you very far on that todo list. Beyond the challenge of adjusting to a new set of social norms, there's the cold hard fact that there aren't that many people here, and I wonder if the right one is even around.

That could be the beginning of some cop-out, a rationalization to keep me in my little Westhaven cocoon, so I nip that line of thinking in the bud. It's a numeric reality, but it seems to me that the harder problems in engaging this sort of stuff are within my self and not really about my environment.

The conclusion I reached while writing in my journal, and one that still feels right 36 hours later, is that what I'm talking about here is Love. I believe it begins with dreams or fantasies that must come to life in my mind. A romantic vision, a fairy tale that's true... your heart doesn't just open up all on its own.

So the operative question here is what that fantasy looks like. I really have no idea. It starts with some kind of basic leap of faith -- square one is a core belief that "It Will Happen," that this question about numbers and "the right one" is something the Universe has some sort of hand in. We're working on it.

It's a long life, and I'm in no real hurry here. Finding the path requires a fair bit of presence in the moment along with all the rest.

Getting my Actor hat back on, it seems akin what the Suzuki Method called "Hang on tightly / Let go lightly." One needs to have a plan in life just as one needs to learn ones lines and blocking in a play, but if your life experience / stage performance consists of you focusing on that plan and moving through it in rote fashion... hell, that's no way to be.

Yes yes, so, finding a romantic dream, building a career that can support the acquision of land, settling back into being present with my body and my surroundings; these are all good things. Just call me the Project Manager of Love, baby.