Photographs by Lucas Gray

First dates are always awkward in some way or another. If you make it to your second date you’ll have a much better chance of getting to know someone, there still might be some reservations but this is where infatuation really sets in. The third date is where it gets a little tricky, all things considered its still pretty light but the conversation probably has already covered most of the surface stuff, your A-game, your ego. So what do you talk about? What do you feel? Third dates ask for some kind of commitment, not marriage but certainly courtship.

I loved day two of training — not just the level of honesty that was shared but also the amount of depth and care that has gone into this company is staggering. For that day, the infatuation was concrete.

Third date; realness, commitment. Thoughts about success and failure have been rolling around in my head the past few days. Intention, momentum, care, insight, faith, humility. I’ve always had the capacity for high levels of anxiety, perhaps even to a disorder some might say — in the sense that I let it get to me in such a way that I become incapacitated at times. The problem is when given a choice of putting myself into something, giving myself to a purpose, agreeing to something that there is a good chance that I may fail, I will most always choose the safer road, the quiet path, the gentle slope. Even the risks that I’ve taken I managed to order them in such a way that I push myself around the issue until I was forced to make the decision I wanted to do from the beginning — to commit, to risk failure, to risk being hurt. Doing it this way may work but the intention is lost, the momentum is slowed if not stopped, caring is not lost but it is strained. I want to have the insight, the faith and the humility to just go for it. Pull the trigger. Go.

Really where is my faith? What is it in? — My self? My leaders? My God?

These aren’t new problems, this isn’t some new combination of emotion and struggle that had never been felt before. The drive and passion of others is not some cosmic sign of my own failure.

First days are always long and usually awkward. I’ve never enjoyed the standard, turn taking, “Hi my name is–I’m interesting because…” While today yesterday was just that, there was with it a sense of openness that is rarely accompanied. Maybe it’s just that I’m older now and have some kind of confidence (though honestly I was still shaking when it came to me.) Most everyone shared at least a little bit of what they were actually feeling, which–while taking a lot longer–brought a kind of comfortability that is so rarely present in situations of that nature.

While there was a lot talked about I feel a majority of my mind was taken up by breaking through my standard levels of self conscious thoughts. Honestly though I am some what content with my slow approach to friend making–which is good I suppose since that’s how I seem to have been made. The draw back obviously is not having that comfort zone of friendship to quickly wrap myself in–though the positive to that is being equally disconnected to everyone thus less likely to get stuck in a clique (if such things exist past school years)

I guess we’ll see what the second day will hold.

The commute is pretty nice though.