PS C:\> tar -xf Captain_of_the_Vibe_v1.zip
Application_Install.exe
Some days are for healing the wound. Some days are just for being a slightly ridiculous human being having the best time of their life. Today was the second kind. Farmers market cherries, a skirt I bought on a whim, bouldering on cliffs I had absolutely no plan for, and a solo dance party on an empty pier with no witnesses except the clouds.
I didn’t process anything today on my 201st day of sobriety. I didn’t excavate a single pattern. I just let myself be a person who climbs things and wears skirts and dances like an absolute goofball to bass music because it feels good in my chest. Turns out that’s allowed too.
That is the application. The rest is the source code.
Source_Code.txt
The open-source code below is free, for you to analyze, modify, and build your own application with.
> Display 202607: Vibe_Captain.MP4
> cherries and a slow start: farmers_market.log
Saturday morning routine. Walk to the farmers market, come home with more cherries than one person should reasonably eat in a week. There’s something about that walk that resets me before the day has even started. No agenda yet, just sun and produce and the version of me that hasn’t decided what today is going to be.
I walked right past a booth today that used to be a regular stop for me, run by someone I trusted, someone I visited every single time I went to the market. That trust turned out to be misplaced. They have been and may still be wasting their life stalking me. Today I walked past and gave them exactly what they get from me now, which is nothing.
The market gave me something better a few booths down. A newer friend who runs her own stand handed me a plum she picked herself from her home orchard, along with a hug and a smile that made me feel warm and specific in a way that is hard to put into words. She is a sparkling ray of sunshine that always smiles and hugs me when I see her around town, and today she balanced out the whole morning without even knowing it.
Walking home I ran into another good friend out in front of Fiamma Pizza before I crossed Chestnut street, just being their usual self, spreading love to anyone in range. Between the plum, the hug, and that sidewalk moment, the market reminded me it can hold both kinds of people at once, and I get to decide which ones I keep letting in.
> a new skirt in La Conner: skagit_detour.exe
Drove out to La Conner with no real plan, which is how the best days start. Found another skirt in one of the little shops I frequent there and bought it without overthinking it, which is not usually how I operate. Being non-binary means gender expression is a closet full of options instead of a locked door, and today the skirt won. Again.
I didn’t ask myself if it made sense. I just wanted it.
> scrambling back to my inner child: clayton_beach.stack
From La Conner I ended up out at Clayton Beach, off the marked trails, bouldering and scrambling on rock outcroppings that were a lot more exposed than I probably should have been comfortable with. Twenty feet up with rocks below, and more rocks hiding just under the surface of the water for the spots that weren’t rocks outright. One wrong hand placement or a foot-slip and that was not a survivable kind of fall. Nobody even knew I was there. Eek. Hands on rock, feet finding edges, the entire world narrowed down to the next hold. I didn’t fall to my death, which was icing on the cake.
I have a fear of heights. Today it did not get a vote. I adventured anyway, all the way out to a section of Clayton Beach I had never seen before, past the normal side I’ve walked dozens of times in a previous relationship that left its residue all over that familiar stretch of shoreline. New rock, new water, new view, none of it touched by anyone else’s fingerprints. Finding ground nobody else had stood on with me washed the residue clean off. I didn’t just visit a new part of the beach. I reclaimed the whole thing.
There’s a version of me that used to climb on things just to climb on things, before I learned to be careful, before I learned to be appropriate. That kid showed up today uninvited, dirt on their hands and a stupid grin on their face, and I let them stay.
That boulder was the size of my car, and I had to climb up and over it.
> dancing like no one's watching, because no one was: captain_of_the_vibe.BAK
Came home, changed into the skirt, and drove to the pier. No sunset tonight, just clouds, and somehow that made it better. The whole pier was mine. Bassnectar and Vindata’s The Mothership came on and I just launched. Not for anyone. Not to prove anything to a pattern or a part or a version of myself I’m trying to become. Just because the bass hit and my body wanted to move and I let it, arms flailing, hips absolutely unqualified for whatever they were attempting.
Masking is a full time job of making sure my body does the acceptable, predictable, appropriate thing. Dancing alone on a pier at night is the opposite job. Nobody grading the choreography. Nobody clocking whether my moves match the room. Just a beat, a body, and permission to let every weird impulse fire without translating it into something more palatable first. Turns out unmasking doesn’t always look like therapy. Sometimes it looks like bad dubstep dancing on an empty dock.
I am the captain of my own vibe. Nobody else needs to be on the boat for it to be a good ride, and honestly the boat is imaginary, and I am still its captain.
Never going to be again either.