Dear strangers. Waking up to keep working and thinking alone feels like putting on boots that have frozen and walking until they become warm. And it isn't necessary. I'm resigned to it, for practical reasons -- because there aren't many people one can work well with, and seemingly zero who feel this need like I do.

Apply a protocol: let's keep this possibility visible and explicit. Instead of forgetting it, we will progressively determine the obstacles to finding a work-partner and think up steps to take, none of which are guaranteed to work. Step by step, not over-thinking it. Better to be busy with an unlikely possibility -- a process -- than to be sitting around hoping for an idea.