Returned from my very low-key trip to Mexico last Sunday, and still could not be happier I did that instead of the Jordan/Beirut trip I had initially intended to take. 
I never saw myself as an all-inclusive resort kind of person, but ten days of swimming, going to the gym, reading and getting 8 hours of sleep a night sound a lot more valuable to me than they might have ten years ago. This trip was just under a year from the last time I was down there, and it was a good way to close the door on the protracted adjustment period I’ve given myself here, during which I’ve only loosely employed intermittent fasting; I’ve struggled at times to figure out how to make it to the gym 4 days a week; and I’ve often slacked on truly getting enough exercise (as much as I need to not feel murderous).
I decided about halfway through the trip that as of Oct 1 I’d fully lay off alcohol for a month, if not longer (I will probably continue through the end of the year with a holiday exception or two), and I’d have to restart OMAD. I’ve tested many types of fasting: alternating between loose OMAD and 23:1 are the ideal types for me, and I figure I’ll use the rest of the year to reacclimate to it. 9 days in, I’ve had no trouble with either changes, and I have yet to break by 10K step a day streak despite being in the office and having a friend from LA visiting me this week. I suspect returning to fasting — which is something I’ve been doing for the past 5-6 years — and giving up cocktail time after work will unlock more time / energy, and I’ll need it. I haven’t been drinking much regardless, but I’ve come to look forward to my post-work G&T or glass of Tempranillo a bit more than is ideal.
With so many friends visiting, it’ll be a challenging month to do this, but I’ve navigated 1/3 of the month easily. My former roommate from Anchorage is visiting later this week and through the weekend; Juan is dropping into town for a show midweek next week, then a friend from RI is coming in on Friday. I then am returning to Austin, then Dallas before I head back to NY / NJ / PA to see some friends and go to my cousin’s wedding. The Texas team has a new manager who starts at the end of this month, and I’ll transition his team to him in December. I’m hoping mid/late December is a recovery month for me; I have no plans and no interest in going anywhere after a final work trip in early December, so it’ll be a nice opportunity to reflect, especially given at that time last year my life felt like a complete disaster and I made it here almost a month before my belongings did. It’s been a long, strange, and yet ultimately fruitful year. I logged my 2022-23 rough fails / goals into my spreadsheet when I got back from Mexico as well; this year was so rough that I actually skipped my halfway/birthday check-in to accumulate more data points.
I burned through quite a few books on my trip, and I am making good progress at home as well.
Journey from the Land of No & Gourmet Rhapsody | 
I honestly didn’t love either of these: the former was OK. I shared with a colleague that my favorite Iran book remains Reading Lolita in Tehran; Journey was a good series of stories and I have a lot of respect for this author, so I may read her other book(s). HBO has a new miniseries called Hostages about the hostage crisis in ’79 that is actually pretty good, I am working my way through that (also seems appropriate to plug Escape from Kabul here, which was well done). The hostage crisis is the least interesting part of Hostages; I watched it because I was curious about the narrative they’d use around the Shah. I begin some of these docuseries with a bit of skepticism, but both are quite good and even Hostages is pretty balanced (so far). Escape from Kabul could never untangle the entire web of history leading up to Biden’s botched pull-out, but what it did cover, it covered well. Trigger warning for the Taliban commanders cheering about how they “defeated” America. We defeated ourselves in Afghanistan.
Gourmet Rhapsody was given to me by a fellow foodie, and while a lot of the food experiences resonate with me (particularly the author’s experiences with oysters), she was too arrogant for me to have really enjoyed what she was saying. She’s written at least one bestseller (not this one), but I’ll pass. I loved her thoughts on her grandmother’s cooking and I found that very relatable; regardless of not loving her ‘voice,’ a lot of the content was definitely relatable and had me thinking that I’ll surely be spending more time in the winter cooking more devotedly. I actually also bought a copy of the OG McCall’s Cookbook while I was gone so that’s sitting on my kitchen counter.
The Happiness Hypothesis | 
I picked this up for two reasons: first, it’s written by Jonathan Haidt, and second, I’ve been struggling with this (‘happiness’) myself and I wonder at times why I feel so dissatisfied with my life and trajectory (this has changed a lot in the past few months). After a rough start down here in Colorado I am pretty happy with my life; I’ve lost some “friends” over the past few years for various reasons, but the quality of my relationships has increased, and the people I’ve kept are authentic and genuine. Any wishy-washiness at this point comes down to career path and feeling like I’m not sure what direction I want to go in. That said, this book was excellent. It is primarily philosophy and (mostly) ancient wisdom, both Eastern and Western. Change is difficult, especially when it’s forced (in my case, I forced myself), but I’ve again come out the other end on the upswing. Haidt is excellent and I’ve read a lot from him, so I was not disappointed in the least.
Plagues Upon the Earth | 
This is the best infectious disease book I’ve read since Spillover. Infectious disease is another strange lifelong obsession, probably due to a combination of morbid curiosity and a fascination in complex systems theory. Despite my concurrent obsession with history, I found the sheer magnitude of death and disease in centuries past to be mind-blowing. The author starts in prehistoric times with schistosomiasis, continues with typhus, typhoid fever, shigella (dystentery), bubonic plague, lymphatic filariasis, malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, HIV, etc. I will probably listen to this book again to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Spillover was more grotesque in terms of details (Marburg and Hantavirus did not make it into Plagues) but I loved both and would strongly recommend to anyone who grew up pre-internet searching through Microsoft Encarta for radiation sickness photos like I did (yes, I have problems).
Cafe Europa Revisited | 
I was pleased to buy this after running out of Drakulić books to read: I’ve read everything she’s written, and this was not a disappointment in the least. Anyone who wants to glean an understanding of Eastern Europe and doesn’t want to read the lengthy & complex history to string ideas together should just read her instead. Slavenka Drakulić and Anne Applebaum have both done an incredible job conveying the nuances of Slavic culture: Applebaum is heavily historical and Drakulić is more focused on contemporary social issues and heavily focused on the Balkans and former Yugoslav region (Revisited is mostly Europe-focused and not Balkan-focused). I have even more admiration for her for covering the highly sensitive topic of immigration in Scandinavia and the ensuing failure of their expansive refugee programs. Speaking of which, I stumbled upon a really good Italian film, Terraferma, focused on similar challenges in Southern Italy.
I’m currently wrapping up Putin’s People, a highly acclaimed book about the rise of Putin and KGB-run Russia during and after Yeltsin’s departure. Having read so much of this stuff and seeing what happened with the Crimean bridge the other day, I’m waiting for Putin’s next false flag: I don’t know how this will all shake out, but I remain proud of the Ukrainians and ashamed of any Americans who doubted them (I also think Elon Musk is an absolute fool after his “peace plan,” and I’m glad he was told to shut his pie hole by a swarm of Ukrainian diplomats and officials). As I saw in a meme early on in this war, NATO should be asking to join the Ukrainian army, not the other way around. Putin could potentially have destroyed his own future with this, fiasco and I sincerely hope that is the case. Unfortunately the narrative he’s used around Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear power plant, his subsequent annexation of that region (which he does not control) and the plant’s waning power supply is a huge risk and sets the stage for him to blame the Ukrainians for a nuclear meltdown. I wish they’d close the Georgian border as well; Georgia needs to rethink their Visa requirements and I hope this is a learning opportunity for them.
That’s it for now. I will probably not post again until I mid-November.
I have comforted myself by making numerous batches of random soups and stews, which is a definite throwback from living in New York, but still is oddly soothing to me. Butternut soup, my grandmother’s shrimp/okra gumbo and Thai coconut soup now fill my freezer, and I’ve managed to procure a few high-end ham hocks to continue this into the fall.
The many months of thought and effort I had put into building a healthy culture from a toxic, broken team also really began to pay off, and after getting through business reviews, I’m pretty happy about where everything is, although I still do not believe this job is for me in the long run. I am fairly sure after this most recent trip to Austin, they will not be joining my fanclub. Managing people is hard, but I am interested in how different people are, and what motivates them, as much as they all piss me off near-daily. In one month, I’m free of being indebted by contract to my employer, and it has taken me almost that long to enjoy what I’m doing and to wake up fairly eager to start another day. Going back and forth to Texas has been a lot of fun; having a good (metalhead) friend in Austin makes it even better. So does Velvet Taco. Overall I am better at this than I thought, and at this juncture it’s not as miserable as I expected. I’ll take it.
I am closely watching what else transpires in Central Asia, for many reasons, one of them being that I’d like that to be my next big trip (Tajikistan is not on my list, but Kyrgystan is). 
I have many unanswered emails and other things to do, but instead of knocking them out, I started cold-stratifying bonsai seeds as I think growing a few different bonsai trees (obviously a very long-term project) will be fun and low-investment. I’ve always been pretty interested in plants, this is the first time I have enough real sunlight to do so. When I was a kid, I had a hydroponic vegetable garden (before hydroponics were cool) and a terrarium full of venus flytraps and pitcher plants, which are not the easiest plants to sustain, especially in upstate New York.
my trip abroad began with (of course) a typical Turkish Airlines delay that forced me to run from one end of Istanbul airport to the other in 15 min to make my connection to Tbilisi (they literally closed the door behind me); my bag did not make it onto the plane, but showed up later in the evening. I was happy just to actually get there on time and feel like I was comfortably away from my life in what at this point is definitely my favorite foreign city (New York is still my favorite American city, sorry not sorry). I was slimy and exhausted by the time I got there, but I was over the moon to be there and we went straight to our standard breakfast spot to stuff our faces with khachapuri.
My sister and her husband finally moved out of their shithole garden level unit in Belleville and moved into a really beautiful, sunny apartment in Rahway. My sister and I are very different — she has very few hobbies, no college education and is mostly a homebody — but she got a second pug and has been showing her, so I’m pretty stoked she is busy and doing stuff she’s genuinely passionate about. I really wish they’d get the hell out of New Jersey, but as I said, we are very different people. I’d love for us to eventually live closer to one another: we hated each other when we were kids but we are very close now, and she continues to look creepily similar to me as she gets older.
I had hired a dog sitter off of Rover to drop in on Fuji 3-4 times a day and while he has the best reviews of anyone in the area on Rover, I was not impressed: he did not walk her once despite committing to do so, he failed to show up one night and never communicated that he was not coming (according to him, he was in a car accident, and yet showed up the next day in the same car which was unharmed), and he spent very little time with her. Thankfully my neighbors were around to pop in periodically and we’ve decided to just trade off on drop-ins for each other’s pets for the foreseeable future (I am taking care of their husky and cat now, and they’re on Fooj duty next week). This was an ambitious experiment to determine whether the dog was better off just staying home alone for 3 weeks, and despite my dog sitter not meeting my expectations, she was in a much better mental state than she would’ve been if I had kenneled her the entire time. I checked on her couch-lounging regularly and tossed her many Furbo treats, and she was just fine, so I will definitely opt for her staying here alone overnight versus worrying about putting her in a kennel or boarding facility. Fuji’s dog aggression is annoying AF but otherwise she’s pretty much perfectly behaved.
I decided I’m too old and impatient to spend 28h getting from Prague to JFK, so I coughed up another $1100 for a direct flight back to NY to catch my unlinked flight to Denver. I am never flying with Turkish Airlines again; while I still got a decent flight there, they’ve managed to pilfer enough money and time from me that I will avoid them in the future.
The running analogies in this book were not relatable to me, but this book really made me think about the checks and balances I have in my own life, and how to inspire people to move faster and embrace the suck. I’ve had to have a few tough conversations at work over the past few months, and this book will help me choose even more effective words. Both these books gave me some good ideas related to efficiencies and empowering people to do better. It also made me reflect on the things I do to help myself suffer, and why it works: the rules that unfold in my head when I am dying at the gym, and refuse to quit until I hit a ten minute interval, at which time I end up feeling fine, only to dip into misery halfway to the next ten minute interval. This is a great book for many reasons, not least because it puts forth plenty of research around the complete worthlessness of calling people pussies and berating them until they do a better job. There’s a lot around planning for contingencies, breaking things down into measurable pieces, controlling your reactions to externalities, being self-aware enough to know that things will be hard, and setting yourself up for success. I’ve learned to do a lot of these things by trial and error (ie, smuggling my Caucasian rug down here to Denver so my empty-ass house felt a little familiar for the month before my belongings showed up), but a lot of people could skip a lot of fuck-ups and fails by just reading this and taking the advice.
This is a lot of the same kind of material, around setting yourself up to actually change permanently. This one also gave me some good ideas for work, and can be credited for some of the leaning I’m doing on my own team while I’m away. For many years I’ve managed my personal goals via spreadsheet, and I credit this book for helping me realize I am not actually insane: that people actually do think of their lives in terms of chapters, and my milestone updates actually make sense. I thought this book was going to be super boring, actually… but it wasn’t. High recommend on both.
I was surprisingly invigorated by my Texas trip: it was a pretty quick trip, but it reminded me of my old life, Life Before COVID, always en route, packing or unpacking. I shared with my boss that I’d like to find a way to get more of that back; I have never been the settling type and I’d like to ping-pong around more in the fall (and I will, starting in Chicago in August, 3 days after I return from Prague). My road warrior life — the life I lived for many years without complaint — was exhausting, but so rewarding. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost more than I realized initially, the free-wheeling that has collected this cloud of COVID doom in these past few years: what if I test positive? What if I get sick? What if I get stuck? What if the hospital is full?
came to visit in May, and that has been one of the highlights of the past 7 months: first, virtually all of my favorite pre-AK life people live in New York. These two guys came in to see our other friend’s band one night (they are based in San Francisco). I talk frequently to another friend here about how thus far, Colorado people aren’t really my cup of tea (or his), but it was glorious to have more friends in town: we ate amazing food, watched sci-fi movies, listened to metal and drank on my porch. We managed to get into In-n-Out 5 minutes before they closed at 1:30am the morning they left, and the entire trip was amazing. Apparently there are dirt cheap Frontier flights from Albany to Denver, and I’m hoping my people keep taking advantage of the relatively inexpensive airfare. Bonus round, the headliner for this show was a 
I beat myself up for being pretty introverted, but I’ve built a fairly robust community here in a short period of time, and while I’m spread thin, it’s nice to have the option to do things. Today was the first day in awhile that felt like what a weekend day should feel like: yesterday I hustled to hit the gym and walk the dog before making a giant broccoli salad and heading up to a BBQ in the mountains. I spent today cooking a week+ of food to save myself the hassle next week, and I’ve been taking Fuji on 2 long walks a day (1 with a 16lb weighted vest, which I thought would be heavier and challenge me more than it has). The dog spectacularly failed her boarding interview a few weeks back; I figured I’d at least see if she’d be happy hanging out with other dogs and the answer is hell no, she was having none of that, so I finally gave up and found pet care on Rover for my lengthy trip. She’s turning 9 this year and has not slowed down at all. I am thankful. Having a dog and wanting to be on the go all the time is a pain in the ass, but she has been an anchor for me and it has been more than worth the trouble and expense.
It’s actually pretty incredible to me that I survived this brutal move and all of the suffering that went along with it without having another hyperthyroid episode, but my most recent labs came back perfect and it’s difficult to express how grateful I am that this hasn’t gotten worse. For the most part, even with the heat, I seem to be acclimating fairly well here; the summer temperatures are horrible and I feel hot all the time, but my July goal is to shave off another 10lbs or so before I go to to Tbilisi, which is derived from an Old Georgian word that means “warm place.” Every pound I can drop is less I’ll be sweating through my damn clothes, in the land where “air conditioning” usually means a dirty old fan or a window that you can prop open with a water bottle. I also noticed today that Turkish Airlines once again fucked up my return flight with their schedule changes, so hopefully I can figure that out this week: Turkish is the only airline I’ve ever flown on where you almost never get the flights you pay for, because they constantly change shit and don’t even send you a courtesy e-mail.
I am never satisfied with myself, and I think that is a blessing and a curse; people either drive themselves into the ground or are lazy as shit and don’t care about progression… I still believe I am somewhere in the middle (maybe a bit more driven than I need to be, but violently turned off by people’s lack of motivation). I did very little on my actual birthday; a friend from work decided it was unacceptable for me to spend it alone (she is young, she’ll understand someday), so she came over for tacos, a shitty grocery store lemon meringue pie (the only kind of pie I wanted, and could not find a better one on short notice, and I refuse to bake anything beyond keto muffins and key lime pies) and 
I’ll maybe pick that tradition up again by 40. I took the day off work and ran a bunch of errands, and that was enough of a gift for me. All in all it was awesome to not be working and have a second of three 3-day weekends in a row.
I ended up grudgingly agreeing to read Brene Brown’s latest book, and it wasn’t bad, to be honest. I realized in refining my business/self-improvement book Excel sheet (yep. I have one of those) that I had read her previous book and enjoyed it. She says the same thing over and over again, which is annoying, but what she says is not untrue. David Goggins’ book Can’t Hurt Me was also not bad: a guy on my team loved it and I traded him for Jocko’s Extreme Ownership, which I definitely like much more, but it was enjoyable. The guy basically grew up in a dumpster and became a Navy SEAL+++, an ultramarathoner, etc etc. He has incredibly strong will and determination and also has beaten the shit out of his body, which will catch up with him sooner or later. As I said before you’re either lazy or you drive yourself into the ground, this dude is all the way at the “needs to hurt himself physically or he is depressed” end of the spectrum. Dan Ariely’s Honest Truth About Dishonesty was OK as well, it was suggested to me by another person at work, and I had read his others, I actually liked Predictably Irrational a lot more, and was already familiar with most of the studies in Dishonesty.
I had not read this guy’s precursor, but I feel well versed enough having a team of millennials. The title is misleading in that it implies he blames millennials for being stupid, ultimately he puts a lot of blame on educators. I’m not even “dumb” is the appropriate word: I’d use “dull.” The Dullest Generation Grows Up. This book better-articulated a lot of my struggles than I could and has allowed me to outline more of a problem statement at work, which is that the people I’m managing lack a lot of history and knowledge, and as a result their daily lives, struggles and challenges are not placed in any context. It is a really, really, really hard problem to solve when you’re trying to develop young people who do not have the attention spans to read a single KB article in its entirety. I don’t want to be too general in grouping people by generation, and I am an older millennial myself, but there seems to be a distinction, and I see it every day at work: a lack of curiosity, an inability to connect the dots and link concepts together, a completely missing sense of imagination. It is very sad, and my company, and I’d imagine many other companies, are not equipped to upskill because they do not understand the entirety of the problem. Very strong recommend, although it’s quite depressing to see some of the results: the gradual plunge of SAT, ACT, ASVAB scores over time, the declining reading comprehension, the complete failure in STEM subjects. IQ increased over time for many decades, and it is now declining precipitously. Even worse from my perspective, people have lost their interest in the world, the awe of experiencing even the smallest joys, the ability to persevere through hardship by anchoring themselves to history. It is a tragedy.
I’m not sure whether or not I had mentioned that I finished Vol 2 of Gulag Archipelago, but I did. I am patiently waiting my next Audible credit so I can pick up Vol 3. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Gulag Archipelago is the most brutal, horrifying book I’ve ever read, and this is my second time through this series. While I’ve been waiting, I started and finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was good, but had nowhere near the breadth. Darkness at Noon was another classic I had not bothered to read and finished it in about two days: it was good, but not high on my recommend list: it is too much like 1984, and not nearly as harrowing as many others. There were some memorable passages, though.
I somehow managed to make it all the way through Picketty’s Capital in the 21st Century years ago, and while a lot of his data ended up being disputed, I actually really enjoyed the anecdotal material, and his ideas. A Brief History of Inequality was a lot shorter, obviously, and easier to digest. Quillette reviewed it and has a lot more text than I’m willing to type out, so that review is 
but it’ll have to wait until I get back to Denver. I did want to carve out some time to write while I’m back up here in the North, though I selfishly thought I’d have a bit more time to relax, and that has not been the case. I’m not very good at relaxing anyway, so I suppose I’ll live. I had originally planned to be up here for two weeks, and cut it down to one, so it’s my own fault in the end. Alas, here I am, sitting on a floor cushion pecking away on my opium table, my favorite spot in my favorite spot.
Leaving Alaska was bittersweet, being back here is like visiting your childhood hometown, the things you hate and things you love surfacing interchangeably. I feel more like that here than I do returning to the Catskills, which have changed so dramatically since I grew up there. The po-dunk mountain town I grew up in is basically a satellite colony of Manhattan and New Jersey now; Alaska will probably always be the same as I left it. AK is just too far for the hordes of city-dwellers from New York and California that have colonized Montana and Colorado and the other mountain towns of North America, and for that I am grateful. I think often of John McPhee’s Coming Into The Country, probably the most renowned read on Alaska history, and I think about all the people up here I’ve met over the years who talk about how different things are now. And they are, but subtly: change materializes slowly up here, excepting the weather.
despite the fact it’s appreciated in value by over $100,000. This little home is pretty special to me and I’ve renovated it piece by piece over the years from the wood paneling, laminate counters and cream-colored carpets it had when I bought it. It is now one of the nicest, most updated (and energy efficient) units in my complex. There are still things I want/need to do in the coming years: replace the washer/dryer, get rid of the dated textured walls and repaint, fix some of the trim… but every year I upgrade a few things to maintain its value.
Last night I ventured up to the high-end restaurant atop the mountain with a close friend; when I worked in this town, our resort at least had a cool culture, but almost all of the high quality people have moved on, and there is a void where there used to be a passionate, fun-loving, hard-working culture. I was the first of us to leave in 2014; there now remains one of the 8-10 person exec-level dream team.
The route from Myrtle Beach to Denver is 1,745 miles, and it would’ve been feasible to clock 1000 instead of 900, but 1000 is probably my limit. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. I realized on the way home I think I like these trips because (a) I love to plan, and the logistics of travel can be challenging, and (b) I am extremely goal oriented. Long drives require discipline and grit. 900+ miles in a day requires determination. I have all of those things, and I love to suffer to test my own endurance. I’d go so far as to say that’s why I’m here, in my life, in Colorado, in good health, why I haven’t crawled into a hole with booze or pills or God knows what else. Determination is also helpful in avoiding the descent into a homicidal rampage at the ineptitude of other drivers, who clearly have not heard of cruise control, and love to chill in the left lane driving under the speed limit.
I only took Friday off after failing to swim M-Thu (riptides, rain and other trash weather disrupted my plans), and Friday was windy and cloudy, but I did end up in the ocean, thankfully. I had the mornings to myself (in EST, working on MST), and I loved chilling on the balcony reading: I finished four books (more on that in my next post), and got enough down-time to sustain me for awhile. I went out there to swim as much as possible, as whatever micro-creepy crawlies the ocean has to offer do wonders for my skin, but I loved my time down there anyway and I’m grateful to have access to a beachfront condo to visit any time I please. One of the two happiest moments of my life was as a young kid, lying awake on a twin bed in my grandparents’ house on Long Beach Island while my sister slept in the bed next to me, smelling the bay breeze waft in through the windows and thinking to myself, “let me hold onto this.” Even as a kid I knew life was fleeting, years pass in an instant. Every time I’ve eaten an oyster in its salty water or walked out onto a dock in Alaska I’ve remembered those nights, gratefully awake, the smell of the sea.
I think I am fully out of whatever dark place I was trapped in for months, if not longer, feeling hopeless and empty and devoid of any direction, any value, any purpose. I took that trip to remind myself of who I was before the pandemic: a road warrior, a lone wolf, someone who just wanted to be out and immersed in the world, someone who rarely stopped moving, who wanted to see and experience everything. I have unbelievable appreciation for this country, for the different landscapes and people and histories of the different regions, and I have always been so fascinated by how other people live. One of the top pros of moving back down here was to be able to drive anywhere again, and I’m happy I prioritized that for myself: it’s still a huge part of who I am. I’m even grateful, seeing so many cars with blown out tires or broken down on the side of the road, to have a reliable vehicle, and a furry little derp to come along for the ride, and the funds to afford to take such a trip.
The nicest things about moving back down here have been the small pleasures: how comfortable the weather is, the herons and cormorants, the constant sunshine, even the wind. I still would put sitting outside in the sun with a book and slamming cocktails as among my top 5 favorite things to do; my house is comfortable, my neighborhood is quiet, Fuji is happy. My gym routine is working out well for me, and I’ve got 4lbs more to shave off before I hit my target range. I still feel pangs of… something, when I think about what I left to be here, and what those things meant to me over a decade of my life. Alas, it could all be a lot shittier here, and it’s not. I spent $100 on a set of baller wind chimes that I can hear from inside and you’d think it’d take a lot more to make someone happy in the moment. Not so.
It seems that it was a long time ago I was thinking about driving to South Carolina, and flying back up to AK, and those trips are coming up fast. I still feel a deep sense of ‘what’s next?’ in my life, but it’s slowly dissipating as I ramp up socially and make more plans. I moved here, more than anything else, to be closer to people, to see familiar faces more often, to have more people to talk to, and I have in 4 months managed to turn that into a pretty excellent reality. Maybe it’s OK to not know what the future holds. Maybe things just need to not be lonely and depressing af first. Everything was so epically beautiful where I was (this is not ‘the grass is always greener’ rationale, because a lot of things sucked up there) – but in returning to the lower 48, I’ve become a willing participant in a kind of lifestyle I hate: 9-5, commute to the office, etc. This is not my long-term plan. I do not want this kind of life with any kind of permanence. I am making the best of it, for now.
I showed up here barely knowing anyone, and I’m charmed by how many solid people I’ve already collected, not to mention the many people who have already stopped in to spend time. My former roommate’s coworker relocated to Denver as well, shortly after I did, and we’ve been spending Sundays drinking Bloody Marys in my yard and I’m grateful one of my favorite people managed to gift me another quality friend. I hosted a small-ish house party on Saturday to get to know some of the local metalheads, I’ve had a number of work and personal-life visitors, including my sister and her husband, and a close friend from the Catskills. Juan came in for the Amorphis show, a long-time friend from Albany is flying out for our other friend’s band’s show over Memorial Day weekend. There are many great bands coming through, and I love that aspect of being back down here.
My social life overall is pretty full… I cannot complain. I even have really enjoyed getting closer to the Ukrainian on my team, and we are navigating the fine line between professional and personal relationships. Before I know it, it’ll be July, I’ll be packing for Europe, and maybe… just maybe… this whole depressing pandemic ordeal is mostly over, and I’ve emerged from this pretty dark, fucked up period of my life. I even caught up on WhatsApp with some people we met last time we were in Georgia and we’ll be meeting up for drinks in Tbilisi. For a pretty introverted, private person, I somehow manage to connect deeply with certain people and keep them around for years. I don’t know why people go out of their way for me, or remember me, or put in the work, but I am always grateful and feel a lot of love in the social sphere after all this time. So thank you all.
I’m signing over my condo to the heli-ski company full-time as of October, so this may be the first and last summer of remote coordinating vacation rentals. Depending on how my June trip shakes out, I may go back up there again before the end of the summer… we’ll see. I’m torn; I want to go to Jordan, I’d also really like to make an appearance in Sarajevo as it’s been a hot minute, so we’ll see. I’ve had some epic food adventures here in town over the months, and many more places to hit up, but all in good time.
then went to Boulder. Boulder has a 
We then met another work friend back in Denver at 
but I am also about to finish an unbelievably interesting book set in Germany immediately following WWII. 
The Chaos Path 