Considering what’s unfurled in the past few weeks, it’s surprising I feel so much positivity as I complete the last few tasks I have up here and head back to Anchorage to catch an 8am flight back to Denver tomorrow. 
Two weeks ago, my mother had a pulmonary embolism following her foot surgery. It has made for an anxious couple of weeks; I was supposed to meet her in Myrtle Beach next Monday, and when I asked her about informing the doctor of her travel plans, she said she was just not going to tell anyone. My mother is wildly optimistic; perhaps even idealistic to the point of absurdity. I had read quite a lot on the internet and was 95% sure she would be told not to travel, but everyone in my family is stubborn af, so I’ve been waiting patiently for her to go to her checkup. She was finally told today she can’t go (she told her doctor after I threatened to call every hospital in Pennsylvania to rat her out).
Initially I had planned to drive out there just to have a beach week by myself (my mother had decided to join later on), but I canceled in solidarity. I will return to Colorado tomorrow, take the rest of the week off, and then return to work. The drive from CO to SC sucks ass… it is so tremendously boring, and my 4Runner isn’t exactly fuel efficient.
While the prospect of anything (ever) happening to my mother fills me with dread and fear, the silver lining of canceling this trip is that I will be coming back to AK in late August, for an entire week, to hike, and play, and possibly fish. I had not anticipated returning again this summer, but I have to. I was not here long enough, and I am not done.
I may never be done. 
Even coming here to another mess left by my winter tenants, my little house looks beautiful now after days of scrubbing, cleaning, rearranging. I had one afternoon to hike and I chose the most miserable one in our immediate proximity: Bird Ridge, which is basically straight up and down. I figured the ridgeline would be mostly clear of snow as it is exposed, and most of our other trails are still snowed in. My trusty hiking partner of the last decade+ changed her plans to meet me up here. We huffed it right up that bitch and back down in :30 under the typical time, even though she is only a few months recovered from major surgery and while I am acclimated to altitude, I am not acclimated to Alaska-intensity hikes.
We returned to town, ate most of a giant pizza and I soaked in my hot tub here at the house (I am still hobbling today). It was fucking glorious. I went back to Anchorage early this morning, renewed my 4Runner tags, ran a few last minute errands, and decided to book my next trip up here. The fact that I don’t have a ton of reservations for the summer was helpful. I feel so much better about leaving now. I told my mother on the way back to Girdwood that I had to come back, and she told me she figured I would.
So few people have been able to comprehend the love I have for this place. The day I pulled out of the driveway at my parents’ place so many years ago to embark on my relocation here is still the happiest day of my life: the level of confidence and mettle it took to do that only occurred to me years later. I remember going through the interview process for the job I accepted up here and knowing — truly knowing — I would get it, and my life was about to change in an unbelievable way. I laid in bed and cried tears of joy at night before I even returned to sign my job offer. Anathema’s Weather Systems will always remind me of that journey – the emotional one and the physical one. I still choke up on my way down the Seward Highway: I have always felt a lot of gratitude, but my life could end any day and I’d be so grateful for the time I’ve had to make this insane dream come true.
Ten years after making this place my home, after a cruel, inordinately lonely pandemic and realizing I would not be able to continue to challenge myself in my career if I lived up here indefinitely, I cried every day as I packed and prepared to leave. I knew it was the best thing for me, but it was not what I wanted. I never wanted to go back to the lower 48, and I mostly still do not want to be there. I have done well regardless, and am finally in a really good place in Denver after a pretty difficult transition. I have never struggled at all with change as most people do, but not one single molecule of me wanted to do what I did in 2022. It has truly been a process.
I had a beautiful but hard life up here; I spent many years contending with a lot of my past and figuring out how to create the kind of life, and the kind of person I wanted, and wanted to be. I spent time in every nook and cranny of this state: very few places did not make the long, long list of places I explored. I am often afraid my life will never be as good as it was here, and I will never be as happy, because I am so proud of this experience and what became of me. I remember walking into this house after I had signed all of the closing paperwork and realizing that this house was mine: that at 28 years old, I could see glaciers from my kitchen door and know I owned this tiny slice of somewhere I dreamt of for so long. I have loved few things in my life as much as I have loved this time in Alaska, and I feel bad for anyone who lives his or her life without the absolute awe I’ve felt up here.
And so, as I prepare to depart again, I at least can rest assured knowing I’ll be back in a few months. One of the longer term goals I had was to organize my life so that I could spend more time up here in the summer, and I’m surprised that I will accomplish that this year.
More on the rest of my life to come.
Fergana is home to the original capital of Central Asia before the region was chopped up by numerous conquerors. Once we picked up our small group, we continued onto Urgench, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and returned to Tashkent. On the final full day (I decided to stay an extra day), we flew out to Nukus in Karakalpakstan to see the Savitsky Art Museum and the Muynak ship cemetery on the Aral Sea. I was highly skeptical about going on this Gate 1 group tour, but our group was very small and the people were not bad, although they were much older than I was. I am mostly thrilled I got into Fergana and managed to see the second largest collection of Russian avant-garde art, all the way out in bumfuck nowhere, autonomous province UZB. I had extremely good fortune: I booked this trek into Fergana 12 hours before we departed (it was a 14+ hour day) and that same operator arranged the trip out to Nukus. Uzbekistan is developed for tourism, but not so much so that it’s easy to get to places like these (there are no tourists in Fergana, and it has at times been hot-spot for conservative and militant Islamists and extremists); Nukus is so remote and so bleak that we had to take a flight.
I secured some contacts for my eventual return to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan (Turkmenistan scares me and is on my wait list with Belarus). I somehow managed to load up my luggage with tapestries, silk clothing, fur, leather, ceramics and saffron without having to part with any of the clothes I brought along. The food was excellent — more salads and vegetables than I expected, and more beef than lamb — and despite not feeling particularly rested, I can’t believe how much I was able to see in 2 weeks. I managed to make it home safely without incident or delay, miraculously making it through customs, bag re-check and terminal transfer in Chicago in under an hour, which is definitely a new record.
Bourdain cut pretty deep, not only because he took his own life, but because he contributed so much to the modern world, especially around truly experiencing other places through food and conversation. Life has changed so much since he began, and we now live in a world where people travel to places and order food just to post on IG: Bourdain, Michael Pollan and others have pushed a different agenda. I remember reading An Omnivore’s Dilemma years ago and loving Pollan’s emphasis on preparing food together, on sitting down to eat together, and the ancient origins of sharing food out of love and closeness. In a world where people eat fast food in their cars and order ready-made dinners in the mail, we’ve lost a lot of that, and with it, a lot of human connection. Bourdain’s curiosity about culture and his habit of reading and researching the places he was going to be able to understand the people and the food and how everything came to be was another rare trait. For a guy who smoked packs of cigarettes a day, drank a ton and had an on again, off again drug problem, he was extremely thorough and intellectually curious. I really admired him, and I think the world lost something irreplaceable when he died.
I have been showing up to lift at 7am, coming home to shower and get ready and bomb out of my house in 25 minutes to get to the office. On days I don’t do that, I do UX coursework.
It’s often been a hard road, but it’s given me bottomless mettle and self-confidence in my ability to weather any storm. I’ve also thought a lot about how the people I encounter at this gym are the kinds of people I want in my life: people who push themselves constantly, and challenge themselves to be better, who are willing to face the music. People who are never finished becoming the best version(s) of themselves. How can I use this to further improve my quality of life, and that of others? A girl on my team recently told me that me being open about everything I’m doing has inspired her to rejoin Crossfit, as she couldn’t get started. That off-hand comment really meant a lot to me, that is the kind of shit I want more of in my life. I think it took me a long time to get into a good clip here in Denver, but I am definitely there now after a gradual upswing.
close friends here in Colorado, and that’s fine with me, but I am really pleased that I’ve had so much time with my out of state friends. I am really looking forward to getting back to AK for a few days as well: I expect to propose to Di we go on at least two soul-crushing hikes, 
one being Bird Ridge, which I absolutely hate, because there are hours of false peaks along the way. I may also opt to re-do the Alyeska Flake, though it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get up that high with so much spring snow; we’ll see what we can do. The last time I did that hike, I did it in a fasted state and my quads gave out on the way down which was a total pain in the ass and delayed us significantly. The prospect of having a few days with two of my favorite people back in AK is really exciting. Toward the end of June, another friend is coming down from Juneau to hit the Emperor show with me in Dallas and hang for a few days. Feeling pretty grateful.
but it proved to be ridiculous: only in the last week or so do I feel I have returned mostly to myself: biologically, mentally, intellectually, emotionally, philosophically… existentially. 2023 has been really fucking annoying so far.
I also resumed my very high intensity gym routine, so that’s been great: I’ve clocked over 600 active minutes a week for the past month or so, and that is bad ass. I decided to step up my bio-hacking and have folded more adaptogens and two different probiotics into my diet: one is 
I would not have seen myself, ten years ago, as someone who occasionally splurges on Korean beauty products, or puts carrot oil under my eyes, or uses a facial exfoliator in the shower, or puts a frozen eye mask on at 6am before my alarm goes off 18min later, but apparently I am one of those people now.
I booked all of my stuff for Dallas and am meeting some friends down there (and perhaps bringing one of the metalheads from here with me). I considered hitting up the Chicago show for my birthday as well (they are playing Jun 23) but I think I will do something else.
Given my severe lack of sleep and puffy, greying raccoon eyes at that point, I was persuaded to give beta blockers a try, and they have helped a lot. I have always been afraid of this stuff, despite it being one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the Western world. 20mg of propanolol with 2mg of melatonin at bedtime has at least has allowed me to sleep over the past few weeks… and as of a few days ago, I am off both.
I update my annual good/bad/fail/goal summary tab, which has been helpful in giving me a more quantitative look at what I’ve accomplished in the previous year. I realized a long time ago I tend to look at my accomplishments very cynically, and kick myself for being a disappointment and waste of potential — a worthless meat popsicle — and I need to be able to look at what actually happened to alleviate this sense of utter failure. This feeling has always been with me, I am extremely hard on myself and my absolute worst critic 100% of the time, and living with this perception of my life day in and day out is a nightmare. 
Soon enough, things will gradually calm down and I will spend the second half of December relaxing(ish) and, knowing myself, reflecting on a quite eventful year of change. It’s still mind-blowing to me that I’ve been here for nearly a year; I can’t believe how fast it has blown by, and I suppose at least part of it is that I have been too busy to be bored. Life is good, though, and while I am constantly grappling with what’s next, I have not ever felt I chose this step incorrectly. My father asked me if I still miss Alaska, and the answer is always yes, and will likely always be yes, but it was a good call to take a break and do something else. I also do not (yet) regret holding onto my house up there; I would be struggling a lot more emotionally if I had left nothing there to go back to.
He is more of a brother to me than a former roommate, or even friend, and conveniently one of his defense contractor buddies relocated to Denver at the same time I did, which meant he was visiting both of us here. Even more conveniently, we have become good friends in this past year, so we had a blast together. Matt (Anchorage) is in Djibouti now, and if I’m lucky I’ll see him again in the spring or summer.
We also drove up to Leadville, a little mining town that quite a few people have recommended to me, and it was an all around awesome day. Leadville is very Alaskan; remote and quite rough around the edges. There was a bar for sale on the main strip when we visited that the guys later chased as a lead for our imaginary future together, where we all live on a compound, they never have to grow up or assume any responsibility, and I run the business to keep us all afloat. If only. The bar sold before we could grab it, so I guess we’re all stuck in our present lives.
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 honestly didn’t love either of these: the former was OK. I shared with a colleague that my favorite Iran book remains 
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.
This is the best infectious disease book I’ve read since 
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, 
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 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.
The Chaos Path 