Category: Personal

While last week I wrote in broad strokes about moving in general, this post is being written in a bare bedroom in San Diego on one of my last nights “living” in this city.

Continue reading “Good Night, San Diego”

Last weekend I helped my fiancee move into our new apartment in San Francisco. This most recent weekend, I drove down to San Diego to get the majority of my things.¹

It’s been a hectic time, but it’s exciting to be moving in together, buying furniture and arranging our lives. I spent the last two years in a pretty minimalist state, with all forms of work and pleasure happening at my desk setup. I now have a living room with a couch, and will render my desk for its intended purposes: work.²

Moving can be quite a hassle, and since this move has been most associated with the acquisition of new items, I’m excited to have a steady place to be for several years before we have to do it again. Hopefully.

1. Finishing up this post on Sunday is actually a bit rough. I woke up around 1 AM this morning and just couldn’t get back to sleep, so at 2 AM I hopped in my car and headed back to San Francisco. ↩
2. Well, work in the sense that certain hobbies (podcasting and writing) can also be considered activities that require a “work” setup. But also real work that I get paid for. ↩

Last October I asked my then-girlfriend, Erin, to marry me. As the cliche goes, I was lucky enough, and she was crazy enough, that she said “yes”. Soon thereafter the wedding planning began, and it’s been an on-and-off process as other events in our lives ebb and flow.

We are aiming to have our wedding in fall of 2022, so we’re giving ourselves a lot of wiggle room. Even then, it was clear we needed to get organized. There are a lot of moving parts, which only increased when we decided to have the wedding at her parent’s farm. Suddenly there were no preferred vendors, and everything was on us.

This part 1 is to briefly discuss some of the ways we’ve gotten our act together. I’m sure other posts, focusing on other elements, will follow.

Continue reading “Wedding Planning Part 1”

On an episode of the podcast No Dumb Questions, Destin and Matt discussed how they compiled a playlist for each year. This allowed them to track changing moods and tastes as the years went by, and also to link songs to specific times in their lives.

The benefit of listening to these shows hosted by people with more life experience is that I can actually learn from them sooner than how they learned themselves. I loved the idea of having anchor points in songs on an annual playlist, so I made my own for 2019 and 2020.

I spent some time the other day trying to begin building out my 2021 playlist. I seeded it with about 5 songs that were late additions in 2020 to give Spotify something to work with.

After thirty minutes of going through songs, nothing stuck with me.

This situation is still unresolved. I’ve always had trouble intentionally finding music that suits my tastes. It’s unusual for more than a few songs from a given band to strike me as my kind of music, leaving me in a tough position. Despite that knowledge, I scoured internet forums looking for bands related to those I’d listened to the most during 2020, but still couldn’t get a song to grab me.

I’m not sure what to do better. Perhaps my relationship to music is just a bit complicated, and I need to let things settle, let the playlist formulate naturally. Maybe I just need to do more research. I am certain that I love this idea of a yearly playlist, and I’m not giving up on it. It worked pretty well in both 2019 and 2020, but I had old music that hadn’t been a part of any playlist to fall back on.

The music well is not dry. I know there is more out there for me, and I’ll keep hunting for it. Ignoring my struggles though, I highly recommend something similar for everyone. Maybe music isn’t your thing (it wasn’t mine until I started working full time), but I’m sure there are other things you consume that could be put in a yearly list of some type. Track new meals, new books, places you visit¹ or media you watch. Being intentional about tracking your life is putting an investment in your future. Memories are important, and setting up a system to enhance them isn’t something you’ll regret. At worst, a failed system may be something memorable itself.

1. You probably shouldn’t do that this year. ↩

On the most recent episode of OHAC, Mikhail, Jack, and I talked about our yearly themes. You can head over there to get links to other resources, and listen to our takes on each of our themes. This post is to summarize my own theme, and try to have something clearer in my mind after a lot of talking through it with Jack and Mikhail.

My theme for this year is the Year of Transition. Its focus is twofold: acceptance of the changes happening in my life, and leveraging the progress I made in 2020 to capitalize on those changes.

I’ll be moving from San Diego to San Francisco this year (and potentially moving once more within San Francisco), causing an uprooting of my routines and requiring the need to adapt to new spaces. This is not inherently problematic, but it’s something I must face rather than trying to hold onto my past situation. There is an opportunity to reevaluate my working situation, for example. In fact, moving in with my fiancee means everything has the chance for adjustment and improvement.

Regarding routines and habits, I’m focusing on how to dissociate them from a particular location, and let them grow into the new place they occupy. I have created a solid groups of habits to bring along with me, but they have new facets to them. Exercising and eating, something that’s been a solo activity the last few years, will now require me to be aware of someone else. Taking the time to write these blog posts and pursue side projects needs the same consideration.

There are changes coming my way, and I plan on working with and through them to make the best year that I can.

I’ll be spending this Christmas away from family for the first time ever.

I’ve been left trying to make the best of the situation. I’m not alone: I’m spending Christmas with my fiancee, and we have been decorating her small San Francisco apartment with lights. Our parents have sent us cookies and gifts, and we have a small tree on the table. ¹

I think the biggest difference is that this is the first year where I don’t have a distinct build-up towards Christmas externally pressed upon me. Until I graduated college, there was always winter break. The last two years, flying home for the holidays was a clear marker where I was now working remotely for a couple of weeks, surrounded by family and trying to see all my friends who were back as well.

None of that is available to me this year. I’m not going anywhere, and working from home is no special deal. Hence, decorations everywhere except the bathroom. We have a home automation set up called Christmas Time that sends our lights flashing and Christmas music playing. We made mint cookies this weekend, and decorated sugar cookies my mom sent us. I’m happy with how we’ve adapted.

1. The apartment is less than 250 sq. ft. so there’s limited space for anything more than the 2-foot tree we chose. ↩

On Saturday of this past weekend, I was able to check out the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It’s a truly beautiful place.

What struck me was a description of what the designer, Bernard Maybeck, intended to create when forming this area. First, he wanted to make sure that it was using the natural landscape. To that end, there is the large pond, trees and bushes growing all around it, and no desire to reform the landscape. Second, the intended feel was that of well-preserved Roman ruins. I think he nailed that. It’s gorgeous, and although out-of-place in the broader scope of San Francisco, walking around it really makes you feel like you’re in another world.

I’m planning on making the best use of this long weekend that I can, since it’ll likely be the last one I get until Thanksgiving. To that end: