End of an Era

Yes, the rumors are true. Tonight at midnight, I'm going to the hospital to have my Thirties removed. They'll install my Forties at the same time, which is like a pacemaker that should keep me going for the next 10 years or so. Many people go on to live long and fruitful lives after this, but I'm still a little nervous. 😅

Despite all the craziness during the last several years, I think my Thirties have probably been the best decade of my life — it was certainly in the top 4, at least! So, here are some of the many highlights:

Friends

Of course, I had friends before my Thirties as well, but I met a lot of my best friends during this decade! Things really kicked off when I met my friend Deb at a local coffee shop (Pleasant Pops) in 2018 or so. She introduced me to several of her friends, and then things spiraled out of control. Oh God -- please help! I have too many friends now!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!

In all seriousness, though: having a close-knit group of friends living nearby has really transformed my life for the better. I'm really grateful to have all of them in my life!

Realignments

Career

I spent most of my Twenties living the stereotypical life of a Washingtonian. In other words: my career dominated my life, I spent way too many hours working, and much of my time outside of work was spent at networking events. 🤮

At some point in my early Thirties, I finally realized that all of this investment in my career was counterproductive. My employers were just getting more of my time for free, and my only reward was that they'd push even more of the work my way. So, I finally started limiting my work week to a strict 40 hours, and I've been happier ever since!

Politics

My career wasn't the only realignment I made in my Thirties. Prior to the 2016 election, I always considered myself a Republican, although I never really analyzed their political positions very deeply. I just assumed that their positions were better than the Democrats' positions because... well... that's what the Republicans always told me!

Suffice it to say that I'm a Democrat now, and I strive to avoid adopting political positions based upon unsubstantiated claims.

Views on LGBTQ+

I used to hold some very stunted views regarding LGBTQ+. I would outwardly claim that I supported LGBTQ+, but I would also insist that LGBTQ+ people should act in a manner that would effectively erase them from society. For example, I'd confidently utter word salad such as "I'm okay with whatever lifestyle they choose, but they really don't need to show affection in public.". Like... what? How in the heck does that even make sense? In what way was I "okay with whatever lifestyle" if I was also insisting upon targeted rules that controlled how specific people lived their lives? Incoherent thoughts such as this were a very convenient "failure to connect the dots" that allowed me to feel like I was being accepting while simultaneously advocating for inequity. Meanwhile, I never really felt impelled to scrutinize these beliefs, so they just persisted like a bag of garbage that I stuffed into a closet and forgot about. 😔

Well, I'm happy to report that I finally threw out that garbage in my Thirties. This realignment began when I moved into the Dupont Circle neighborhood, which has a very active LGBTQ+ community. Importantly, it's not like they were a separate community that happened to reside within the same zip code. Everyone was part of the same neighborhood community, and everyone happily lived amongst a diversity of lifestyles. Furthermore, nobody imposed targeted rules that dictated how specific neighbors should behave. If some neighbors were permitted to show affection in public, then everybody was!

But... where was the societal decay that I had always expected? Where was the moral rot that was supposed to be filling the streets? All I saw was a beautiful and peaceful neighborhood full of neighbors who respected and cared for one another. How could this neighborhood be thriving when nobody was enforcing the targeted rules!!?! 🙀

Yet, despite the apparent lack of moral rot, something still smelled like garbage. Where was that odor coming from? After a small amount of soul searching, I realized that the source was my previously-held beliefs that I had never really scrutinized. Were there some specific harms that these beliefs were supposed to protect against? Um... maybe child abuse or something like that? But... I didn't see any evidence of rampant child abuse or pedophilia. If I was being completely honest, this neighborhood exhibited much less evidence of child abuse than any place I had ever lived before. Also... what exactly was the causal link between LGBTQ+ and child abuse supposed to be? How exactly would having two Moms or two Dads lead to child abuse? As far as I could tell, they were able to care for children just as lovingly as traditional parents. So... 🤷‍♂️

I could have been stubborn and just held onto my beliefs despite the evidence that I was seeing all around me. I could have insisted that there must be a reason to impose those targeted rules even if I didn't know what that reason was. But, in the end, I decided it would be easier just to throw out that garbage. So, I did, and I've been much better off for doing so!

Adventures

Somehow, betwixt all of these radical realignments in my life, I also managed to find time for several adventures! Here were a few of my favorites:

Visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Wyoming

Holy cow -- I can't believe that I took this trip almost 10 years ago! 🙀

Anyway: my Aunt and Uncle had moved out to Wyoming ages ago, and I had never actually gone out to visit them. So, I decided that it was finally time to fix that!

They had a very lovely home that was absolutely packed full of musical instruments (I'd show you some photos, but my Aunt is worried that the abundance of guitars and violins makes the house look borderline cluttered). Additionally, the the local landscape was beautiful, and there was no shortage of places to go hiking.

The most memorable part of the trip was when my Aunt and I were driving back from somewhere, and we noticed some weird sculptures at the side of the highway. We pulled over to investigate, and we learned that a retired metalworker was living in a home nearby. He just got bored one day and decided that he wanted to start making sculptures. So, that's exactly what he did!

Really, you just had to be there. He built dozens and dozens of crazy sculptures, and most of them came to life whenever the wind blew (not literally, of course!). It was very impressive!

Very. Much. Train.

In 2017, I attended the wedding for my friends Michael and Yiting out in Eugene, Oregon. It was an outdoor ceremony, and I'm told that the venue was gorgeous. However, there were massive wildfires occurring at the time, so nobody could see more than about 100 feet before everything vanished into a smokey gray haze. Fortunately, Michael and Yiting had both just kicked off their careers in climate policy, so they promised us that they'd get everything fixed in a jiffy!

After the wedding, I decided that I wasn't ready to head back to DC quite yet. Besides, Portland was relatively nearby, and I had always wanted to visit there. So, I took an Amtrak to Portland!

It was okay.

(Okay, srsly: I think Portland would have been a lot more enjoyable if it wasn't for all of the wildfire smoke. It really made it unpleasant to be outside.)

But, I still didn't feel like I was quite ready to return to DC yet. So, on a complete whim, I purchased an Amtrak ticket from Portland to Denver that included a private room. It costed about the same as renting a hotel room for a few nights, and I'd heard that the views along the route were supposed to be stunning. Plus, I could work just as easily from a train as I could from my apartment, so why not?

Best. Decision. Ever.

If you ever want to take a very low-effort vacation, then I absolutely recommend this trip. The accommodations were very comfortable. The dining car employed actual chefs who prepared delicious meals. And... just look at this scenery!!!

Just... wow!

Colombia

One day, my friend Deb called me up, and the conversation went something like this:

Deb: Hey -- would you have any interest in going on a trip to Colombia?

Me: Hmm... that could be fun! I've been meaning to take some vacation anyway.

Deb: Great! I finish my current job in 2 weeks, and I have a week off before I start my new job! So, let's schedule the trip for that week!

Me: wat?

The next thing I knew, I was on a plane flying to Colombia.

Reminiscing about this now, I'm realizing that we had way too many adventures during this trip to cover in just a single blog post. So, I'll need to write a series of posts about the trip one of these days. In the meantime, here's a quick overview.

We stayed at a very quaint hostel in Bogotá. We also did a biking tour, and we absolutely loved the murals that decorated much of the city!

Some of the locals were very excited to meet foreign tourists! They thought that the presence of tourists was a sign that their country was doing well. On a few occasions, they asked to take photos with us.

We took another bike tour in Medellín. At least, that's what we thought we signed up for. However, it turned out that their concept of a "bike tour" involved bicycling alongside the highway!!! Deb and I were both used to biking through cities, but that was admittedly a little intense! 😅

One curious thing about Medellín was that the inner city was middle-class, but the outer perimeter of the city was very impoverished. Additionally, in the middle of the city, you could catch an overhead tram that would transport you to a national park that was a few miles away. So, for part of this journey, you were being lifted over people's homes in the slums. Kinda yikes. 😔

Oh -- we also shared our tram with some locals who were very excited to meet tourists!

We also visited the town of Guatapé, as well as a very massive boulder just outside of the town! The boulder was called La Piedra del Peñol.

Finally, we ended our trip in Cartagena. This was definitely a much more touristy location, and the vendors were very happy to sell us things for exorbitant prices compared to what we had seen elsewhere. Fortunately, we could talk them down to a fraction of the cost by letting them know how much we had paid for the same thing while in Bogotá. (Don't worry -- they were still ripping us off! We were just paying twice the cost now rather than 10x the cost 🤣.)

There really is a ton that I left out from this overview. I try to write some more detailed posts about some of our adventures one of these days.

Ride to Harpers Ferry

In late 2019, I had just quit my job, and I was planning to take a few months off to do some soul searching. To kick things off, I decided to join my friends on a bike ride from DC to Harpers Ferry!

I wrote a long post about this adventure on my previous blog, and I encourage you to check it out!

2020

I'm pretty sure that 2020 was an adventure for literally everyone on Earth!! Still, I'm really glad that I was living in Washington, DC at the time because I was able to experience so much history firsthand.

As you probably recall, everyone was quarantining during the start of COVID. After a couple of weeks, they announced that it was safe to go outside and get some exercise as long as you wore a mask and maintained social distancing. But, despite this announcement, many people were still hesitant to leave their homes. I remember biking through a ghost town during the early weeks of April. For example, this is what the lawn near the Washington Monument looked like during the peak of the Cherry Blossom season. Normally, it would be extremely difficult to bike at this intersection due to the size of the crowds!

Everywhere I biked, the streets were just completely empty:

A few months later, protests erupted across the country in response to several injustices such as the murder of George Floyd. People were vandalizing buildings and monuments near the White House, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the national news made it out to be. I was at Lafayette Square during the initial wave of protests, and the worst thing I saw was a handful of people spray painting the US Court of Federal Claims and a few statues.

The next morning, several members of my extended family sent me aerial photography that suggested that large sections of the city had burnt to the ground. So, I spent that afternoon biking through those sections of the city and photographing all of the damage I saw. The worst of the damage was at the government buildings immediately adjacent to the White House and Lafayette Square:

The non-government buildings in the immediate vicinity received noticeably less damage:

The signs of damage disappeared almost entirely once you moved a block or two outside of the area. Importantly, absolutely zero buildings were burnt to the ground. In the end, my photographic evidence brought at least a small amount of relief to my extended family.

Things calmed down quite a bit after the first night, and most (all?) of the remaining protests were peaceful. Still, Trump felt it was necessary to prove that he was the "Law and Order" president, so he came down on DC harshly. A curfew was set throughout the city, and it was enforced very aggressively. Military vehicles occupied the street corners, and police cars rushed all over the place. Low-flying helicopters scanned the streets all throughout the night, and searchlights continually flashed in through my windows. Needless to say, it made it a little tricky to get much sleep! 😅

The policing relaxed after the first few nights, but it didn't completely go away. I remember biking through the city one evening when I stumbled upon a large crowd of peaceful protesters near Thomas Circle. As usual, people were holding signs and chanting. Occasionally, groups of people would kneel in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds as a tribute to George Floyd. Let me tell you: it's not easy to kneel on a street for that long! Just imagine if you were the one laying on the street with somebody kneeling on your neck for even just 30 seconds. The final moments of George Floyd's life must have been truly awful.

Eventually, some people in the crowd started to shoot off some leftover fireworks from the 4th of July. I watched them for a few minutes, but then decided to go back home to make dinner. As I was leaving, a swarm of police officers on bikes suddenly surrounded the protest. I'm not really sure what happened to the protesters after that.

After a surreal lifetime, the election finally took place in November. I had already submitted my ballot via a dropbox a few weeks earlier, so I was glued to the news feeds that night. As expected, Trump was ahead in the initial tallies because in-person ballots were counted first, and he had instructed his supporters to vote in-person. Still... things were looking pretty bleak that night. I eventually turned off my laptop and went to bed earlier than I planned. I was already dreading the next 4 years.

I woke up the next morning shortly before my daily standup meeting. I signed into the call a few minutes early, and the only other person on the line was the CEO's son. He was checking the news, and he was surprised to see how much ground Biden had gained overnight. I don't think Biden had pulled ahead in any key states yet, but it no longer seemed like an impossibility. There were still a lot of ballots to count. The majority of the uncounted ballots were absentee, and therefore they were more likely to favor Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump had already declared himself the winner, and he demanded that everyone stop counting the ballots. He insisted that all of the remaining ballots were fraudulent, and he began crowd-sourcing social media to harvest conspiracy theories about the election.

The next few days were a hazy fog. It was like we were all in the lobby of a hospital, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell us if our loved one had survived the surgery. We tried to keep ourselves occupied with our daily routines, but the election consumed our thoughts.

Around 11:00 AM on November 7th, I started to notice a handful of Tweets claiming that Biden had won the election. These Tweets came from some reliable sources, but nothing was being reported in the news yet. So, I drifted back into the hazy fog.

Ten minutes later, I started to hear people banging pots and pans together. I looked outside, and I saw neighbors leaning out of their windows and cheering about Biden's victory. I checked the news again, and sure enough: the news outlets were all reporting that Biden had won the election.

KABOOOOOOM! People began setting off fireworks.

I stepped outside to witness the events firsthand. All throughout the Adams Morgan neighborhood, people were celebrating in the streets. Cars were honking their horns as they drove by, and everybody was cheering. Police cruisers started flashing their lights, and you could see police officers dancing inside their vehicles as they drove past.

At this point, I started to wonder what things were like closer to the White House. So, I began migrating in that direction:

I managed to run into Deb as I approached McPherson Square. Given that this was still the height of the COVID pandemic, we were both a little hesitant about jumping into the middle of the crowd. So, we lingered on the outskirts for a few minutes and took everything in:

Eventually, we decided to join the festivities:

So, what was it like to be in the crowds that day? Well, we've all seen the photos of the jubilation at the end of World War II. I imagine that it was a lot like that. We were finally approaching the end of a terrible period in our history, and for the first time in ages we finally felt hopeful for the months and years ahead.

January 6th, 2021

You know what? I don't even want to talk about this right now. I just finished writing about the end of 2020, and I'm still reliving the high from that!

We all experienced January 6th. It sucked, but I'll blog about it later.

Too. Much. Era.

To be honest, I intended to write this as a brief, silly post on the last day of my Thirties. But, I've been writing this post for over 2 weeks now (it's August 23rd!), and I still have several adventures and memories that I want to write about! So, look forward to a "Part 2" of this post where I'll write about things such as:

• Travels with my COVID bubble group!
• A trip to the Grand Canyon!
• The time my friend almost killed me while we were hiking!
• Learning to rollerskate!
• Karaoke!

Yikes -- you know what? Maybe I'll write some individual posts about these adventures. It turns out that you can squeeze a lot into a decade!