Category: Life

Today, I’m turning 37.

Last year, I skipped my 36th birthday post.

I’m not really sure why I chose to skip writing that post.

After re-reading what I wrote when I turned 35, it has become clear to me that I am now a very busy person. That may be what forced my hand to skip my annual reflection last year. Bummer! Oh well. Lot’s to catch up on!

Let’s get started. The past two years have been very challenging. Some highlights:

• At work, I had some high profile product launches. That was fun! But also, incredibly challenging. I started managing a team of software engineers. That is not easy, and I feel like it’s only going to become more difficult as time goes on. Growth!
• I have an elder cat and an elder dog. Having both aging into their senior years has been emotionally and financially difficult
• I became an uncle! I’ll talk more about this later, but this has been the single-most important thing in my life lately. I couldn’t be more proud of my brother. I promise to be the best uncle I can be 🙂
• Lately, I’ve taken up a new hobby. Pottery! I’ve made a lot of pottery lately. I plan to make even more this year! Easily one of the most fun hobbies I could recommend. It gets you off your phone and I made a lot of new friends at the studio.
• Travels: Lots of revisits to favorite spots: Upstate New York, Las Vegas, Austin, San Francisco (first time visiting!). I had hoped for an international trip in 2024 but that didn’t pan out, and the cards didn’t land for 2025 either. Fingers crossed I can squeeze in some international travel this year
• I didn’t write as much as I had hoped for since I turned 35. That’s not great. That’s on me
• I’m still learning Korean! Duolingo has been helpful. Noji has been more helpful! Flashcards are the best.

Welp, I’m in my middle age now.

In my twenties, I had very high expectations for my 30s: a mortgaged home, maybe some children, and an esteemed career. In my head, I had this vision that turning 37 would signal the entryway for a comfortable 40s. Now, retirement feels further than ever before. I have no kids. My grandparents are in the final chapter of their life. Peering down the road, I can tell that entering my 40s will be very rough if nothing improves in the US (inflation is a bitch and real estate markets are ass). I feel a little bit like I’m fighting an uphill battle.

I became an uncle in 2024, and I couldn’t be happier about that. It’s exciting, but long-distance uncle’ing is tough. I miss my nephew often 🙁

Now that I’m an uncle, all I can think about is what it would be like to become a father myself. I finally feel ready to broach fatherhood (should it present itself). I deeply want to become the father mine never was. There’s some degree of fear inside me that I’ll never get that opportunity. There’s also a degree of fear that I will get that opportunity. All I know is that this may be the biggest catalyst for me before I turn 40.

I made a lot of new friends over the past couple of years. This was kind of hard to do in a post-pandemic world. I took it upon myself to be more engaging in public with people. I took effort to walk without headphones in. I took up new hobbies (pottery!).

This was how I felt before pottery:

I’ve taken a big step back from spending time on consoles gaming. Largely a positive gain I think! This has freed me up to spend more time in the pottery studio, writing, reading, and spending quality time catching up on shows. I mean how else am I going to burn down my ever-growing list of movies to watch? These movies are not going to watch themselves.

A few goals for myself this year:

1. Spend more time with my nephew. Spend more time with my brothers and family.
2. Stop obsessing over hedonism, it’s okay to not feel good about the world. It’s beyond my control.
3. Maybe I just need another tattoo 😏
4. Buy that motorcycle
5. Continue learning Korean. 한국어는 어렵습니다! 😅

I turned 32 a couple of days ago.

Just like last year, I’m late to writing about this birthday. Frankly, I was a bit overworked, anxious about the nation, and just flat out tired. It’s been exhausting, and we’re only two weeks into the new year.

I typically enjoy having my birthday in January, because it gives me an organic moment to pause and reflect on my past year of life. This time around the sun, my reflections probably don’t differ too much from your reflections. Mainly because, so much of this past year was frozen in quarantine after February 2020. Everything basically halted. Seeing friends, family, plans, short and long-term — it all came to a halt.

Later in the year, I had a corrective knee surgery to repair my femoral cartilage in my right knee (ouch!). I had to deal with a deformity I’ve been dealing with called Osteochondritis Dissecans. Its was not pleasant, but I was happy to have it fixed up. All thanks to a kind donor who died, and gifted me with a small piece of their cartilage so that I may walk normally again. So, listen up, y’all take care of your knees, ya hear? It was a dreadful recovery, but all is well now! I can walk normally again without pain. Given the pandemic, and social distancing, I wasn’t missing much during the recovery period. I’m very thankful I still have my job, and my health. That’s what matters most these days.

The world is still reckoning with a record number of people dying from Covid-19. Vaccinations are beginning here and there. With any luck, we may be able to see each other normally again in the fall of 2021 (well, what even is normal now?). As of writing, we’re still reeling from the failed white supremacist insurrection at the Capitol that happened just last week to overturn the election of Joe Biden. Not exactly positive news, but interestingly greenhouse gas emissions dropped 10% this past year due to the pandemic.

Lately, the future has been obfuscated by a very dense fog. It’s been scary. I’m angry, bummed, and disappointed I can’t see ahead. I so desperately want to charter plans. So much so, in fact, I drafted a bucket list for the first time.

My friends and peers are moving away from big cities like NYC and SF. Trading in their 1 Bedroom city apartment rent for a 2-3 Bedroom house mortgage with a backyard and car, in suburbs (or hell, even in exurbs in most cases). Some are moving back to their hometowns to pickup even cheaper living and planning their future work-from-home lives saving a pretty penny paying half the rent-price premium where the their job may be headquartered. Honestly, I’m envious. A part of me so desperately wants to relocate back home, to Texas. I definitely suffer from seasonal homesick-ness (I just need my Tex-Mex and open skies, and one-of-a-kind thunderstorms — Texas just ticks the boxes, what can I say). Another part of me calls out to New Mexico, to Colorado or even to California. Even climate havens regions are at the top of my mind these days.

I definitely don’t regret not moving in the midst of this crisis. This past year was difficult. I’m happy it wasn’t made more difficult! I’m just slightly jealous of those who made it work, and happy for those who embarked on a big change during the pandemic! That takes guts, and ambition. Tip of the hat to ya’ll ????

So, as you can imagine, I’m very much looking forward to receiving the vaccine. Excited to get back on track to making plans to visit or host friends, travel, and eager to build out a foundation for the next chapter in my life. Certainly eager to be groomsman in my brother’s wedding in November later this year! But I have a feeling, there will be big moves this year (physically, or emotionally or perhaps both). Maybe, that means moving away away from New York. Maybe that means moving to Austin. Maybe that means moving somewhere… unexpected. I really don’t know.

I’ve never been the superstitious type, but 32 does seem to have a certain roundness to it. It’s certainly an even number. Maybe, it’s my lucky number? Never really had one of those before. I don’t know if it’s mathematical, or if it’s the way the ‘3’ and ‘2’ glyphs sit next to it — but, 32 looks like a screaming eagle to me, beckoning for a reckoning I think. So, here’s to 32.

I guess I’m an adult now?