My 2021 Wrapped

Mic check, is this thing on? Hello, friends! 👋

I can now say this is the longest gap between updates since I started this blog over nine years ago in 2012, but as anyone who’s ever blogged knows, sometimes that’s just how things go. I know it’s been a while, but as we wind down 2021, it felt like the perfect moment to pause, check in, say hello, and share a few highlights from the last year. 

Before I get into the good stuff, I want to acknowledge that it’s been another wild year for us all. Heading into 2021, I remember thinking and writing about focusing my energy on what I can control instead of obsessing and stressing about things beyond it. This year brought more lockdowns, protests, new vaccines, an increasing number of climate-related disasters, Delta variant, now Omicron, and despite my best efforts to live in some kind of stoic, zen-minded state, my reality was another emotional roller coaster. I don’t how you feel about it all, but the word that comes to my mind is exhaustion. Mentally and physically, we’ve battled it out, for better or for worse, and now we’re here.

It’d be easy to write off 2021 as another “lost year”, but for me that just wouldn’t be true. In the midst of all the uncertainty and global chaos, there’ve been some incredibly exciting and beautiful moments worth cherishing and sharing here. 

To kick off the highlights, we need to venture into the world of the impossibly small. In April my father’s g-2 experiment released an exciting result after more than ten (yes ten) years of work. To those who work in this field, “This result from the first run of the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment is arguably the most highly anticipated result in particle physics over the last years.” I’m extremely proud of the commitment and work my father and his team have accomplished and it was a special moment witnessing the academic and scientific communities rally in the excitement around new possibilities in the way we understand the Standard Model. 

Switching gears slightly but still on the subject of small and highly anticipated things, my brother, Jake and his wife, Erica welcomed their first baby girl in September! It was such joyful news for my family and I’m happy to report I’m now also known as “Uncle B”. We got to meet our beautiful new niece over the Thanksgiving holiday and it was lovely spending some (overdue) quality time with both familiar and new faces. 

Speaking of growing families, we’ve reached the highlight of my year, I got married! My wife (Diana) and I got married in the beautiful hills of Santa Cruz, California in November, surrounded by our close family and friends. It really did feel like the “best day ever” and I finally understand why everyone says that about their wedding day. We got super lucky with the weather and somehow managed to thread the needle between two highly contagious COVID variants which allowed most guests to attend. Over a year’s worth of planning went into that single weekend and it was just such an overwhelming feeling of joy to be surrounded by that much love and support. 

Looking back on it all, 2021 was a fascinating contrast of emotions. On one hand, it felt like a continuation of 2020 with familiar COVID restrictions, working from home (still), fewer trips and so on; we clearly haven’t turned the page on “2020”. But on the other, there were little glimmers of normalcy and hope for the future sprinkled throughout the year. With vaccines and an increasing amount of treatment options for COVID, my life became less dominated by fear. I was able to resume some of the activities that I enjoyed prior to the pandemic and above all I think we (humans) are collectively learning to adapt to living in a post-COVID world. 

What’s my top goal for 2022?

The subject I’ve been thinking most about in the past year is time, how I use it, how valuable it is, and how best to spend it in the future. Perhaps partly because I feel like I’ve underutilized my time throughout the pandemic or maybe it’s the result of being forced to confront how fragile and mortal we humans truly are. Whatever the case, I’ll be focusing more in 2022 on living “unapologetically more intently”. 

What does that mean? It means just making the time and space for the few things I enjoy the most, e.g. spending time in nature, writing, cooking, walks and coffee with friends, etc. and cutting out the less nurturing time consuming activities. If 2020 and 2021 are proof of anything, it’s that getting to do all the things you enjoy isn’t guaranteed. In fact, it never was. 

As more activities and possibilities open back up next year, I’m not going to try to do it all. Instead, I’m going to think very critically and carefully about which activities offer the most of that soul nourishing feeling and choose to invest my time there. Will it work? No idea, but I’m committed to making an honest effort and will report back here if there are any interesting takeaways. 

Thank you

If you’ve made it this far, I’m both impressed and honored. Thank you for staying in touch with me and following along with my life updates. If you have any feedback or just want to reach out and say hello, you can simply leave a comment on the blog or reply back to this email. 

Wishing you a healthy, joyful, and unapologetically intentional year ahead! 

Life Is What You Pay Attention To

Hi there! It’s me, and I’m still writing here. If you got my email or are reading this directly on my site, thank you for sticking it out with me.

As 2017 comes to a close, I can’t help but feel like this year was just one giant rush of emotions. So many things happened this year that it’s hard to single out just one; there’s simply too many to talk about. For a quick reminder, check out Google's always amazing year in search. 

Yet, I felt it might be the appropriate time to share a short little life update and what I’ve been thinking about lately. After work tomorrow, I’ll be flying up to Seattle to spend a few precious days with my family, who rarely gets together all in the same place. Every time I’m with the whole bunch, it’s such a special treat, and I feel like I need to savor every moment.

What else is new? Perhaps the biggest update I have for you at this time is that in the beginning of November, I resigned my position with the bank to accept a contract content writing opportunity at Google, via a third-party company called Adecco*. In my role, I get to work on the Google campus and feel so inspired by what I see and learn there every single day. It’s truly been a life-changing experience thus far, and I feel grateful every morning I wake up and get ready for work.

Now that you know my career update, I also wanted to share another idea I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately, which is, “life is what you pay attention to”. I heard this on a podcast and it really resonated with me for some reason. Probably because in our screen-obsessed modern life, our attention is constantly getting ping-ponged from one thing to the next, and at the end of the day, my brain says, “Huh? What did I miss?”.

It’s like Ferris Bueller famously said, life moves fast and if you don’t look around you could miss it. But how does that translate to real life? For too many practical purposes, I can’t just throw out my phone and laptop. In fact, I love the information available at my fingertips, but there obviously needs to be some intention behind the all the time I spend in front of my screen.

That's why intention and attention are going to be at the top of my 2018 list. You can do anything you put your mind to, but you can’t do everything. What we do with our time and who we spend it with can end up being some of the most important decisions of our lives. Which is why, I can’t wait to go home, and spend time with my family. Happy holidays, I hope they’re filled with gratitude and love.

*Adecco is my official employer.