January: A New Beginning

Moments before midnight December 31, 2015

It starts with a kiss, as do all great stories. Amid the bright booming fireworks and the joyous cheers and general cacophony, a boy and girl are locked in a deep embrace. The moment lingers as they share warmth and love, both feeling electrified with passion. Then, the moment passes, they pull apart and join in the celebration of the new year. 2016 would be quite an amazing year, especially if it started off like this. Little did we know that our kiss would mark the beginning of one of the best and busiest (and most challenging) years of our lives!

Some context. I am now a 25 year old doctoral candidate in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. I study teams in the workplace and how to make them better. I last used this blog as a way to chronicle my adventures during my undergraduate days, with my last update taking place right before I started my senior year of college at Washington and Lee University. It has been a little over four years since that last post, and I have had many adventures since then. Moving forward, I want to keep this blog as a way to reflect on my life as it is. A sort of diary. I have spent many hours lately fearing growing old and having never lived an extraordinary life. That is, until just the other day when a dear friend pointed out that our lives, in fact already are extraordinary. The opportunities and daily adventures we have, though riddled with challenges and mundane tasks, are still the stuff of dreams for many people. Part of my fears, too, are stemmed in my poor autobiographical memory. I have come to realize that my brain lets many of the events of my life just slip by, washing over it like a wave that retreats. This wave may make some lasting impressions or changes, it may have stand out among the millions of waves of experiences crashing over us every day, but generally, once it recedes back into the endless ocean of time, it's gone for me. Reading over my previous posts I noticed two things: 1. I was rather immature in both my writing and my perspective (but what is to be expected of a 20 year old). 2. I have only the vaguest memories of many of those posts. Some of the people and events mentioned are just shadows of a wave that passed by years ago. I now fear growing old and not being able to remember the extraordinary life that I am currently living, and thus, I have taken up this blog again.

Enjoying the Las Vegas strip before 2016 starts

We started our journey through this recent year at the very moment the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve. My girlfriend, Kim, and I were in Las Vegas celebrating. My parents live out there now, and we had taken two weeks to visit them for the holidays. Not wanting to waste an opportunity to celebrate New Years in one of the three most iconic places to do so, we went to the strip. After hours of wandering around the strip, admiring the lights and the people and the food, we found ourselves buffeted to a viewing area for the fireworks outside the Bellagio. There we stood waiting eagerly for 2016 to begin. It was freezing, quite literally. Kim looked radiant in a very well fitting dress, but because the desert nights are unfathomably cold for a place that can reach 120 degrees during the day time in the summer, she had worn "the warmest coat in the world." This coat is my dad's, but is worn almost exclusively by my mom. It can keep you toasty in sub-zero weather. I was bundled up in a peacoat and blazer. That said, I was much colder than Kim, and both of our legs were freezing. Fortunately, the excitement of the moment, the almost tangible buzz of life around us kept us warm, or at least distracted until 2016.

Enjoying the beautiful scenery and homes in Palm Springs

A few days later, while still visiting my parents, we took a day trip to Palm Springs, California. We wandered around this aging town that served as a retreat for celebrities during the Golden Era of Hollywood. It had the occasional threads of life and new blood that ran through the city, but the magic of yesteryear was ubiquitous. We went through shops (where I picked up my favorite hat, a grey fedora-style hat that actually fits my oversized head), and neighborhoods, admiring the beautiful houses and backdrops.

Tasting some wine and cigars with the parents and Kim

We stopped for exquisite wine and cigars at Fame Tobacco & Wine, enjoying people (and dog) watching. We were surprised to find a film festival taking over the town during that week. We tried, in vain, to watch the celebrities walk the red carpet at the awards ceremony that night. We were able to find the location, and saw limos bringing some of Hollywood's rich and famous, but we had no patience or time to wait in the excruciatingly long lines that buffered us from the red carpet viewing area.

Brewery tour and tasting with Kim, the boys, and Bob at Cigar City Brewing Co. Tampa

Returning to Tampa, we hit the ground running. Classes started back up, my thesis was finishing up data collection, my role as a kickboxing instructor was officially starting, and filming for the short indie film I was in was also beginning. We were home for barely a few days when I was semi-surprised by some of my fraternity brothers who flew in from Virginia, Maryland, and California! We toured the Tampa History Museum, visited the Korean Family Spa: Shangri-la, and toured Cigar City Brewing. It had been a few years since Kim and I had been on Cigar City's tour. They had upgraded from their initial one room tour in which a small group of guests were able to taste green beer, and watch the brewers hand stir the vats of beer. Now, the tour took us into three different buildings, included a tasting of five different kinds of beers, and was led by a jovial man named Bob. He regaled us with tales of inter-brewery competitions and bets that resulted in beers like "Florida Man Loses Bet."

January ended with Tampa's greatest tradition: Gasparilla! That said, I feel like it deserves its own post. In the mean time, cheers to the daily adventure!