This was first written on December 23, 2023.
A long time ago, I read a book that follows Frank Oppenheimer’s path from the Manhattan Project to ranching to teaching high school before building the Exploratorium. I liked it so much that I hand-typed Frank Oppenheimer’s speech to the 1960 graduating class of Pagosa Springs High School.
And yet, when I lived in San Francisco and just a mere fifteen minutes (ten minutes running) from the Exploratorium, I never visited the museum.
One week before I left the city, a friend asked me what was on my bucket list for SF. I thought about it, remembered the book about Oppenheimer, and excitedly set a plan to meet up at the museum. After two hours of walking through various exhibits, we left.
I still think about that. It's a pattern that I’ve followed for most of my life. I fall in love with the pure idealized version of things and try my hardest to maintain that illusion against the rough edges of messy reality.
New York is like that for me. I was born in the city, and knew enough people living here to fill a phone book. And yet, I can count the number of times I’ve visited the city on one hand. And I hadn’t been there in years. In my mind, it was a place where anything was possible and where things were always happening. And I didn’t want to ruin that.
So when I found myself on the 126 bus from Hoboken, New Jersey to Port Authority, Manhattan, I was more nervous than excited. My destination? Central Park.
After a smooth bus ride, the first challenge came when I went into the 42nd street subway entrance, waited for the C train, and saw that it was delayed for forty minutes. Ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps, I found a new route and took the A train to 59th street. A bit slower, but that was okay.
In my mind, the park was some kind of lush jungle, where thousands of trees vied for the sun’s attention. Reality was a bit less fun. Trees were few and far between, and tourist attractions clumped up at every entrance. But going deeper into the park and climbing the rock formations, I found a bit of the park magic. The joggers pushing themselves to their limits, the dogs chasing each other, and even the tourists taking pictures. It was, in its own way, lovely.
Halfway through my walk, I remembered my second goal in coming to New York. It was in search of that lovely pizza slice to die for. My first target was Joe’s Pizza, at the top of pretty much every recommendation for NY pies. After paying a solid $5.00, I got my slice.
It was exactly how I imagined a New York slice would be like. Thin, crispy, and hot enough to burn my mouth. It was just sweet enough for me to take the next bite, and then the one after that, and then a couple more. But it lacked any depth. There was no eye-closing bliss or savory flavor that lingered on my tongue. It was just okay.
And it was also a perfect metaphor for how my 2023 started.
I had my routine and while I didn’t love it, a large part of it was pleasant enough that I felt no motivation to change it. There’s a Chinese saying: if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling backward. That was happening to me. Things were comfortable, and I was content to let the flow push me back a few steps.
Then, things came to an end. The routines that kept me afloat broke down. It was messy and angry and frustrating and sad.
In other words, I was standing in the New York cold without a steaming hot piece of dough and sauce and cheese to keep me occupied. I was lost.
After a quick google search, I found another pizza joint with slightly higher ratings than Joe’s Pizza. Carnegie Pizza. If I had to verbalize my thought process at the time, it would roughly go like this: if one slice of pizza didn’t hit the spot, why not try two?
Carnegie’s slice was $5.38, slightly more expensive. But their slice was heavier. Unlike the thin and crisp piece from Joe’s, Carnegie used thicker dough, more cheese, and even included a basil leaf on top of the Margarita slice that I ordered. It was nice, and I looked forward to every bite. Not because it was that good. But because I held hope that the next bite would somehow be better than the last.
In real life, I doubled down on what was comfortable. I moved back to Maryland and withdrew into my hobbies. Living at home was nice and warm and doughy enough to make me feel safe. Career wise, I kept doing the same stuff, believing that perhaps life would be fair and compensate for the string of shitty luck that I just had. But once again, the stories I told myself in my head were no match for reality’s tendency to disappoint.
Don’t get me wrong, the middle parts of this year were a much-needed rest and recuperation time. I got up close and personal with my problems. But I kept hoping for some miracle to descend and change everything. Spoiler, nothing came.
Finishing Carnegie’s slice, I realized that perhaps I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my time in New York. I had gone through the effort of getting into the city; it was time to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.
Coming up with a plan was easy. I was close enough to Times Square that it made sense to pay a visit to the iconic tourist rite of passage. Then, I was close enough to the famous Rockefeller Square with its winter ice skating rink. Once there, a bit of serendipity hit with finding a bookstore with a dedicated stationery section. Bliss.
A little less than halfway through this year, I realized that I had to take charge of my own life. I bucketed everything into three big categories. Body, mind, and soul. And, I realized that before I could tackle the more ephemeral mind and soul buckets, I had to start with the concrete body bucket.
That’s when I started running. It started with three-mile runs where I’d absolutely die. I don’t mean this in some self-deprecating way. I was literally dying. My heart felt like it would beat out of my chest, and my VO2 max was severely below average. But once I got started, it didn’t matter that I sucked. I had something to look forward to. And over countless 5ks and 10ks, I became faster and faster. My 5k times dropped from over 30 minutes to a mere 22 minutes. More impressive was my 10k time, which somehow went from almost 90 minutes to just above 48 minutes. I was getting my health back on track with running, swimming, playing badminton, and even strength workouts.
Heck, even my career was looking better. I pivoted and found far more success. The body and mind categories were finally starting to look up.
And then, like most things in life, things went off the rail.
After spending almost half an hour ogling over the stationery in the bookstore, I realized that I hadn’t planned for a lack of bathroom facilities. The nearby bathrooms were all closed. Suddenly, I was stuck in the middle of New York with a minor emergency.
In my life, things went bad when I cut my pinkie and had to get surgery. All of a sudden, all the progress I had made in my health and career crashed down. I couldn’t run and couldn’t even type with both hands. This was even more crushing than the shit that had happened earlier in the year. I was finally doing the right things. Things were starting to look up. And then reality slammed into me like a 250-pound defensive end.
Thankfully, my trip to New York didn’t include a pee-myself-bingo-square. After walking around frantically, I found a Starbucks that not only had a bathroom but also tables and internet. Perfect.
And in real life, the stitches on my finger came off a month after the surgery, and although my runs were far slower than before, I was just happy to be stretching my legs again. Somehow, everything felt okay again.
Back in New York, after a quick pit stop in that Starbucks, it was once again time to resume my quest of finding the perfect slice of dough. This time, my target was Pop’s Pizza. A cozy little shop that could barely fit three people. $5.44.
Before I got my slice, I struck up a friendly conversation with another pizza-seeker. When the slice came, it was the thickest of the three that I ordered for the day. And also the best packaged. Wrapped in a paper bag, there was a heft to the thing that the others simply didn’t have. It was cheesy and heavy and lovely.
A true pizza connoisseur might have rated that third slice a 6.4 on a good day. But for me, at that moment, I was happy. Three not-bad slices of hot pizza are about as good as anyone can hope for in a day trip to New York. Despite everything that happened, I didn’t have to seriously consider ducking into a side alley for a quick wee. That’s victory in my book.
The last parts of 2023 were like that. No fireworks. No rushes of excitement. Just more appreciation for the mundane.
I ran 71.2 miles in the past three weeks (yes, I’m proud of that final 0.2). Work hasn’t been the hyper-scale that I’m used to with my past startups, but that’s okay. I’ve become enamored with the craft of writing and for the first time, I think the power law here is in my favor. Writing great words is less a matter of learning the rules and more a feat of compounding experience.
And in the final leg of my day in New York, I popped into an art museum. For people that know me, that sentence probably shocks them. Art and paintings are something that I’ve always been somewhat allergic to. Why look at splotches of color thrown on a canvas by someone long dead? But after so much that happened this year, art has taken on a new meaning for me. It’s not so much the destination. The journey is just as important. As I follow every brushstroke and look at how the figures come together to become a lovely swirl of colors, I feel at peace.
Perhaps, life doesn’t need to be some perfect version of events that only lives in my mind. I just need to keep trusting that some good will come. That’s why I’m in New York today.