nye update

California "recap" | cheers to a great 2023

Three Sisters by Yamakawa Shūhō

Hello! I’m back home now in Maryland. I spent about a week and a half in California, first in the Bay Area and then in Palm Springs, and now I’m here.

It’s good to be back. I’m home with my parents and brother—I missed them. My high school friends are back from college—it feels strange and right to drive the same streets we always did, go to the same restaurants we always ate at, play Spikeball and stay out talking late on elementary school blacktops, the way we did growing up. In a way, it feels like nothing has changed. Like, this is the world I know. Maybe it looks slightly different superficially, and maybe we do as well, but, at its core, this is home.

Life these days (read: the past two weeks) is very different than it was in Hawaii. I haven’t been spending much time doing nothing.

My time in the west coast was eventful. Especially in the Bay—that was probably my craziest week this year. I bounced around a lot—I woke up in a different city four days in a row. I have no faith in my ability to give a summary that does not blithely overnarrativize, and I have no intention of writing a long recount of the trip because that would go on forever, so I’ll share three interesting things that happened during my stay:

1. I lived in a mansion for several days with tech founders, including a very chill guy who built the Anchor protocol, who ended up teaching me lots about multinational and domestic corporate and tax regulations, among other things

2. After visiting a hackathon at the HF0 house in SF, friends and I took an Uber and our driver turned out to be the #2 bodybuilder in California and the #10 bodybuilder in the country, who apparently competes with CBum (follow him @sami_miraz_ifbb on IG, the guy is absolutely jacked)

3. After waking up in an Airbnb with some Harvard AI Safety Team members, friends and I visited a group house in Berkeley where we met a guy who got a geometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem branded on his back while he was living on a farm

I don’t know, maybe this is just typical Bay Area stuff, but as someone who has spent most of my life in Maryland and who has only been to the Bay twice by myself so far, it’s all novel to me. I will say that I don’t have a solid feel for SF and its surrounding areas, in terms of culture and how things work, just because I have stayed mostly on the other side of the country—like, it’s hard for me to get a read on some things there just because of my lack of proximity—but, well, maybe in time.

Palm Springs was more relaxing. That’s when I was reunited with family and family friends—we spent Christmas there, which was different (because we have always spent Christmas at home) but loads of fun. And then we got back late Tuesday night. I got my wisdom teeth removed Wednesday morning, then I was out Thursday in DC (saw two more from Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series at the National Gallery of Art!), and I’ve been catching up with friends and family yesterday and today. I have about 30 free minutes now before I leave home to celebrate the new year, and I’m here writing to you.

So, yeah, there hasn’t been as much do nothing time lately. But it’s fun, at least right now, when there are lots of things to do, and I got enough rest in Hawaii so that my introverted tendencies won’t take over and cause me to just stay home and read and lounge all day.

A more ambitious me would try to write a 2022 retrospective right now but, realistically, if I write such a thing I’ll have to do it some other time when I can be more thoughtful. This past year was just full of so much change. Like, in January I wasn’t even through with my first semester of senior year; I was still applying to colleges; I was still in the middle of swim season and starting to train for the beginning of tennis season; I was a different person with different perspectives, and I never would’ve imagined life being like what it is now. (There’s a grateful thought in here that I’ve been trying to remember in order to avoid the hedonic treadmill: a past you would love to be where you are right now.)

So I’ll content myself with this short update. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your support. I would feel weird if I wrote those updates presuming that people cared without really knowing, so I’m glad I don’t have to do that: thanks for caring.

I expect 2023 to be full of lots of change as well. Especially because of the pace of technological development—it feels like we’re accelerating into a new future. My prayer is that I’ll grow ever closer to what is true. Remember that every moment and every new sunrise is a gift. And at the risk of being terribly cliche: let’s make the most of the time we have. Cheers to a great 2023.