Reflections on 2024

As the year draws to a close, I figured I should look back at the highs and lows and take an assessment of where I'm at. So here goes.

Highlights

The biggest project I'm most proud of completing this year was the guidebook/travel guide to every US women's soccer pro stadium. It was about 3 months of travel and several months of daily writing to get nearly 40,000 words about the fourteen stadiums and the league and what we saw and enjoyed most.

I had the idea in early April and by July we completed the research, and after working with an editor the text was finally done by early December. It was submitted to a distributor a couple weeks ago and I'm still waiting for final approvals before it ends up in all the ebook stores. And once it's finally available to everyone, I'll work on prepping the print version for sale in another couple of months.

Another big moment this year was dropping Fiona off at her dorm and seeing her take off to college. It was a milestone that was a long time coming, and I'm so happy we were able to save up since she was born so she won't be saddled with debt or have to always work 1-2 jobs during school to try and cover the expenses like her mom and I had to do. Navigating her teen years was one of the hardest periods of our family's lives but thankfully she landed in a good program with supportive friends she loves and I'm really happy to see her start to become an adult on her own.

A couple years ago, I started watching Dodgers games more closely and following the team after a lifetime of my parents hating them because they were a rival of their beloved Angels. Near the end of the summer, I took a bunch of family and friends from LA out to one of the last games of the season, and it happened to be on the same day as my mom's birthday. Our group buy gave us the chance to put up a message during the pre-game, so we submitted a quick happy birthday message.

My mom died 13 years ago, but when we all saw her name in lights just below a sizzle reel of Shohei Ohtani hitting home runs (who left the Angels in 2024 to join the Dodgers), my aunt (her sister) said "oh my god, you know that Nancy would have HATED this entire night" which got one of the biggest laughs of 2024. Getting to watch Ohtani hit his 52nd home run in front of us was also a pretty good way to end a great baseball season.

Lowlights

Obviously one of the biggest downers this year for me was my dad passing away in August. It was a long time coming after an extended illness and I grappled with the weird, dual feelings of sadness but also relief. Thankfully he didn't leave much chaos in his wake and I got to visit him shortly before his death, which helped the healing process.

The weirdest moment of 2024 is something I've haven't written about before.

In May, I was down in San Diego for a soccer research trip, traveling by myself to cover a stadium Kay and I had already been to several times in the past. I stayed in the Gaslamp Quarter and walked down to the light rail stop at the convention center to get around the city instead of using a car, which had been going great so far on the trip.

While I sat in a group of commuters waiting for the train, I took the photo above, and a couple of homeless people started arguing loudly and aggressively about 100 yards away from us. They didn't end up throwing punches but at some point after a lot of yelling just as the train pulled in, one of the guys arguing said "HE'S GOT A GUN!!! EVERYONE STAY AWAY FROM THIS GUY HE'S GOT A GUN."

This is a uniquely American problem, but when you have to grapple with firearms when you're just going about your daily business, it's pretty fucking weird. Everyone boarding the train looked at each other and I think we all shared the thought "what are we supposed to do with this information?!" I suspect, like me, we all tried to get out of a bad situation and hopefully towards safety on the train, but I didn't see where the two people arguing ended up after we took off.

A couple stops later, the doors opened and about 30 cops flooded onto our car, yelled at us all to stay still, and then swarmed the guy with a gun in his bag who apparently ducked into the very back of the train car I was in.

One of the commuters called the police and they stopped the train and started to talk to the guy, surrounding him to try and protect everyone else on the train. It’s crazy to think it's not illegal to have a gun in your backpack in public, but the guy likely didn't have a permit for it, and after a few minutes he was escorted off the train and we all had to act like nothing happened and go on with our day.

It wasn't the worst situation of the year, just extremely weird to have to confront some serious risk around personal safety when you least expect it. It’s a bummer that this kind of intense fear is just a fact of life in America where anyone standing next to you at any point in your day can legally be holding a machine designed to kill people.

The final low-point of the year was watching an inept, corrupt, narcissist win the same presidency he tried to violently overthrow (completely free of consequences) four years ago. No matter how the next four years go, the time will leave a dark stain on US history that will likely take decades to repair.

The combination low/high moment of the year

One of our last soccer trips was hitting both Washington D.C. and New York in a three-day weekend to wrap up our east coast reviews. After hanging out in DC for a couple days, we landed in Newark, which was near the Red Bull stadium in New Jersey. By the end of the game, thunderstorms rolled in and we had to evacuate the arena. We were scheduled to head home that night but flights out of Newark were delayed by hours and as we waited to take off to the airport, I doordashed some food to our hotel. When it showed up, I opened a box to see there was a worm crawling out of a chicken dish so we dumped it in the trash, chalked it up to bad luck, and headed to the airport. Just as we got to our terminal we found out our flight home was completely canceled after 7 hours of consecutive delays and the earliest we could get back was 24 hours later.

Thanks to the hurricane-like conditions outside, the airport was slammed and we had no other options. We decided to try and make the best out of it, so we jumped on a train to Manhattan, and found a hotel near Central Park.

That extra day turned into a delightful tour of museums I hadn't been to, a few great meals, and just enjoying ourselves on a sunny day in the greatest city in the world. The flight home was uneventful after a packed day of sightseeing and making the best out of a bad situation.

Total travel for the year

I love to travel and I've learned it's a kind of meditation. I'm terrible at actually meditating for real, but when you travel, you're out of your comfort zone, and your focus narrows to just getting to the next city, or getting your next meal, while everything else melts away. Sure there are new sights and experiences to enjoy, but I get something out of clearing my mind and getting to intensely focus on just one thing for a change.

I got up into Canada for a bit, out to Utah for a week, down to California half a dozen times, and got to host my brother in Oregon for the first time in about 15 years as I showed him every place I love. I also finally did a cross-country road trip that’s been on my bucket list for decades.

I flew to a dozen states for the book and got to enjoy a few cities I'd never visited while seeing with many old friends all around the country and the whole experience was a blast.

Skills and leveling up

When you work at a job, they constantly make you evaluate how you're improving your skillset. It doesn't seem like a bad idea to take that kind of approach with myself looking back at 2024.

I feel like I hit a real groove with writing this year. I'm glad I put a lot of energy into blogging here regularly again, because that lead to my book project and it feels really great when you can take the thoughts in your head and get them down on paper in ways that other people can understand and learn from right along with you. Writing is a real muscle and the last time I felt this good about it was when I was writing books twenty years ago. There's something about pumping out thousands of words every day that builds your skills, and gives you a real strength that makes it easier to share. Also, writing for me unleashes a serotonin machine. Every time I hit "Post" I get a jolt of happy vibes and I can't believe I deprived myself of that for so long by not writing regularly.

I have to say even though it's been only a month, having a 3D printer has been a game changer. I've fixed a bunch of things around the house and in my car, making things out of thin air that serve a purpose and fix problems. I'm in the process of organizing my home office thanks to it and it's just kind of remarkable to have a machine that can produce any object you can imagine in just a few hours. I may release things someday as new products since it's so easy to rapidly prototype ideas into real physical mockups.

I walked a lot more in 2024, to the tune of hundreds of miles, but according to Strava I only logged a few hundred miles on bike rides. I hope to change that for 2025.

What's up for 2025

I don't have a lot of concrete plans for the new year, but I have some trips to Utah and Arizona planned soon, likely a trip to Europe in the spring and perhaps Australia and New Zealand before the summer. I aim to ride my bike more and hit a bunch of gravel ride events throughout the year as I hope to spend much more time on a bike. I don't know yet what my major project for the year will be, but I'm sure it'll land in my lap soon.