It’s been more than a year since I last did an update here, one where I just broadly talked about how I’ve been doing. There have been many drafts that never made it here. They got harder to write as time elapsed. A big factor was busy-ness surrounding my job. I really didn’t feel like myself. I was getting pretty low. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain it. Facebook was a sort of paradox for me - it was everything I wanted and nothing I wanted at the same time. I have pages worth of stream of consciousness of what it was like, and there’s no simple way for me to unpack it.

I had been considering 2017 a “waste of a year” in my mind, up until Suzi told me that we were pregnant. Suddenly, it was a good year. Anticipating fatherhood warrants its own post - there’s so much I want to say, and so much I’m afraid of, but the existential conundrum of being responsible for another human about instantaneously disappeared once I found out it was going to happen. We’re expecting a daughter at the end of May, and we are very blessed to have friends who insisted on throwing us a big gender reveal party. We’re looking forward to the new chapter in our lives and are happy our families will be able to join us in Seattle for some time and support once the baby comes.

Besides that, I started at Airbnb last fall, and things have been a bit better, I feel like myself. I’m writing this from Portland on a work trip, from a dark coffee shop, where EDM and R&B have been playing for the last hour. I had a TODO to write a post about how I was moving to Airbnb, another post with multiple drafts, none published.

Here are a few other things that happened in 2017:

  • I did a curling tournament (called April Spiel) with Chris, Nick, and Randy. We went on a run after dropping our first few games and ended up losing in the semifinals of our bracket, yet still winning a little bit of money. What was more memorable was hanging out with everyone at hours when I would’ve normally preferred to be asleep and improving as a team
  • I read these books, many of them taken from this book list:
    • Making Sense of God: an Invitation to the Skeptical - Tim Keller
    • The Faith of Christopher Hitchens - Larry Alex Taunton
    • Neighborhood Mapping - John Fuder
    • Heavenly Man - Brother Yun
    • A Grief Observed - CS Lewis
    • Strong and Weak - Andy Crouch
    • No god but One: Allah or Jesus? - Nabeel Qureshi
    • Answering Jihad: a Better Way Forward - Nabeel Qureshi
    • The Great Divorce - CS Lewis
  • We had a good group of friends from church working out at our local gym, Rainier Health and Fitness, sometimes as much as 3 times a week
  • Our church small group Bible study grew in size and in faith. We had a lot of fun, but we also saw some of us grow attracted to the faith, come to faith, and get baptized
  • I did physical therapy to recover from my broken ankle. I couldn’t put together a long run past 6 or 7 miles without feeling pain in my ankle or knee. I ended up focusing more on strength training. The only race I ran all year was a charity 6k with my church for World Vision
  • Travels:
    • Suzi and I visited my sister and her family in Taiwan in March
    • Suzi and I went to New York City for a few days before I started at Airbnb. We met up with some old friends, ate Shake Shack, and saw a Broadway musical, but the most fun we had was just walking around SoHo
    • I spent 3 weeks in San Francisco for Airbnb onboarding; Suzi joined me on the last weekend. Got to stay in 3 different neighborhoods - Outer Sunset, Lower Haight, and South Market
    • Suzi and I were back in Tulsa over Christmas/New Year’s, one of our longest stays since getting married. Got to catch up with high school and college friends
  • Suzi and I celebrated our 5th anniversary with a weekend stay in a cabin near Leavenworth… it was seriously one of the coolest things we’ve ever done
  • Gave a talk on optimizing React apps for TV, first internally at FB, then several months later at the SeattleJS meetup (recording here)
  • Took a day trip to Portland, I got to run at the Nike HQ Track in the Woods. We also went to Saburo’s, but that was the week we had found out Suzi was pregnant, so she didn’t eat a lot
  • Hiked the Ira Spring Trail by myself one day
  • Went paddle boarding for the first time
  • A few things I particularly enjoyed:
  • Did a side project - problemswithchristianity.com
  • Got the driveway paved (also, ginormous thanks for all of the help, Blocker, as we had to remove a rain garden from our front yard)
  • Got a lot better at Flexbox and CSS, played around with Expo, some more React/Redux development
  • Scored the game-tying touchdown on 4th down in CSBC’s traditional Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl (then we lost in overtime, but it was a good and well-matched game)