Welcome Back To My Journey
It has been an awfully long time, hasn’t it? As of the time I write this article, it’s been almost two full years since I last wrote an update to my Journey. The previous one implied there were adventures to come, and then I simply left you all hanging. So how did my life continue in the pandemic age while people became increasingly discontent with that situation? It didn’t stop, I assure you, and there were some gems to be had.
I did once or twice try to transcribe a summary of events, but because of various complications – some of which will be touched on here – I simply wasn’t able to find the time. And the last article that I fully wrote ended up much more like a therapy session than an update anyone but myself would be interested in reading. That was in September of 2021. While posting it to get all the anguish off my chest certainly would have helped – there was a lot of strife, and certainly more yet to deal with – it wasn’t kind to the sources of my melancholy. There wasn’t any reason to let the world read it.
So, let’s finally knock this out of the way! In the interest of brevity, I’ll try to cut this up into months running from the end of 2020 and throughout 2021. Honestly, I could write five or six articles out of everything that’s happened in the last two years, but my goal is to now stop focusing so heavily on the past and make every effort to take what I’ve learned to tunnel through to the future. A lot has happened, and I want to make sure that doesn’t stop. So let’s get started, shall we?
October 2020
After having been accepted into a scholarship program to learn first Chinese and then International Trade, I decided the $500/m the scholarship promised me wasn’t enough to live off of in the USA. I also didn’t think I’d have time to study on the Chinese Standard Time (12 or 13 hours ahead of EST) and have a job. My solution? Fly off to Albania! Where none other than a familiar face had sauntered off to in hope of breaking out of his Pandemic Funk.
We lived there in the capital of Tirana for a time where I started my studies. It was… challenging, to say the least. They provided very little information about how the online courses would work. I adapted, for sure, but that meant waking up at around 4am daily, taking class until 10 or 11, and then doing whatever I wanted before trying desperately to fall asleep in a hostel at 8pm every night.
Around 2 weeks in I decided to take a trip down to a cool beach side town named Himare. It was nice there, but the vacation season had ended so it wasn’t that cool. Just interesting to see a fusion of Albanian and Greek culture.
November 2020
Technically this all began in the last week of October, but around this time I moved to Pristina in Kosovo. Which, if I recall correctly, almost didn’t happen. I got on the bus from Tirana to Pristina and half way there they said that I – as an American – might not be allowed to cross the border because of covid restrictions that had maybe come into affect the day before; they really didn’t know. Sure, tell me this after you take my money. But I made it in anyway! Can you guess who convinced me to move there in the first place?
Pictured are me, Kyle, and a nice chap named George. He’s an Englishman who’s deep into philosophy. We’d met in Albania, and here in Kosovo we lucked into renting an apartment for something like $200 a month. I wish I had photos of that apartment. Always cold. Constantly in need of cleaning. Broken kitchen. And the bathroom…. Our tub didn’t have walls, and the ceiling above slanted at 45 degrees so there was no way to have a shower curtain. We also had to bend for our entire shower and the moisture resulted in a permanent black mold behind us. Good times. For a brief glimps into the antics we subjected ourselves to, please refer to this Food Critic Vlog!
Beyond that, more studying. More hanging out. Pristina was in lockdown with an early curfew during this time, so there weren’t a lot of options.
December 2020
These were some of our closest friends in Pristina, and to this day, I still really miss them. Orbis, Kastrioti, and Eranda. They provided fantastic conversation, and were just overall wonderful people to have in my life. Deep conversations were had, some philosophy, some personal, some world-events based. They worked hard to make us feel welcomed in their country and they succeeded with flying colors. They all deserved a “Connections from The Journey” article, but between school and a general malaise in my life, I couldn’t bring myself to write.
We also had Christmas here! I’d really missed my family and was trying to connect with people from my past in China at the time to show them how good my Chinese had gotten. In general, I just missed a lot of people and things. But at least Pristina was beautiful, and the people in my life there cared about me enough to try and make it special.
Another group of amazing Kosovars! Rron, Jon, and Olti! Sometime in December I thought up a song while in the shower. Kyle, as a musically gifted genius, figured out the notes and how to relate the song to others. Rron and his talented band said they had a place they practiced and offered to play the song while I sang! And then we did just that! Officially this means I’m a song writer. The song isn’t even that bad. I have the WAV file, and am considering posting the song here on this website, but it’s a love song for a person things never would have worked out with and overall can very accurately be summed up as “minorly cringe.” Would you like to hear the song? Let me know in a comment or something and I’ll post it in its own article!
January 2021
Thus we came to the new year. It was around this time I was told the $500/m my scholarship promised was not to be delivered because I was not in China. Either no one in the program knew or wouldn’t say. Turns out they changed the fine print after I signed. With that, I decided it was time to go home to America. Some time in quarantine in NYC was had, but ultimately America had really seemed to stop caring that a pandemic was happening, and getting out of NYC wasn’t too hard.
February 2021
So what did I do? I went to visit LA around Valentine’s Day! Irresponsible? Maybe. But I went and had a wonderful time with the same people I did in Summer of 2020. Just as we’d done before, we all went on a camping trip, this time to the desert. It was an interesting, mind opening experience. I got to see old friends from college for the first time since over a Zoom baby-shower, which was nice. Ultimately, this trip was the catalyst for a lot that was to come in 2021 and, even in retrospect, was one of my favorite memories from all of 2021.
March 2021
March was something else. In January I’d gotten a job offer from a school in Shanghai and it was around this time that they told me they had to put the entire thing on hold due to pandemic restrictions. Fine, I thought, but I didn’t want to stick around for too long in the states and so I looked for work overseas. An old co-worker had recently gone to South Korea and had mostly good things to say about it, so I looked into work there.
I got a job offer but something about it hadn’t sat right with me. I also happened to receive an offer from friends in Los Angeles to stay with them if I was looking for a place to lie low and think about my next steps. Now to those who know me, I make it no secret that when I lived in LA briefly in 2015 that I hated it. A portentous sign, but I had what I felt were certain assurances that this time it’d be different. I also felt strongly that the experience of age (and a car) might make everything about it better. And so…
April 2021
…I decided to drive across the country! This had long been a dream of mine, endlessly romanticized by media as well as the adults in my lives who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s as an unforgettable right of passage. I saw some amazing things and made it from New York to San Francisco in about three and a half days. Even I was surprised!
Syracuse to to Southern Illinois, Southern Illinois to Eastern Colorado, Eastern Colorado to Nevada, Nevada to Daly City. Some trip highlights? Nothing much back east but the moment I hit Colorado from Kansas I was confronted with a blizzard in every sense of the word. At one point I was stuck between two 18-wheelers going 5mph. I’d been aiming for a Flying J but had to hunker down at a rest stop where I awoke to the car being totally encased in ice. I also saw some vast salt flats where the air itself dried me out, as well as Lake Tahoe. The trip was really as much as everyone had told me it would be.
And at the end? The Willson Brothers. I’ve known these two in some capacity since Sean joined middle school 7th grade math and we bonded over Star Wars. We three never interact enough for me personally, but each time I’m lucky enough to spend time with them I cherish every moment of the memories we make.
I helped them get a Covid Vaccine, we went hiking among the redwoods, saw a dead whale carcass, and explored Berkley University. It was great! And did you happen to notice that Kyle LaPoint is among us in these photos? Upon writing this article I was reminded that he and I have hung out on three separate continents. He found out I was heading for Cali and decided to make the trip himself and met me there. I’m fairly certain I mention it every time he comes up in this blog, but my god am I lucky to have a friend like him.
Me and Kyle rode down to Los Angeles together and thus began The Summer of LA 2021.
May 2021
Let me start off by saying that none of this trip would have been even remotely possible without the three people pictured above. Bryan, Gaby, and Nina. Had they not offered to help me sort out life while there I never would have been able to entertain this fancy. Bryan and Gaby, bless their heart, lived in a studio apartment at the time and despite having no walls, let me stay on their couch for roughly 6-7 of the 8 weeks or so between me getting to LA, finding a job, and getting into an apartment. They had also recently become dog-parents, so I functioned partially as a babysitter which was great.
Staying with them as long as I did was never the plan, and after the second week I was constantly wracked with guilt at the burden I caused them. It and everything around it affects me to this day. The article I wrote but never posted dealt heavily with these events. By and by, though, they were beyond good to me and despite my misgivings about how I had to rely on them I couldn’t be more thankful for the generosity they showed me.
June 2021
Eventually, I found a job. One with Shelf Engine! Check them out. I liked that company and the work was anything but difficult, I just felt socially isolated working essentially as an independent contractor going from Grocery Store to Grocery Store scanning hundreds of items a day. As an employee I genuinely had no complaints about either the company or its staff. Had things gone better in LA, I would have been fine staying with that gig longer. I also worked for Amazon Flex but that did suck when it came to driving 40 miles to deliver maybe 20 groceries. Easy money, however.
I also found an apartment. This was cool because the landlady was Chinese and it was a Chinese neighborhood so I was able to practice my Chinese while living there! The problem? My “apartment” was not legally fit for human habitation. When I left, I wanted my deposit back and did as much research as I could for laws in the State of California for what counted and mine did not. Basically a patio that had cinder blocks put up to encase the “floor” that were covered in plaster, with a makeshift roof placed over top. I wasn’t allowed to use the AC despite it regularly getting to be over 100F in the room. No lock on the tin sliding door.
This is the month Kyle left California for his own reasons. This was the month my mental health started deteriorating.
July 2021
This is the month everything fell apart. To put what’s necessary on the table, a significant reason behind my choosing to move to LA instead of South Korea was a relationship I was hoping to pursue further. The details behind it are too complicated to be worth going into and origins of which stretch back further than this article begins. Suffice it to say, I went to LA expecting one thing, and they another. Shortly after arriving, the complications of that became evident. An agreement was made where no one felt satisfied. Given the circumstances of my moving to the area, no one felt comfortable doing the healthy thing sooner. The stress it placed on other platonic relationships exacerbated everyone’s discomfort and brought it all to a head on July 4th weekend.
At least we won first place this time, though I don’t remember anything save what the photos tell me.
I then spent roughly 3 weeks totally alone. No one to interact with through my job. No friends who weren’t affected in some way by the breakup or the strain my existence in LA placed on them. Family on the other side of the country. I can not recall a lonelier time in my life. Cigarettes became a common element of my waking life despite my disdain for the sticks, along with all the breathing and vascular issues that come with them. Nightmares and cold-sweats plagued me each night. Most moments were filled with dark questions better left unwritten, though many of you will no doubt know them yourself.
I tried to make the most of my time there. It didn’t really work.
August 2021
So the goal became to escape. I did have a nice trip to Vegas where frankly the greatest art exhibit I have ever experienced – Omega Mart by Meow Wolf in Area 15 – was explored. I was fairly uncomfortable during the trip due to my own hang-ups, but it’s a trip I’m glad was had.
But by the end of the month I left. I thankfully had some stellar family in the area who put me up for a brief time while the car was prepped, but the moment it was done, I was out of there. Honestly, Los Angeles has earned a black mark in my book. I recommend it to no one and don’t plan on visiting again for any reason. San Diego is much nicer anyway.
September 2021
The feeling of leaving was surreal! Months of stress, dissatisfaction, and self-loathing shed from the shell they’d formed around my spirits with each passing mile. I remember well the feelings of elation at leaving the situation in the past. Sprinkle in another cross country trip with dearly-missed family waiting at the end and the echoes of relieved laughter on that first day leaving made a lot of sense.
The first stop on my way back was The Grand Canyon. Mom had visited years before and had never been able to contain her opinion of the majesty of the place. I’d wanted to go for some time ever since and being as close to my route as possible there was every reason to make a stop. What shocked me was just how forested the area was. Oh yeah, the canyon itself is a desert, but above it there are vast forests of pine with elk wandering to and fro. I drove into the area at somewhere around 11pm and assumed for a loooooong time that I must have made a wrong turn as I navigated dark, labyrinthine roads surrounded by walls of wood. The next two days were spent boondocking at the canyon or just outside of it, and I honestly preferred that to the “apartment” I lived in in LA.
These are several of the shots from my time in the canyon. Truly an amazing experience. Learned a lot about the native cultures and the history of the area. Bought myself a nice hat (now lost T_T) and hooded shirt to keep off the sun and ended up walking something like 12 miles at the canyon and slept well that night. I don’t have much else to say because there’s simply too much to say. If I’d been able to get myself an article out while there I would have because it deserved it. Just do yourself a favor and go there for yourself.
After the Grand Canyon I saw New Mexico, and it was probably the most aesthetically pleasing state I’ve ever visited. Mesa are no joke! After that I went through Texas where I was shoved for wearing a mask in Amarillo, Oklahoma where the tweakers in front of the Flying J (gas station, not truck stop?) convinced me to not get out of the car, and eventually Louisianan! I quite liked the last one, but it was a strange situation as Hurricane Ida had the day before ravaged New Orleans. I’d had every intention of visiting the great city, but just about every single metric said it was a bad idea to try and go; not least of all the fact that every single hotel room in the state was booked.
Instead? I went to visit family I frankly hadn’t had the time to interact much with since 2016! Jon (brother), Christa (sister-in-law), and their three lil darlings Anya, Skyler, and Coryn (niece, niece, nephew). I met Jon when I was 15 or 16 – a long story for another time – and the similarities have never been ignorable, even by the most oblivious person imaginable. But, well, life is complicated and the opportunity to really bond had never presented itself before for various reasons, mostly due to my own forms of adolescent immaturity. Oh we interacted, Mom, Dad, and he himself were awfully keen on fostering those type of interactions and each one is a great memory. This trip was different, however, in the depth of the interactions.
I’d also had only ever met Anya before this trip. I’d heard of Skyler and Coryn and all their own little developments, though me being in China for the vast majority of their lives prior to this wasn’t really conducive to a proper meeting. I was equal parts nervous and excited. I made sure to put extra thought into the gifts I bought them, tried hard to smell as little as possible (not easy while boondocking cross country with the last stop being humid summer Louisianan), and worked myself into the best uncle mindset that I could!
The time I spent there in Mobile with the family also should have gotten its own article. Un-freaking-believable. I’d thought about staying just a night or two and it turned into four or five. Everyday was awesome. I also got to meet Christa’s sister Lindsey, Jon’s friend Tim, and had the chance for deeper conversations with Christa’s parents Dan and Sarah – all wonderful people! Each and every night involved me and at least Jon sharing a discussion over shared interests for two hours, each of us deciding it was for sure time to go to bed, followed by another hour or more of discussion.
The kids loved the gifts I got them and we spent a great deal of time playing this game or that and making amazing memories; I’ll never forget Jon’s face when, in a bid to give me a break from his children’s attention, he offered to throw Coryn across the pool instead of me only to be met with an off-handed yet emphatic “No.” The kids each morning either tried to break into the room I was sleeping in or at the very least left me “gifts” they wanted to play with together after I woke up. Christa and I had a wonderfully deep conversation and she offered excellent life advice. I found a pearl in an oyster out at dinner. This paragraph doesn’t really do the trip justice, nor does it convey the rapturous depth of joy, acceptance, or familial love I felt having experienced it.
But I had to get back to New York and return the car. Which I of course did! After driving through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. That last one I spent about a day in enjoying the truly spectacular company of a long-time friend of the family. Some of my very best early memories involve them or their house – winning a Star Wars Episode 1 backpack from a Doritos bag, listening to Weird Al’s “Running with Scissors” album for the initial exposure to the artist, multiple original Futurama episode premiers, nearly breaking all my toes on an antique sowing machine, lighthouses! They’re an amazing person and our family, quite frankly, would be nothing even remotely close to what it is today without their warm, helpful, and caring presence in it.
Finally the trip of the summer was over. I’d made it back to New York. All-in-all I’ve now been to 34 states in the union – I made sure to at least get out and pee in each and every one – whereas before I’d only been to half that. I have aspirations to eventually make it to another 10 of them, but sadly I can’t see any reason why I’d ever make it to Arkansas.
September was alright considering everything that happened. I started looking for work overseas again, did my best to help around the house, spent time with mom and dad trying hard to get them both into healthier and more active lifestyles after the covid-era isolation, and simply did my best to enjoy the warmth that family brings, even if you’re frustrated.
October 2021
October went by in a flash. Kyle, who’s from Montreal, invited me up to spend time with him for Halloween. I met a ton of amazing people while there party-hoping. The food, dear god: heaven. He made that trip awesome and it was exactly the sort of care-free experience I needed at that time in my life and I couldn’t be more thankful.
This was also the month that Mom got sick.
November 2021
This was a whole thing as well. What a forgettable month where a lot happened. As the family tried to make consistent trips to a hospital with stringent covid visitation policies, I was scrounging for cash. I’d been lucky up until this point to have worked hard enough to save money each job to support me for months after. China gave me enough for the trip that started this blog, and the Census gave me enough to make it to California where my paychecks basically kept my bank account unchanged. Driving across country only drains money, though. So at this point I was starting to feel the strain.
Now, the best part of the trial that was July was a job offer from China. I was pretty weary about taking anything in China considering the global pandemic and the extremely varied responses to it, but this school seemed like everything I could have hoped for. While they reached out in July, they didn’t make an offer until August because of regulations surrounding certain documents being unclear prior. I did sign, however! They figured they could get me in around the end of September! At that point it got more complicated and they were back to a stance of being unsure. So I needed work. Instacart and a job at Michael Kors. I disliked both and made only a few hundred dollars. Even now I’m not sure whether I even needed to file taxes for these places, but I had those jobs ever so briefly.
Thanksgiving was sullen. Mom wasn’t there to coordinate, and Dad was too tied up trying to work on his retirement while being the primary visitor at the hospital. We kids – and we are all 30+ now so it wasn’t too much of an issue – banded together and made a meal that in some form was enjoyed by both parents. Sitting at the table, though, we had some laughs tainted with anxious uncertainty. At least we were together, more or less.
I believe mom also got released from the hospital around this time and and was sent to a care facility? The specifics for that are fuzzy due to their brevity. She would soon return to a hospital, and this one even stricter on visitation.
December 2021
Frustrated at a draining bank account, difficulty in visiting my mother, and faced with fear over my future career after nearly two years out of relatable experience, the end of the year was rife with depressive moods.
It wasn’t all bad, however. Truly a month for hope. Many conversations were had with doctors, many tests were being done at the hospital, mom was rigorously being considered for a desperately needed heart transplant and she took a solemn vow to eliminate smoking from her life – I’d seen her make similar statements in the past, and this commitment was different, it was entirely earnest. Things seemed to be looking up.
Christmas was as Christmasy as we could make it. For the first time we got a fake tree, which was no issue honestly, and far fewer decorations went up than we are used to. Mom would always coordinate while we labored, with the before and after effects of it being transformative. We did some, but we all had other things on our minds and it simply fell by the wayside. I did get myself plenty of Egg-nog, though, which was nice. I was successfully off-setting it with daily 4-5 mile walks.
I also got a job offer for where I am currently writing this from! My old colleague and former Journey companion Keri put me in touch with the company she did and does work for, which eventually led to me getting a job there too! Details are far more complicated than me simply being hired, with that not even being the initial situation. In the end, the result was still that I got the job. I was finally looking forward to a potential escape from bumdom into the working world as a teacher again. Much of this month was spent looking forward to and planning how to handle that uplifting state-change.
Kyle also came to visit. I showed him basically the entire life I’d lived prior to setting off on the world adventure that resulted in our friendship, and he gave me some much-needed fun. He came just after Christmas, stayed for New Year, and helped me have a real blast. He helped me update my Magic: The Gathering collection for the first time in literally 12 years. More on that later. He also had an intense COVID scare while visiting that resulted in him getting trapped in Albany for a few days, which I did my best to help him through. It sucked for him, but he eventually made it home alright and was back to the magical land of Maple Syrup.
And that is essentially a breakdown of everything between the last article and the end of 2021. Looking back on it now to remember the when and the what, for whatever reason I feel strongly as if I missed an entire year. I know a lot of people say that because of the collective loss we all experienced with the pandemic, but it is such a confusing feeling to look at these dates, look at the current calendar, and recognize that an entire year of events simply happened and life is in almost nearly every way totally different. I look back with a great sense of loss, but not even the sort of loss for something one once had. It’s almost like a story to me, here and now. An imaginative fancy of events that would have been quite the experience but that are none-the-less separate from my reality. Maybe some of that has to do with what has transpired in 2022, or maybe it’s just a feeling that comes with getting older. Time will tell.
While this article has covered events from 2021, what about the current year and all that has happened in the last six months? What about the future? I left you on a few cliffhangers, didn’t I? Well, perhaps you will be happy to know that I have every intention of continuing to update this blog. I pay for it, and there are many memories I have no interest in losing.
So stay tuned! For real this time! I have three articles planned as of this moment and my intention is to get one out once a week, and at worst bi-weekly. Considering those ones only cover a maximum of six months compared to this one’s 15, the effort I’ll need to put into them should be significantly less.