These last few weeks have been a state of in-betweens.
In-between student and full-on grown up.
In-between homes.
In-between jobs.
In-between friends.
In-between relationships.
In-between coasts.
In-between summer and autumn, literally and metaphorically.
Recently, I’ve lived in Washington D.C. for 3 weeks. Then I lived in Durham, North Carolina for 3 weeks. I lived Washington D.C. again for 1 week.
Now I am in San Francisco for 1 week. Tomorrow, I fly back to Washington D.C. But, if things go well today, I might be driving back to San Francisco in the near future. And this is a good thing.
A quick his story:
Driving out to D.C., I couch surfed in Pittsburgh. Found a nice soccer game that evening at the University of Pittsburgh. They were all first-year MBA students.
This was my desk at Viget Labs South. I re-designed the user experience for the Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation. I loved working at Viget.
When I was in North Carolina, I visited my grandparents and relatives. I love my grandma Margaret. I also love my grandpa Kent. But he’s the one usually taking pictures.
I also met my cousins Meredith and Logan for the first time. They are wonderful and reminded me of why I want to have my own children.
I also saw my Uncle Lawrence.
And my Aunt Rose.
And my cousins Amy and Rozan. They know how to kick it.
Rozan shoots excellent candid portraits.
Samantha and I were in the same photojournalism class 3 years ago. Facebook told me she was in Washington D.C. Now we’re better friends, and we made some good memories and good friends together.
Samantha invited me out with her friends one weekend in the U Street district in Washington D.C. I showed them what a dance battle really means. (Which was mostly fending off all the frat dudes trying to grind up on ‘em).
My friend Amy made an unexpected visit from Iowa. I met her in D.C. and we had a great weekend at the Virgin FreeFest and at the book festival in Baltimore. Her friends Kat and Ben (a Kiwi who was teaching tennis in Vermont for the summer) were lovely travel mates for the weekend.
Kat and me managed to get all the way to the front row at the West Stage at Virgin FreeFest to see M.I.A. perform. There were thousands of people there, and when M.I.A. finally went on stage, we were crushed in the mosh pit. So much so, that at times I was suspended by the bodies around me and my feet didn’t even touch the ground.
That same weekend Amy, Kat, and I went to Baltimore to see the Johns Hopkins campus where Amy is applying to graduate school. We also visited the book festival downtown.
Amy took my portrait in downtown Baltimore. If you look closely, my name is painted on the building in the background.
Life lesson: slow down and make wide turns around curbs. Or you might end up with a flat tire. This was sad because I had just replaced that tire 2 weeks before.
Kat, Amy, me, Akshai, and Tushar had a good dinner at the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington, Virginia. We lost track of time, and I had to drive 60 miles per hour at 9:45 p.m. from Arlington to Union Station to get Kat and Amy there by 10 p.m. so they could get their belongings out of the lockers. This was a big deal because I was driving on a spare tire.
Akshai and Tushar are the college buddies I never had.
Life is punctuated by these in-between times. They’re surreal, fast-paced, full of new faces and places. The in-between times are challenging and cause us to grow. You learn who you are and what will define you for major stretches of your life.
I am learning what I will do professionally. The skills I will use to be successful. What I need to do to be a better lover. What being a lover actually means in this day and age. Why I am fortunate in a world full of poverty, physically and spiritually. What I can do to make others’ lives better.
The in-between times are the times I write about. Because at all other times, I am too absorbed in the living of life to reflect on it. To stop and see the world around me. This time, I’m glad I’m keeping a journal and taking pictures. Sixty years from now, when my story is almost written, I’ll be glad to look back and see where I’ve come from.