OK Go and Music from My Teenage Years

I got to see one of my favorite bands, OK Go, perform last night!

During the concert, the band made a comment about one of the band members, Andy, being the “new kid”, having only been their guitarist for the last 22 years.

“Oh, since I was 10 years old!” I joked to my friends. I realized later on that 16 years ago, I was 16 years old. Half my life has passed since my sweet 16 birthday!

Anyway, the show was amazing! The setlist included so many nostalgic songs – like, songs that I remember listening to in my iPod with wired headphones, half-asleep on the bus to high school.

I’ve tried listening to more modern artists, but very few songs provide the same dopamine hit like music that I listened to in high school. After returning home, I listened to more familiar music while I finished my wind-down routine and escaped back into my teenage self again for just a couple of minutes.

So much has changed since that time – I live in a completely different state, almost all of my friends are completely different, and I’m married (!) with a job (!!) and a child (!!!). I’ve run 2 marathons (yay!) and am still in so much student loan debt (boo!).

After that night, my biggest takeaway was not actually about me or my high school life – it’s that my baby girl has her entire life ahead of her. She’ll get to make her own memories on the school bus! She’ll find her own artists that make her think, “Music was better when I was a teenager”! She’ll get to reflect on where her life will take her! The circle of life continues!

(100) Days of Summer (Blogging)

At the beginning of 2025, I set up a habit tracker.

This ended up being a great way to encourage myself to follow through on behaviors that I was hoping to adopt more consistently in the new year, like reading, exercise (which is a struggle with a newborn!) and meditation (which is an EVEN GREATER struggle with a newborn!).

However, one habit has taunted me for approximately 5 full months with no progress: blogging.

As the seasons change, the days get longer, the temperatures rise, the jackets come off, etc etc – actually, more importantly, as my baby girl becomes (ever! so! slightly!) more self sufficient and I find myself with (every! so! slightly!) more free time, I have decided to double down on this goal.

I am officially making my intention to blog daily for the next ~3 months!

I’m planning to experiment with style, length, and content, so to meet this goal, I am definitely expecting a lot of word salad, bullet points, incoherence, etc. The most important thing to me will be opening up WordPress and hitting publish!

See you back here soon (tomorrow?)!

2024: My Year of Trivia

One of my new year’s resolutions for 2024 was to go to a trivia night at least once a month.

My goal with this resolution was twofold: (1) I love trivia, and (2) I was extremely shy about initiating plans with friends, and hoped that having a standing excuse to make plans would help me break the ice.

I did not complete a full year of trivia, but for a happy reason – my daughter was born in mid-October, so I (understandably) had to skip November and December. However, I was able to go to trivia nights with friends at least once a month for the first 10 months of the year, and I consider this resolution a success!

I used this resolution as an excuse to hang out with people that I do not normally reach out to (and even met new people!), deepened many of my existing connections, learned a lot of useless trivia, discovered new venues, and, ultimately, had a great year of trivia nights!

If I were to do it again, I did realize a few things that I probably should have done differently.
My biggest regret was publicizing the resolution so widely at the beginning of the year. I was excited to hit the ground running with that new year’s momentum, but quickly found myself overwhelmed with invitations to trivia nights. Understandably, everyone I talked to about my resolution took our conversation as an invitation to a trivia night in the near term (said another way, nobody I know is making plans months in advance). This meant that I was going to multiple trivia nights a month earlier in the year, but scrambling to make plans before the end of the month near the end of the year. In retrospect, I wish that I had staggered my announcement to different groups of friends.
On that note, I actually kind of wished that I hadn’t told people about my resolution at all. I made the resolution because I wanted to proactively make plans with friends, but after hearing about my goal, many of them reached out to me to make plans. I cannot stress enough that I am thankful for my friends and am overjoyed for the time we spent together, regardless of who-reached-out-to-whom! However, I do feel like this system let me “cheat” my original goal to be the-person-who-reached-out, and if I were to do it again, I would be a little more under-the-radar about my motivations.

My trivia nights are on hold right now because I have limited evening availability these days (baby girl’s bedtime is 8PM, after all) – but I look back on my trivia 2024 with fondness!