My Year in Music (Frak Spotify Wrapped)

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To repeat what I said last year in My Year in Music (My Version of Spotify Wrapped), though I have a Spotify account, the way I use the service – which, not coincidentally, I have just canceled our premium family subscription plan to because of the variety of ways it is an absolutely shitsome company – simply doesn’t reflect or capture the overwhelming amount of music listening I do. Because of this, the 2023 Spotify Wrapper inspired me to begin exporting on December 1 of each year the usage/meta data from my actively curated Apple Music library, which contains over 23,000 songs that we actually own. Thanks to some above-average Excel skills, this is now the second year in a row I’ve been able to assemble a report to Spotify’s while denying them the ability to gather the user data needed to both create it and, more importantly, monetize and use it for their own nefarious needs.

So, without further preamble, my 2025 year in music…

Listened for 54,871 minutes (highly enabled by working from home and having music on most of the time while doing so,) or 38.1 days of music. I would like to note that my recent transition into playing whole albums on CD rather than through my music library is not captured in this data.

Played 4,501 different songs (I often simply shuffle the whole library.)

Streamed my top song, “Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad” by Tears for Fears, 41 times.

The top song leaderboard:

  1. “Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad,” Tears for Fears
  2. “Astronaut,” Tears for Fears
  3. “Uptown Funk,” Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
  4. “The Girl That I Call Home,” Tears for Fears
  5. “Dear God,” Black Landlord
  6. “Emily Said,” Tears for Fears
  7. “Landlocked,” Tears for Fears
  8. “Close to Me,” The Cure
  9. “Change,” Tears for Fears
  10. “Wrong Bitch” (extended mix,) Todrick Hall feat. Bob the Drag Queen

The first five Tears for Fears songs were an EP (of sorts) of new material embedded at the start of their 2-disc Songs for a Nervous Planet album, which was otherwise a really good live best-of compilation. I listened to that EP independently of the rest of the album frequently, which caused those songs to dominate the list. Just to see what the Top 10 have looked like without those songs, here are the next five in the list:

  1. “And Love Goes On,” Earth, Wind & Fire
  2. “Turns the Love to Anger,” Erasure
  3. “Self Control,” Laura Branigan
  4. “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This,” Eurythmics
  5. “Echo Beach,” Martha and the Muffins

Moving on…

Listened to 1,161 artists.

Top artist was Tears for Fears. Played their songs 650 times for a total of 2,881 minutes. (This was the second year in a row that they top my list, and it wasn’t even close.

My top artists, based on song plays:

  1. Tears for Fears
  2. Erasure
  3. Pet Shop Boys
  4. Depeche Mode
  5. Barenaked Ladies
  6. Duran Duran
  7. Eurythmics
  8. New Order
  9. Suzanne Vega
  10. Ghost

It’s worth noting that if this was based on minutes played instead, Suzanne Vega would fall out of the Top 10, and The Alan Parsons Project would move into the 10th spot.

Finally, attempting to determine which album I listened to the most is exceedingly problematic, though I feel I have a very good guess as to how Spotify calculated it. So, without attempting to come up with parameters for filtering and sorting the data in an effort to determine it, I’ll just note that there were two albums released in 2025 that I listened to each over a dozen times: Flying With Angels by Suzanne Vega and Skeletá by Ghost.

35 Years Later

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My 35-year high school class reunion is taking place in two weeks. Amusingly, I’ve been to more of my wife’s reunions than my own. In fact, I’ve only been to one of mine, the 10-year. As you may surmise, that one provided zero motivation for me to attend future ones. To starkly illustrate, that reunion provided a wonderful anecdote I’ve loved sharing over the years. My previous wife went with me to that one, and I informed her in advance that I hadn’t seen or talked to anyone from my graduating class in the interim. As we walked back to my car at the end of the night, she said, “I can see why you haven’t talked to any of those assholes since high school.”

Before I go further, I first need to share a little something about my high school experience. While I understand that most people, at a minimum, do not look back fondly on that time of their life, my teen years were kind of brutal. I was basically an outcast, and while I got along well enough with the others who were also in all the advanced and college prep classes, I also didn’t have any real friends amongst them. In fact, my best and only real friend at the time, Dave, was an anti-authoritarian metalhead who was constantly getting in trouble with the school administration. He was dyslexic, likely ADHD, and almost certainly high functioning autistic (things that schools in the late ’80s just were not looking for nor equipped to handle.) In fact, the administration basically badgered him into dropping out. In addition, he was actually a year behind me — I only got to know him because he lived a block away.

(There’s a great story about how we met, but that would be digressing far too much.)

Anyway, for all practical purposes, I felt like an outcast in high school. It didn’t help that my signature blend of neurospiciness made me a target of ridicule for some of the jocks at the school. Nothing intense — I wasn’t bullied (that only happened in elementary and middle school) — but it was enough to make me dread interacting with those mouthbreathers when at gym class or the other times we crossed paths. Frankly, high school felt like something I needed to endure and survive. The biggest positive that happened during that time was that the isolation I felt allowed me to fully embrace my weirdness during my senior year. I grew a mullet tail, created my first decorated denim jacket, and using the money I made at my part-time job, bought enough different pairs of Converse Chuck Taylors to do the Punky Brewster thing with them.

So, in an incredibly demented and sad way, not social, I at least got to be my authentic self in all its glory that year.

It’s in that spirit I’m going this year’s reunion.

Yes, I’m going with the dial turned, with extreme prejudice, all the way to 11. Weird nerdy t-shirt with an esoteric reference to a movie or TV show. Check. Glitter-covered Chuck Taylors? Absolutely. Gothic velvet rainbow pride kilt? Fuck, yeah! The only question is whether I wear my silver sequin-covered jacket or one of my brightly colored and decorated denim jackets. I’m going to arrive in full fabulousity, the way Romy and Michele should have when they first arrived at their 10-year reunion.

I’m going to fucking enjoy myself, arriving like a conquering visigoth, and not just because in the interim I’ve married the valedictorian. Okay, she went to a different high school, but humor me here… I’m rolling. (Besides, do you understand how hard it is for a neurospicy cis hetero male to find and marry one. There are *far* fewer of them than cheerleaders.) I’m living my best life at the age of 53, and I want to show it off.

So, for those of you reading this who are also going to be at the reunion, consider this both a promise and an advance warning. In fact, I would love it if you showed up flying your own freak flag as well. It would be legend… wait for it…

March 3, 2025, 4:15 AM

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Currently thinking about Harlan Ellison’s waxing philosophically about being a part of the walking dead.1 Along those lines, I’d love nothing more than to just live a life untroubled by the knowledge of the world around me. I know that for the overwhelming majority of people throughout human history, life has been hard – my comparatively cushy life contains privileges I’m sure to don’t comprehend. Nonetheless, I currently function under the strain of a couple of anxieties that are paradoxically separate yet also somewhat intertwined: anxiety over the current state of affairs here in the United States, and anxiety over the many existential threats looming over the long-term survival of the human species (and if not the species, then absolutely human civilization as we now know it.)

Anyway, the upshot is that waking up in the middle of the night and then having issues getting back to sleep is a real thing. Some nights, such as this evening, reading fiction after waking up in the middle of the night allows my brain to settle down enough for sleep to resume. In fact, I spent most of the past two hours doing just that before my focus drifted from my ebook to jotting down the thoughts now appearing on the screen. Thus far, tonight – maybe I should really say “early morning” – this effort to burn down my mental energy hasn’t worked. 

(Quick aside: it seems amusingly fucked up that reading Deadline, a novel set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, is preferable to letting the anxiety siblings run amok in my head.) 

Anyway, for some time now, I’ve been saying I needed to start forcing myself to write again in some fashion. All things considered, maybe using insomnia time to write, in addition to the reading, may not be the worst impetus to make that start happening.

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1 “You think I enjoy getting up angry every morning, going to bed angry every night? To go through the day with the veins standing out, the bolts unscrewing in my neck? Jesus Christ, I would give anything to be able to be as mellow and cool as most people. I would be one of those slaves, the walking dead, but it would be a relief. Give me six months as a walking dead and I will never say anything angry again.” — Harlan Ellison, Dreams With Sharp Teeth

My Year in Music (My Version of Spotify Wrapped)

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As I stated on Bluesky and Facebook yesterday, I only use Spotify to try out new-to-me music before deciding whether I like it enough to purchase it (preferably on CD in order to rip my own high quality digital tracks) and add it to my Apple Music library. Thus, Spotify Wrapped doesn’t properly present my listening this year.

However, last year I planned ahead and at the time Spotify started providing last year’s Wrapped reports to its listeners, I performed an export of the listening stats and associated song data from my Apple Music library. Then when this year’s Wrapped reports went out, I did another such export. Thanks to some decent Excel skills, I was able to create a similar report without having my data mined.

Here are the expanded stats:

Listened for 57,404 minutes (highly enabled by working from home and having music on most of the time while doing so.)

Played 4,922 songs (I frequently shuffle the whole library.)

Streamed my top song, Florence + The Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over,” 40 times.

The top song leaderboard:

1.  “Dog Days Are Over,” Florence + The Machine
2.  “Uptown Funk,” Mark Ronson
3.  “Dear God,” Black Landlord
4.  “Wrong Bitch” (extended mix,) Todrick Hall feat. Bob the Drag Queen
5.  “Gronlandic Edit,” of Montreal
6.  “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” KISS
7.  “Off the Wall,” Michael Jackson
8.  “Rapture,” Blondie
9.  “My Demons,” Tears for Fears
10.  “West End Girls,” Pet Shop Boys

Listened to 1,183 artists.

Top artist was Tears for Fears. Played their songs 715 times for a total of 3,179 minutes. (This was the year I deep-dived into their catalog, listening for the first time to four different albums, which included this year’s new album of concert tracks plus five new songs.)

My top artists, based on song plays:

1.  Tears for Fears
2.  Erasure
3.  Barenaked Ladies
4.  Pet Shop Boys
5.  Duran Duran
6.  Weezer
7.  They Might Be Giants
8.  The Decemberists
9.  Eurythmics
10.  The Alan Parsons Project

It’s worth noting that if this was based on minutes played instead, They Might Be Giants would fall out of the Top 10 all the way to 14th, and Depeche Mode would move into the 10th spot. TMBG really do write songs that are much shorter on average than those released by nearly all other bands.

Sleep, Perchance to Dream

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It’s now 6:15 AM, and this means, for the third day in a row, I’ve been awake for two hours or more. The good news is, according to my sleep app on my watch, that I got 6½ hours of solid sleep last night – which is only 1½ hours less than what I got the previous two nights combined. The solid sleep was also an improvement, given that those same two previous nights included numerous instances of waking up and needing a few minutes to get back to sleep. Alas, these improvements only occurred because I was out by 9:15 and aided by a standard adult dose of generic Benedryl. Tonight, I’ll try to go to bed later, and see if I can get a good night’s sleep without help. If it doesn’t work as hoped, back comes the Benedryl tomorrow night.

Given that this is Sally’s and my vacation week, I was hoping to be able to get much more regular and solid sleep. Alas, the implications of the elections are exactly the kind of thing that my sleep-impaired brain latches onto when I wake up in the middle of the night. Under the best of circumstances, my brain is capable of latching onto the most ridiculous and nonsensical of things that, when returning to bed after needing to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, can ultimately result in not falling asleep again for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. Since the election, waking up for any reason after 3:00 AM and recalling any of the realistic nightmares being enabled by the return of the Der Katzengropenführer just means I’m up for the day.

Something will have to give on that front eventually. I don’t want to become dependent on sleep aids to get a good night’s sleep, and regularly waking up for the day between 3:00-4:00 AM is not feasible. For now, I’m just going to do my best to enjoy and make the best use of my awake time on vacation – there’s still plenty on our to do list we’d like to accomplish before needing to return home – and if the need and opportunity for afternoon naps arises, I’ll absolutely make use of them.

The Trump for President Trilogy

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As of this morning, I’m not engaging with social media or any news providers (internet or otherwise) for a full 24 hours, if not longer. As I said yesterday on Facebook, this is a self-care decision. Frankly, while I intellectually understand how it is this country got to its current sociopolitical state, emotionally I’m am utterly horrified and demoralized. I’ve been saying for some time that when you closely look at history, it’s easily apparent that at any given moment 30-35% of every society — no matter its place, time, or construction — would gleefully welcome an authoritarian populist dictator.

The United States is not exceptional in any way in regards to this. Oh, there was a time in the aftermath of World War II where we as a nation could easily create and buy into a fiction that we were somehow different/better, but the only ones who truly believed that were those who were benefitting from a toxically sexist and racist patriarchal structure. I don’t want to spend the time here getting into how that structure was overwhelmingly undermined by the most powerful white men in the country out of sheer greed, but as they did so, they made sure that those on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder who had been benefitting more than others would absolutely not blame them. Trump and his faux populism is nothing more than one of the logical endpoints of a long-game that right-wing forces have been playing for decades.

No America’s capability for fascism and/or authoritarianism has always been there. It made itself abundantly clear on Feb. 20, 1939 at Madison Square Garden. It made itself abundantly clear as the Jim Crow-era South literally used lethal force during the Civil Rights Era. It made itself abundantly clear during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27.

The difference now is that Trump, unlike any Presidential candidate in my lifetime, keeps making statements about he will use Presidential power to punish his enemies, and those who by traditional American peaceful standards, oppose him. It’s not something I ever witnessed or experienced until the first installment of his Trump for President trilogy back in 2016. The thing that truly rattled me is just how receptive so many of his supporters were to the hateful and violent rhetoric he seemed to relish delivering in campaign speeches. As a meme that went around Facebook recently stated, I found that many of my family, friends, and acquaintances — some of whom I’ve known since childhood — have become people that I wouldn’t tell where Anne Frank was hiding.

As someone who is easily paralyzed by an overload of empathy for the unfortunate and/or downtrodden, this was absolutely horrifying. Just how can these people — at the lowest possible level — find it so easy to disregard/downplay the dehumanizing way Trump and his surrogates talked about such a large percentage of the population? Worse still, what about those who understood and were actively cheering him on? The ones who know his history in regards to fraud and behavior to women? I like to joke about the feelings of nihilism and misanthropy I occasionally experience in response to the world around me, but these people have done nothing but intensify those negative reactions and make them more frequent.

Let me be clear: I absolutely detest feeling that way.

I try my best to understand that most of them have been brainwashed by the decades-long crusade by America’s right-wing to paint liberals as deceitful, traitorous communists who actually hate America and want to destroy it. They’re easy enough to pick out. They’re the ones who go on about how Kamala Harris’s planned socialist policies will destroy America, but they can’t actually name a single classically socialist policy she has advocated. They’re the ones were derogatorily use the label woke, but cannot actually define what it means. But, they are not to be confused with the middle-aged or older white, cis hetero males driving nice cars emblazoned with “Don’t Tread on Me” paraphernalia. To them, I just need to state, “Sweetie, no one is treading on you.”

The worst part is even if the polling is utterly skewed and by the end of tonight it’s obvious that Harris has been elected President, the Trump for President trilogy still isn’t over. Much like the film adaptation of The Return of the King, the final installment of this three-part horror tragedy is going to include numerous codas. Trump and his supporters are going to do everything they can to subvert the results in an effort to put him back in the White House. Furthermore, as made abundantly clear on Jan. 6, 2021, he has plenty of followers who will engage in 2nd Amendment solutions when they don’t like the way an election has ended.

That’s the best case scenario. Don’t get me started on the other ways this Wonka-esque chocolate factory of a boat-ride ends.

With all that, in addition to all the insanity that has been this past election season, it seems Sally and I decided several days ago to skip watching the election returns tonight. The most likely outcome for this evening is the same one that we experienced four years ago: that we won’t know the winner for another few days. I haven’t forgotten the way I sobbed with relief the morning that all the news organizations starting calling the election for Biden. Truth be told, there will almost certainly be tears when the election is called — I’m just hoping that they’re for a good reason. Regardless of when the tears come, there just doesn’t seem to be any point in watching the major news organizations obsess over the returns on a microlevel.

No, far better to instead allow tonight to be anxiety-free and be able, no matter what, to get a good night’s sleep. If the news is bad tomorrow morning, then at least we’ll have had a full day to absorb and deal with the news before going to bed tomorrow night. It’s the kind of news that you can afford to wait to learn. This is much preferable to being utterly demoralized just before trying to get to sleep.

If the news is good, awesome, but even then, we’re still a far way from done with this grotesque political trilogy.

Rejecting Traditional American Masculinity

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Lots has already been said and written about the toxic argle-bargle that came spewing out of Harrison Butker’s maw during his graduation speech this past weekend. I have something to add, but not about the parts about women and gender roles that’ve gotten the most attention. In regards to that: Ladies, know I’m on your side, and I’ve been cheering on all the memes and takedowns he has been more than deserving of.

There is different portion of the speech that I want to personally address out of my self-interest. To whit: “To the gentlemen here today: Part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities… Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.”

I would love nothing more than to quote directly to him a line from one of my more recent favorite songs (the song was already more than a few years old when I fell in love with it): “You’ve got the wrong bitch, bitch.” Alas, I know that very early stage CTE is not the reason for either Butker’s prehistoric brutal notions of masculinity & gender roles or his refusal to properly understand why men like me don’t agree with him & are trying to change masculinity for the better. No — far too many other “right-thinking” men who’ve never taken a hit to the head (with or without a helmet) feel the same way.

First of all, no one is saying that men are not necessary. No, we absolutely do have a role — it’s just not the one that Butker believes is the only true one. We are needed as supportive parents and partners. We are needed as mentors and tutors. We are needed to help lift up and assist those who are weaker than us. We are needed to help protect equality for all. By doing all these things, we become outstanding male role models. What is not needed is outdated notions of masculinity and what it means to be a man. Frankly, if you think the ’50s are some kind of good old days that we need to return to, you have not bothered with learning about how the majority of that era’s leaders treated women and minorities. That period was a real shit show for most of them. No, you are not being emasculated. You are being told that the old way of doing things is no longer acceptable.

Furthermore, as a non-normative, cis hetero, male, I experienced first-hand how that mouthbreathing kind of toxic masculinity is actually detrimental to boys and men of all ages. That kind of masculinity leads its adherents to believe it’s okay to bully, denigrate, and belittle boys and men who don’t display it. I know because that was my childhood experience. I learned well before finishing elementary school that the easiest way for me to exist peacefully was to suppress all the natural inclinations that gave justification for the preadolescent versions of people like Butker to make my life miserable. Worse still: I found that aping some of the lesser toxic behaviors provided me with extra camouflage. It took me years of adulthood to break free of that conditioning and learn to proudly be and display my true self.

So, yes: traditional American masculinity needs to go away. Fuck the patriarchy and notions of gender roles that clearly weren’t working for most people during the days that troglodytes like Butker wish to return to. He deserves every bit of vitriol that is coming his direction, and it’s imperative that men like me do more to make our voices heard and to take action to ensure his notion of masculinity goes the way of the dinosaurs.

On MST3K, My Health, and Denim Jackets

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My last post here was six months after the previous one. This time, it’s been a mere 11 days. Progress! There’s even a chance that the time between this and the next post could be even shorter. However, still using bullet points for this one.

  • At the beginning of last month, I decided to watch the entire run of MST3K in order, starting with the first episode that aired on Comedy Channel in 1989. At no time ever have I ever done anything like this with the series. In fact, it wasn’t until this past November that I could say with true certainly that I had actually watched every episode that ever aired. Over the years, I’ve read various statements from those who worked on that first season about how they viewed those 13 episodes as collectively being of subpar quality. Five episodes in, it truly feels that way. They were still clearly trying to find their stride that year, and thus far, this rewatch has been more slog than enjoyable. Thankfully, there are a couple bright spots coming very soon. That season also happens to contain a couple of my all-time favorites: Robot Holocaust and Untamed Youth. After checking the episode order, it came as no surprise that they were amongst the last ones made that year.
  • Four weeks into 2024, and pleased to note that the motivation to take proper care of myself continues unabated. Thus far, the weight has fallen at the expected pace (determined by having ridden the weight loss/regain roller coaster uncounted times,) which certainly helps to keep the motivation where it was on New Year’s Day. There’s actually a good chance that by my birthday the weight will be down where to it needs to be in order to make the sciatica issues go away.
  • Speaking of that pain in the ass (as well as in the lower back and on upper part of my left leg,) if any of that desire to take the excess weight off and keep it off for good had started to wane, yesterday certainly would’ve brought the determination back to full strength. We spent most of the afternoon in downtown Frederick, doing the kinds of things that always cause the sciatica to flare up, which it very noticeably did. This is a serious quality of life issue for me. Yet, as much I hate dealing with that, the hypertension and cholesterol issues are far greater concerns. Even though neither produce any kind of discernible pain and discomfort and are both kept in check, they are both actually more dangerous as I continue to age.
  • On Facebook a few weeks ago, I posted photos of my most recent denim jacket creation. This makes a dozen jackets in the collection, and it won’t be the last. An additional unadorned white denim jacket is hanging next to the others until making the final decision regarding which color to dye it. In addition, have plenty of pins, patches, Star Trek deltas, and tie clips still to be applied. Amazingly, each of the existing jackets remains relatively unique. Without taking the time to look carefully, the number of patches, pins, etc. appearing on more than one jacket is absolutely no more than 10, and may even be fewer than five. In addition, aside from two black jackets, each one is a unique color as well. (The only reason I repeated black is that one of the two is a special Harry Potter themed jacket.) It actually kind of boggles my mind that I have done all this over the last several years.

Current Stuff

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It’s been quite some time since posting anything of any consequence, so it seems like a good opportunity to correct that with a bullet-pointed post about what’s been happening of late:

  • 2024 started with a return to being highly motivated to properly take care of myself and to working back down to my ideal weight. Lots of factors contributed to this: my blood pressure, cholesterol numbers, sciatica issues, too many clothes didn’t fit or were too snug, and, frankly, the fact that I was less than 10 pounds under my all-time peak weight. Given that he severity of the all the factors were driven by being obesely overweight, it was an ideal time for another downhill run on the weight rollercoaster. Thus far, I’m off to my usual great start, having lost nine pounds in a little over two weeks. I’m getting too old to continue taking off dozens of pounds and then turnaround and allow them to return yet again. Figuring out how to maintain once back at my ideal weight (once I get there) is a puzzle that I really need to permanently solve this time around.
  • Sally and I recently started watching The Gilded Age and are absolutely enjoying it. Given my sociopolitical bent, many of the characters are people that I’d want nothing to do with in real life. However, this is fiction, so I’m absolutely happy to watch people in possession of stupid money treat their standings in society and the business world as blood sport. The show also does a wonderful job of reminding us that the robber barons of that time at least knew how to show off their stupid money in the details of the buildings they built and the charities they funded, rather than simply hoard it Smaug-like.
  • On a related note, we have decided that when we make our next trip to NYC – which will be at the end of April – the J.P. Morgan library is absolutely should be on the itinerary. I visited it when I lived up there 25 years ago but don’t recall much about it. It feels like a trip there is absolutely in order after finishing up The Gilded Age.
  • Finally, when the day started, I was entertaining some ideas about getting out of the house after work today. Other than shoveling snow yesterday morning, I actually haven’t left the house since late afternoon Saturday. However, it’s just too damn cold out there. I just can’t bring myself to leave the house when it’s 25° outside. Instead, it’s going to be a few hours of reading and watching TV until Sally gets home from work this evening.

It’s Been… 25 Years Since “One Week”

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Earlier today, I was reminded in roundabout fashion that almost exactly 25 years ago to this day I quite spectacularly and recklessly ripped apart both my professional and personal lives with almost no planning or forethought. It would take a few months before the chaos subsided and the immediate repercussions fully worked themselves out. That period was by turns – and sometimes a combination of – scary, exciting, worrying, dizzying, disconcerting, and awe-inspiring. The suddenness with which I did it also inspired quite a bit of introspection and self-reassessment.

Flashing forward to the summer of 2003, it felt like the decision pull it apart and put it back together had been the right one. Oh, there was lingering regret over the carelessness with which I carried out some of my actions. As a result of them, I hurt someone in the process and lost a couple friends before the aftermath properly began to settle. However, I was happy with the life I had, and I was eagerly anticipating the Brandon’s birth, which was just a few months away.

Less than five years after his arrival – in under four, actually – the woman for whom I brutally ripped my own world apart proceeded to do same with her life and in the process upended mine. By the summer of 2008, it felt in some ways like the only lasting good thing that resulted from the summer of “One Week” was my son. Of course, I wouldn’t have changed anything about the summer of ’98, even if it were possible. I wouldn’t have been the person I was, and Brandon wouldn’t have been there without it.

Now, 25 years later, there’s almost nothing but thankfulness for the decisions that 26-year-old me made during that summer. This isn’t merely a case of how our past experiences made us who are as people. It’s also a case of how old decisions and actions alter our lives in ways we never could have anticipated at the time they were made. Without the momentous summer of ’98, it seems unlikely that I’m hired by Major Defense Contractor in early 2007, when I desperately needed a total career change that made use of the skills I possessed. There’s also no way I meet Sally in the summer of 2009, because I’m certainly not living in Loudoun County, VA. Without leaving New York City to return to the DC Metro area, there’s no way I meet some of the people I now count as good friends.

More importantly, thanks to that eventful summer I’m living my best life right now. A life where I’m happier with myself than I’ve ever been. A life shared with an amazing woman whom I simply cannot imagine a life without. A life that by just about every measure that matters to me is pretty damn awesome. A life that in many ways is strikingly different than the one I hoped I was making for myself when I decided to blow apart the one I had 25 summers ago.

It’s ended up so much better than I imagined.