2010 Prospective

Now that we have a little gap of time between us and the New Year, I feel a little more prepared to set down a general idea of how things look from here. I also turned 24 on the 8th and as of the 5th am receiving my first salary, so this feels like a natural point at which to recuperate mentally and assess what 2010 might have in store.

Although it has taken me longer to get a real job than I would have anticipated, I feel good that the year and a half time between graduation and now hasn't been idle or otherwise unproductive. I'm glad that I turned down a job that I wasn't very excited about and consequently had a summer to spend wandering around China. Spending the fall bouncing between Maine and Boston turned out not to be the most efficient way of finding work, but it did allow me to spend lots of time with friends, family, and the girlfriend while continuously searching for jobs and reading up on finance as the economy crashed around me.

After a preliminary reconnaissance mission to DC in December, it became apparent that first moving to an area in which I wanted to concentrate was the way to go. Given President Obama's then-recent election and the fact that a Political Science/Economics major should find out sooner rather than later what they think of being in the District, moving down to DC seemed to be the logical step. I was situated a little before Inauguration and had the fortune to start as an intern at CSIS at the beginning of February.

Although I started off in the President's Office, over the course of the next few months I shifted down to the Global Strategy Institute, added some side research with Reuben Jeffery, and from there to the Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy by September, taking me through the end of the year. Over the course of these different groups I had the opportunity to get to know scholars from around the Center and get my hands into projects including such disparate topics as a historical comparison of Tsarist Russia and Qing China foreign policy, the geostrategic importance of food-water-energy interactions, a crisis simulation for the CSIS International Councillors involving an energy disruption in the Middle East, and running a week-long international fellowship on leadership.

I also could not have expected such great people with which to spend my working hours. I could not have expected my primary social group to become fellow CSISers, but I really lucked out with how friendly, engaged, and intelligent people are around here. When I interned at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston for one summer during school, I likewise expected a rather stuffy office atmosphere and was pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable people were to be around. This is a huge asset to any job and one that separates what I do from many of the people I know around the country.

In the meantime, thanks to the kindness of others, I had a place to stay during the months of unpaid work. Moving in with the girlfriend's parents sounds crazy to most, especially having met them only twice before, but it worked out so much better than I could have hoped. Things were even better when Amanda was around too: until the end of February when she went abroad, back the beginning of May after an unfortunate bout of appendicitis, and more or less through the summer. Visiting when she's back in Boston is a little tricky, but we make it work. We have a lot of good adventures.

Through 2009 I also got to know DC, which I have ended up liking more than I thought I would. Despite the winters being colder than I'd expect (considering this area is practically the deep south to what I'm used to) and the summers being unbearably muggy, it's been a good move. I'd like to be able to get up to Maine and New England more frequently than I do, but my brother moving to nearby Charlottesville helps in bringing some family down to me.

Washington is a very interesting city with many more layers than I expected. Grid systems are nice for navigation, but I still have a lot to learn in comparison to people with more than a year under their belt. It's a little more of a manageable size than Beijing, and speaking the language here helps too. Walking around, attending events, running into people famous only to wonks, and going to lots of concerts have been good. Living actually in the city, having an apartment and housemates, calling Columbia Heights home since mid-October helps to plug me in.

This, so far, has been a lot about 2009 (although nowhere near exhaustive), and not much of a prospective of 2010.

Since last summer I've been getting more into energy and energy policy. I'm looking forward to continuing down that path and seeing where it leads. It's a great intersection of economics, geopolitics, and security, so I think I'll have enough to keep myself busy for a while. Talk about drinking from the fire hose. Enough about work, though.

Now that I have a job, an apartment, and overall a little more stability on those fronts, I feel a little more solidly on two feet. I think this will help me structure a little better and continue to work reading for fun and decent cooking back into my life, to say the least.

Amanda will be graduating this spring (as will my sister, but heading off to college), so we'll have to see where she ends up. Fingers crossed for DC. Having her around for actually more than a couple days was so great.

Amanda training for the Boston Marathon this spring has made me put more back into straight-up running probably since doing xc in high school. Keeping up a few times a week will do me well. It's a little harder to make time for things out of college, during which I had ultimate and dodgeball keeping me active, but that just means a little more effort. And I'll be playing ultimate again once the weather's nice. Right now, unofficially, I have my eyes set on a half marathon this spring, but not really sure yet. Getting into a pattern of push-ups as soon as I wake up over the past month or so is a good rhythm too. A pull-up bar would be nice. Between push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, and running, you cover all of your bases. Well, a pool would be nice too.

I want to work back up the Spanish a little bit too. Even just including some Spanish-language media into my daily peruses would be useful. If I found a free podcast that doesn't suck, that could be useful too. If I were to learn a new language now, it would probably be Portuguese or Mandarin. I don't see either in the near future, but yeah.

I'm looking forward to continuing to ramp up the music. Ryan and I had some success ramping up the songwriting last year and finally getting up a myspace page for The Astroturf (confirming once and for all that editing myspace pages is as seizure-inducing as viewing most of them) despite his sustained trek through South America. Most of the songs up there are rather old, and everything is done on a computer mic, but it's still something. I'd like to get into the groove again of working on songs more consistently.

Some spice might be added to our musical sessions too with my new acquisitions of a guitar amp, charango, and near-future purchase of a melodica. I think the only time I've actually seen a melodica in person still was seeing Esperanza Spalding perform at Bowdoin, but that was enough to hook me. With piano and clarinet/sax under my belt, it should be quite easy to pick up. I've always enjoyed harmonica and accordion, so having an instrument that sounds a little bit like their bastard child will be great fun. I truly am going to need a music room wherever I end up living down the road. Getting a group together with which to play regularly would be nice too.

As followers (read: me) of this blog know, I also started publishing periodic entries for the music blog of the Yellow Bird Project, a music-based charity, back in December. I'm looking forward to keeping that up in conjunction with getting myself to a increasingly solid number of shows this year. I have several lined up already and am eager to delve deeper. It's about time to work through more assiduously the jazz and classical (especially Romantic era) albums I've been accumulating as well. Commutes are great times to keep up breadth of listening and learning.

And that's about all I have to say for now.