Where He Is Now: Thirteen Years Later

Enjoying a beautiful October afternoon in Southwest Florida.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2024, making it 13 years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

Boating in November.

The biggest news since my last post is that I was laid off from Deloitte in October. When I went back to the firm (which I originally joined out of business school and worked at from 2011-17) in 2021, business was exploding, and I rejoined alongside many new and returning employees as part of an aggressive hiring blitz. My practice, which had been launched during my hiatus, offered workforce transformation services, the most in-demand being hybrid work strategy and DEI program enhancement, triggered by Covid-19 and the George Floyd protests respectively. But as those topics and the overall economy both began to cool in late 2022 and early 2023, the pipeline started to dry up, and the bench got ever bigger, leading to ongoing layoffs. I rolled off a project in early September and was having trouble landing another one, so I wasn't exactly shocked when, in late October, a meeting invitation popped up with the dreaded subject line "Business/Talent Conversation," which everyone knew by then was code for communicating a layoff decision.

With new friends at the white elephant gift
exchange party at my country club.

Obviously that was a bummer, especially since I thought I was doing pretty well. I'd founded and was running an offering that ended up being the second-best-selling service out of the seven in our portfolio, on the topic of contingent labor strategy. The good news was that I received a decent severance and, given the lower cost of living in Florida (where I moved to from New York a year ago), had squirreled away a helpful emergency fund in my savings account. But unfortunately, Fort Myers isn't exactly a city full of well-paying career opportunities for management consultants. Although I'm still relatively new to the area, I've made some friends and gotten involved in a few activities. I've joined a tennis club, a bowling league and an LGBT choir. And the reason I relocated to Fort Myers in the first place was because of proximity to my widowed mom, who recently turned 81. So I don't want to move, but I know, realistically, I may have to be open to doing so. And it's not like I haven't done it before. At this point, I've lived in six states!

Making mojitos during a bartending class.

One of the challenges of being laid off, beyond the obvious stress that comes with any unstable situation, was suddenly going from being very busy to having a lot of unstructured free time. To make sure I was keeping my gray matter stimulated, in January I took a two-week bartending class, which was a lot of fun and, truthfully, one of the harder things I've ever done. I was considering looking for bartending gigs afterward, but it so happened that, right after I finished the course, a tennis buddy hooked me up with a flexible hourly job arrangement at her personal-injury law firm. I've been doing that since early February. My main task is to write demand letters, which summarize accidents and request settlement payments from insurance adjusters in the hopes of avoiding litigation. I've also created several PowerPoint presentations for mediations and arbitrations, which are later-stage attempts to settle. I can't overstate how much I've enjoyed working there. It's been exciting to learn something totally outside my areas of experience, and the partners and my coworkers couldn't be nicer or more appreciative of the extra help. (Yes, it has occurred to me to switch fields, but at age 45, I am not keen on going to law school.)

Visiting with my high-school BFF, in from NYC,
on a chilly January day in Tampa.

The job-search process has been slow, frustrating and, somehow, hilarious. My most absurd story is this: I applied for a job in Arizona. They invited me to a virtual first-round case-study interview for which I created and delivered a 15-minute presentation. The feedback was great, so I was then invited to a "final round" interview presentation and panel Q&A in Arizona. I received and accepted the meeting invitation and could see that about 10 people were invited. I let my law firm know I'd be out for two days, booked my flights and hotel, made plans with friends who happen to live out there and took a day off work to create my presentation. I watched dozens of videos about the company and even bought a book written by the founder to read on the plane. Then three days before I was supposed to fly out there, they emailed and said, sorry, we filled the position. (Tip: That should've been a phone call.) They claim that they will reimburse me for my flight, but I'm still waiting.

My mom and I FaceTiming with
my brother and niece in February.

This was the most extreme example of my general experience over the past seven months. A few other times, I got to the end of a months-long interview process and was told I was the top candidate but that they either decided not to fill the role at this time or couldn't because of a hiring freeze. Looking back at how I've approached this search broadly speaking, one mistake I may have made is that, whenever I had a few qualified leads, I perhaps subconsciously took my foot off the gas a bit, assuming that, surely, at least one offer would result. So for anyone in a similar situation, my advice would be to never let up or make any optimistic assumptions until you've actually signed an offer letter ... or better yet, until you're on the job. (I have a friend who's been out of work for a year. Recently, she got an offer, accepted it, and then it was rescinded because the position was eliminated.) Anyway, I know I'm not alone in this, and hopefully I will have some good news soon. 

Exploring Meow Wolf in Denver with two close
friends from my early 2000s journalism days.

Because of the need to tighten the purse strings, I didn't do much leisure traveling over the past year. In fact, I left Florida only for work travel. But in each case, I got to see friends living in or near the area I was visiting. These included Chicago, Boston (onto which I attached a trip to Vermont), Denver (which I'd never been to before) and three unrelated treks to Dallas-Fort Worth, where I lived from 2006 to 2009. Within Florida, I also took a work trip to Miami and drove a few times to visit my brother and his brood in Orlando, where they bought a house and are splitting time between there and New York. I also had five houseguests over the past year. When you move to Southwest Florida and have an extra bedroom, you become a very good friend to have indeed, especially during the winter. One of them even came here twice!

In Orlando over
Thanksgiving weekend.

So, all said, this has been a bumpy 12 months. But even though it's been stressful, it hasn't been all bad. I've certainly had some new experiences I wouldn't otherwise have had. I can make a Long Island Iced Tea and know more about personal-injury law than I ever imagined I would! And, ultimately, hopefully I'll land somewhere great and be able to look back and be grateful that I was pushed out of Deloitte's nest. There's a bit of irony in the fact that I left print journalism to get my MBA in part because I was worried about getting laid off, yet here I am. Doing these annual posts always makes me revisit the question of whether I'm glad I went to business school. I've always said "yes" emphatically because my main goal at that time, back in 2009, was to open doors to a higher-paying career. And to be fair, that happened. But given how this past year has gone, my emphatic "yes" is shifting to a less emphatic "yes, I suppose, but ... maybe I should've gone to law school instead."

See you next year!

Where He Is Now: Twelve Years Later

Me on my first day in Florida, April 2023.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2023, making it 12 years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

The pool at my apartment complex.

The past year has been full of change and upheaval, most of it within the past two months. After 10 years together, my boyfriend, James, and I decided to go our separate ways. This was an amicable, mutual decision that we both think is best for both of us. Subsequently, I decided to relocate from Forest Hills, NY, where I'd been living since 2013, down to Fort Myers, FL, in early April. And that decision meant saying goodbye to my home of 10 years, my dog, my community of friends, my tennis club, my church and, well, basically everything about my life! Why Fort Myers, in particular? For one, I generally wanted to get out of the Northeast for weather reasons, as I was growing weary of struggling through winter blues every year. Financially, given that I have the option to live anywhere, I thought it made sense to be somewhere with no state income tax, ultimately choosing Florida because of proximity to family. My parents moved to this area in 1999, and my father passed away in 2021, so my mom is now here alone, and I thought it would be nice to be closer to her and perhaps be of some help. Coincidentally, my brother and his wife moved from New York to Orlando, and my niece (my late brother's daughter), who grew up in Michigan, happens to be attending college in Daytona. So my closest relatives are now all within a couple hours of me, which hasn't been the case since I was 11 years old. 

With my mom's apartment still in post-Ian
recovery, my brother shows her how to use
the iPad he got her for her birthday.

Although it's still early days here in Southwest Florida, I'm feeling confident it's the right place at the right time. I love my apartment; it's got more than enough space for me and my belongings, including new furniture, and has a relaxing lanai overlooking a lake and palm trees. And, nothing personal against my ex whatsoever, but I'm enjoying the autonomy and privacy of living by myself again. And it's been really nice to spend more casual, regular time with my mom, who's 80 and lives less than 10 minutes away now. I've also joined a new country club and am starting to meet some friendly fellow tennis players there, and am looking into opportunities to sing in another choir, although I'm not sure that will end up being with a church. Mostly, my focus is on my financials, because this is a great opportunity to save money and accelerate annihilation of those burdensome MBA student loans. (My current payoff date is in 2036; my plan is to wipe them out in 2025, a goal that wouldn't be achievable in an expensive city like New York.)

Deloitte colleagues during a rare co-location,
this time in the Miami office.

I am still at Deloitte, focusing on bringing our Workforce Ecosystems integrated offering to market, and primarily working with Tech and Media clients, although broadening into other industries a bit. The process to transfer was easy. In this post-Covid world, they understand that people need to be where they need to be. Technically, I am out of the Tampa office, although that's two hours away, and I primarily work from home just as I did before. There is a small community of Deloitte colleagues here in Fort Myers who apparently get together somewhat regularly, so I look forward to meeting them when the opportunity arises. I'm approaching the two-year mark since I boomeranged back to the firm, putting my total nonconsecutive tenure at about 8 1/2 years, which is remarkable to me (where does the time go?). I'm still proceeding as if my goal is to make Principal or Managing Director -- if they'll have me, of course -- but I still have a couple years before I need to make that decision, so for now I'm just focused on what's directly in front of me.  

At the Glyndebourne Opera in England,
summer of 2022.

As usual, I did a bit of traveling over the past year. James and I went to Riviera Maya in June for his friends' wedding, then to Tulum. Then in July, we went to England primarily to attend Wimbledon (thanks to some generous, well-connected friends), but we also managed to pop into Lewes, a town we love and have visited a few times over the years. Near Lewes is the Glyndebourne opera house, which is gorgeous both inside and around the property, where patrons picnic before each show during the summer. We also had a nice trip to San Diego over Thanksgiving to visit some of James' family; I had never been there (aside from a brief trip ages ago to Sea World) and really liked it. And I made a few work-related trips, not to anywhere particularly exotic (Dallas, Miami).

My friend Debi and I at the
Museum of Broadway on my birthday.

In all, I'm glad I made the decision to move to New York after business school. I first lived there during my summer internship at the Associated Press and had such a blast (well-documented in this blog) that when I got the full-time offer at Deloitte and had to select a preferred office, I deliberated for all of maybe 15 seconds. I knew, even back then, that it may not have been the most prudent choice financially, but you only live once, and not everyone gets a chance to live in a world-class city. Obviously, over the 12 years I was there, the thrill started to subside, and I took less and less advantage of all the things there are to do there. I still managed an occasional visit to a museum, or a show, or a cool restaurant. But by and large I was pretty nestled in suburban Forest Hills and content there. That's part of what's made this adjustment from New York to Florida a little less jarring. When I tell locals that I moved from NYC, they assume I must be experiencing culture shock, but so far I haven't. Perhaps that's, in part, because I'm not a native Northeasterner and spent two decades in the Midwest followed by one decade in the South before migrating up to New Haven.

Business school friends on 
a Zoom in January 2023.  

Since the purpose of this blog is primarily to talk about business school and its aftermath, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the friends that I made there have been among those who've most shown up for me during this time of personal transition. Despite all of us being busy with work and family, we've made a concerted effort to stay connected over text, group chats, occasional Zooms and visits when possible. Sure, a few friendships have faded a bit, but a majority have stayed steady. I've been particularly grateful, over these past few months when I've needed emotional support, for the relationships that've endured so far. Point being that even though this blog focuses a lot on business school as a career accelerator and learning opportunity, it also produces long-term friendships, not just short-term acquaintances and additions to your professional network (although it produces those, too).

See you next year!

Where He Is Now: Eleven Years Later

Me performing a solo, "Take Me To The World," at a community musical revue in April 2022.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2022, making it 11 years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

James and I at the immersive
Van Gogh exhibit in L.A. 

In general, the past 12 months have been fine. When last I wrote, I was about to return to Deloitte, the consulting firm I'd joined out of business school and worked at from 2011-17. A lot has changed since 2017, most notably that the "road warrior" lifestyle has been replaced with primarily virtual work, and the culture seems more embracing of work/life balance. So I'm enjoying both those aspects, especially since I've been working from home (mostly) for the past five years, even before Covid-19, and have personal commitments I prefer to fulfill without pressure to do otherwise. Another adjustment is the role itself. When I left, I was a Manager, which meant I did one project at a time. Now I'm a Senior Manager, one level up, so I juggle multiple engagements and focus more time on POVs, solutions, coaching junior staff, and sales. Also, I used to be in a practice called Organization Transformation (OT), which focuses on change management and organization design, and now I'm in Workforce Transformation (WT), which focuses on talent strategy, although practically speaking my projects have straddled across both. I'm building and leading our "Contingent Workforce Strategies" offering, which is designed to help clients address various challenges they encounter with accessing and managing their non-employee workers. It's a hot topic and a growth area, so there are a lot of demands on my time, but I've enjoyed being back.

Live band Halloween karaoke night
at our tennis club in 2021.
That's me on the far right, dude.

Outside work, life has mostly gotten back to normal as the world moves out of the emergency state of Covid-19. I still play tennis regularly, as my main hobby. Last summer, I captained one of our four Team Tennis teams, each of which was a Hogwarts house. We were Hufflepuff, and we won first place! But during that time, I was suffering from some chronic pain in my neck and shoulder. An orthopedist, a chiropractor and an acupuncturist all thought the root cause was my sleeping position, which I adjusted, and the discomfort eventually went away. Nevertheless, because of that issue, I scaled back my tennis commitments slightly and spent the winter season playing about once a week, half as often as I would have liked. Beyond tennis, my church choir resumed in the fall, in a dwindled-down form, so from then through the spring I went to those rehearsals on Tuesday nights and sang at Masses on Sunday mornings, as I'd done before the pandemic. And this past Spring, I performed in a community musical revue honoring the late Stephen Sondheim. I did "Take Me To The World" from Evening Primrose as a solo and "Tonight" from West Side Story as a duet, on top of a couple group numbers. I've done plenty of karaoke in my day, and have performed in choruses and choirs, but had never sung on a stage in a paid-ticket performance context before. It was scary, but something I'm glad I tackled, and I was well-supported by friends in the audience and got kind feedback.

Me cutting corn off the cob
at our friends' country-themed
anniversary party in Kiawah.

Vacation-wise, James and I didn't go anywhere net-new over the past 12 months, but we were able to take a few trips, including twice apiece to Kiawah, S.C., and Montauk, nearby on Long Island. And even though I'm not traveling for work anything close to the extent I used to, Deloitte did send me to Boston, Las Vegas and Austin. James joined me for the latter two trips, and we attached a jaunt to Los Angeles, his hometown, to the Vegas trip. I also went alone to Florida for unpleasant reasons explained below. Next month, we're off to Riviera Maya in Mexico for a wedding and a short post-wedding getaway to Tulum, and then over 4th of July weekend we're going to England to stay in Lewes, the town where we spent a full month vacationing back in 2014, and will spend a couple days in London.

Stephanie (aka "Stuffs") during our visit
to Wrights Dairy Farm in 2011.

The past year also delivered a couple tough losses for me. In June 2021, my best friend from college, Stephanie, died suddenly at age 41. I wrote about her on this blog a few times, including here, here and here. We had Zoomed just five weeks before she passed away of complications from sarcoidosis, a rare disease that's almost never serious. Her death marked the first time I've lost a close friend my age. She was brilliant, loud, energetic and consistently hilarious. We were inseparably close freshman year at Duke, then lived together (unharmoniously) sophomore year. We reconnected in our 20s, buried the hatchet and got together several times throughout our 30s. I'm very grateful we got to have a second chapter to our relationship. She left behind a husband (her high-school sweetheart) and three school-age daughters. 

My father with newborn me in 1978.

Then in November, my Dad, Richard, died at age 84 due to a mix of factors starting with a spontaneous hemorrhage in his back muscle likely brought on by blood thinners, and ending with a septic infection. He'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year, so in some sense it was a blessing that he didn't have to suffer through years of dementia, as his older sister did 30 years ago. My Dad was a character. He was a bit grumpy and socially ungracious but had many gifts -- he was extensively knowledgeable about U.S. history and politics, an excellent writer, a surprisingly good drawer, and not a bad singer! We had a functional but not particularly emotionally close relationship. My Mom is now living alone for the first time in her life, but is handling everything with aplomb.

In less somber news, my niece just finished her first year of college, my nephews are doing well in high school, and my partner, James, continues to find ever more success as a local real estate agent. And Derby, our beloved dog, just turned 8 and is healthy. So, overall, there's much to be thankful for. 

Even 11 years out, I continue to reflect on my choice to go to business school and whether it was the right decision. I've never believed it wasn't, because at the time my goal was to quickly reposition myself to make more money, and I now make 10 times what I made as a journalist. I do wonder at times whether law school might have been a better fit for my strengths and temperament, as I find the work my lawyer friends do to be very interesting, but given that I delayed going to grad school until I was 30, I think an MBA was a more sensible route. Regardless, staying in journalism doesn't seem like it would have been feasible. Given that newspapers were in a downward spiral just as my career was starting, nearly everyone I worked with back then has long moved on to another career, and the MBA opened more doors to me than would've been available with just a BA in Journalism. So I still think the decision to pursue the MBA was prudent given my situation at the time, and it's all turned out well in that I've had a nice post-MBA career that I've generally enjoyed.  

See you in 2023!

Where He Is Now: Ten Years Later

Me on a private jet (not mine, of course!) returning from Kiawah, SC, in March 2021.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2021, making it 10 years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

My SOM cohort (Blue) reunites over Zoom.

My business school class had its 10-year reunion a few weeks ago -- virtually because, as of this writing, only 45% of the country is fully vaccinated from Covid-19, myself included. Yale did a good job with the multi-day programming, which offered a menu of lectures, discussions and catch-up sessions. Compared to our five-year reunion in 2016, everyone seemed more content and settled in their careers and personal lives. Lots of kids. It was great to see everyone’s faces and hear their voices. Here's hoping our 15-year reunion can be in person.

After bowling on my birthday
with "the core," December 2020.

Since posting my last update 12 months ago, much has evolved on the employment front. A year ago, I was happily working as an internal HR consultant at BASF, a large chemical company I joined after leaving Deloitte at the end of 2017. I wasn't actively looking to leave, but in July 2020 I quit BASF to work as a virtual contractor for a small tech company. They sounded like they were doing cool things, and the pay was double my salary at the time (although, not inconsequentially, it offered no benefits). My role was to help them build, deploy and fix a highly automated talent acquisition process.

Dose #1 in March. I'm now fully vaccinated!

I did it for 10 months. It was challenging and self-evidently not a viable long-term arrangement, but I learned a lot and made some friends (even though I never met them in person). When I started there, my original backup plan for when it ran its course was to return to BASF, as my former boss said I was welcome to do anytime. Unfortunately, in January, my old BASF team and hundreds of others were notified that their positions were being eliminated as part of a global restructuring. With that option gone, I needed a new plan.

Derby will turn 7 in two days!
Still a good boy.

After meeting with an alumni career coach from Yale's Career Development Office, reflecting on the past 20 years and looking ahead to the next 20, I decided I wanted to go back to consulting and build on the "future of work" area I'd been specializing in. It seemed obvious, then, that my next step should be to go back to Deloitte, the firm where I worked from 2011-2017. It's the top consultancy for that type of work, I already had a network there, and I knew I would enjoy being back. So I applied, reached out to a few people in my Deloitte network who were still there (and, lucky for me, in influential positions), and they supported me through the re-application process. I've now accepted an offer to return next month as a Senior Manager (one level higher than when I left) in their Workforce Transformation practice, which was created during my hiatus. I'm excited to be a "boomerang" and focus more on strategic talent issues.  

 

Me back in my first bedroom.
When I lived there, these beautiful
floors were hiding under carpet.

So it's been a bit of a tumultuous year work-wise, but I've ended up in a situation that I think is going to be awesome. In personal news, one of the more unusual adventures I had over the past year unfolded last month, when I found out that my childhood home was up for sale. Without hesitating, I headed to St. Louis to see it during an open house. "Surreal" is an overused word, but the right one here. This house, my home for the first 20 years of my life, has been the setting of my dreams at least once a week since my parents sold it in 1999, so to be back and roam around was phantasmagorical. I'm very grateful I got the chance to do this, and to finally meet some members of the family who lived there after we did. It also happened that our visit was a week before a family friend's 100th birthday, so I got to see her and give her a card in person. Even though she's fully vaccinated and I was half-vaccinated at the time, we wore masks and greeted with a fist bump.

Me with my parents in May 2021.

My family is generally well. My father had a heart attack last month, was discharged, then had a fall and went back to the hospital, but is now recovering nicely. My mom's mobility has declined over the past year or so, and she now uses a walker all the time. I was able to visit them down in Florida two weeks ago, for the first time since late 2019. My niece is 17 and graduating from high school a year early; she'll be attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University this fall. My older nephew is about to turn 17, and my younger nephew is almost 15 and just wrapped up his freshman year at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. 

Last year, I won a B-level mixed doubles
round robin to raise money for cancer research.
It was my first tennis trophy ever.

Back home in New York, our oasis during these past 12 months has been our tennis club, which gradually started reopening last May and offered us social and recreational normalcy. I also took on a new role at the club as Chair of the Nominating Committee, which means I'm leading the effort to determine club officers (president, secretary, governors) for the next term. I'm also co-captaining one of our summer tennis teams, and organized a weekly Thursday evening mixer on the red clay that just began last week and will go through mid-October.

In Cancun for James' birthday.

Despite Covid-19, James and I managed to take a few trips over the past year, including to Cancun for his birthday in January. He's doing well in the real estate biz. I mentioned in my 2020 post that I'd stopped drinking for Lent and was continuing to live alcohol-free during the pandemic. I’ve remained sober since, 15 months and counting. This lifestyle change has been better for my physical and mental health, without question. It's a relief never to have to nurse a hangover or feel nervous that I can't remember the previous night's conversations. It's also pushed me to spend my social time doing things I genuinely enjoy instead of subconsciously gravitating toward activities where there'll be alcohol. And even though the past year has had many stresses, I believe I'm coping better as a totally sober person than I might otherwise. 

Looking forward to seeing what the next 12 months bring us! See you next year.

Where He Is Now: Nine Years Later

One of our first experiences with Zoom in the early days of Coronavirus.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2020, making it nine years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

Preparing to buy groceries
in Queens, March 2020.

Obviously the biggest development from a year ago is that the COVID-19 pandemic has infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands of people, disrupting societies and devastating economies around the world. Here in New York City, as of this writing, we've had 340,000+ confirmed cases, 22,000+ deaths and inestimable job losses. I am healthy and employed, so the impact on my life is tiny next to the suffering of so many. Still, I'm affected. If you look at my update from a year ago, you'll read how excited I was to be enjoying a bunch of stuff I'm now prohibited from doing.

It feels like a lifetime ago,
but James and I won an
exhibition "cage match"
at our tennis club in August.

My partner, James, and I both believe he (and therefore I) had the virus in March, although we didn't qualify to be tested at the time, so we can't know for sure. But James had the standard symptoms, including complete loss of smell and taste despite no congestion. I had no symptoms aside, perhaps, from a brief fever one evening. Our antibody tests in early May came back negative, but that doesn't definitively tell us whether we were ever infected, it only tells us that when we took the test, we didn't have the antibodies -- and even that conclusion assumes the test was accurate, which is debatable.

Visiting my parents in December.

My small family is fine. My parents live in a South Florida senior living community that's been duly cautious given the facility's risk profile. Meanwhile the biggest challenge for my brother and his brood in Upstate New York has been maintaining therapies for my autistic nephew. My niece in Michigan turned 16 in April, so it was a bummer that she had to celebrate that milestone during this time, but overall she and her mom are fine too. And James' family, primarily based in California, are all healthy.

My friend Lori, whom I hadn't
seen in almost 20 years, and I in
Chapel Hill, February 2020.

I've been working at home since December 2017, as an internal consultant for BASF, so I didn't need to adjust to a "new normal" in that sense. Uncharacteristically, though, last winter I was traveling regularly to Durham, which happens to be where I went to college, for a project, but of course those trips were suspended and replaced by virtual workarounds. My company seems to be doing fine overall. Some business units have been disrupted, but others have actually been stimulated, so the overall impact is somewhat neutral, and for me there's been no material change. James earned his New York real estate license just days before this all started, so he's had to delay starting that career journey for now.

Hard to say no to that face!

We live in a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony, and our building has a gated courtyard, so we have some semi-private outdoor space. The playground next to our building, though, was closed by city mandate, so we lost the place we used to surreptitiously take our dog for off-the-leash fetching after sundown. We don't have human children, so there was no extra caregiving to take on due to school closures. And with James here with me, I haven't gone stir-crazy from solitary confinement. (If anything, as an introvert, I've had to carve out my "me" time.) So, overall, we're certainly fortunate.

Live-streaming a recital
for about 50 fellow tennis
club members in April.

The big changes for us have been the suspension of all our leisure pursuits. Before Coronavirus, my typical week included a tennis game or two, community musical rehearsals on Sunday and Monday evenings, Tuesday evening choir practice and performance at Sunday Mass, a yoga class, and perhaps a swim and a steam at the Yale Club next to Grand Central. For the past two months, all that's been replaced by an infinite loop of Backgammon, karaoke on Smule, long walks with my dog, Zooms, dishwashing, piano playing, iPhone games and hitting tennis balls against whatever walls I can find. But we just got good news the other day -- Gov. Cuomo announced that a few low-risk recreational activities could resume, including tennis. So our club reopened about half its courts as of Saturday. We just had a gorgeous weekend, and I got to play twice. It was wonderful to be back there and to see people, if only to wave from afar.

Toasting after our choir's
Christmas concert.

As per tradition, I'd given up drinking for Lent (starting Feb. 26). But breaking tradition, I've been abstaining ever since. It hasn't been too hard because I see it as a reward rather than a sacrifice, thanks to a persuasive book I read called This Naked Mind (Annie Grace), which I'd recommend for anyone interested in cutting down on their drinking. Many of our friends have interpreteded the lockdown as permission to drink. That's their choice. (Or not, actually. This Naked Mind would argue that satiating a subconscious craving to a highly addictive drug is not a choice.) For me, in this time of boredom, stress and fear, I believe I'm better off having the benefit of my full wits, avoiding hangovers and potentially hazardous decisions, and building more of a cushion in my checking account. So our home bar has been collecting dust, and I feel good. Cheers!

"Hey where's everybody?"
I asked myself facetiously
during a fall 2019 visit to
Yale SOM's former building.

When I was in business school in 2009-2011, stories were still circulating about the mess that the previous few classes had faced hunting for jobs during the Great Recession. Subsequent studies have suggested that those who graduated in 2008-09 continue to experience lower incomes and less advancement, even 10+ years later. I assume that the Class of 2020 will experience even more significant long-term consequences. Of course, there are worse situations to be in than having just earned an MBA. But, relatively speaking, it's unfortunate that some students' experiences are being shortchanged, and that their nontrivial investment in their education may not have the return it should.

Celebrating our friend Pablo's
50th birthday in Cartagena,
Colombia, in November 2019.

Putting the Coronavirus aside for a moment, over the past year, we managed a few getaways, the most exotic of which was last fall to Cartagena, Colombia. James and I were among about 20 people invited to celebrate our friend Pablo's 50th birthday. He and his partner, John, took wonderful care of us, and we had a fantastic time exploring the area. It was my first time in South America, so now I've been on four continents (minus Africa, Asia and Antarctica). We also went to L.A. for James' sister's wedding, took a trip to Vermont to stay with friends who'd recently moved there, and visited my parents a couple times in Florida. We had some spring and summer travel plans that were postponed, of course, but c'est la vie.

Here's hoping things go back to normal, and perhaps even better than normal, very soon, and that my 2021 update doesn't need to address global despair! See you next year.

Where He Is Now: Eight Years Later

Me after my 40th birthday (surprise!) dinner in December 2018.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2019, making it eight years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since last I posted an annual update.

Our crew at the WSTC's
grass courts in August 2018.

These past 12 months have probably been my favorite since business school. I'm in my second year of my second post-MBA job, as an in-house management consultant for BASF. I continue to enjoy it, and especially continue to enjoy working remotely, which has enabled me to plant roots in my community and generally enhance my life on all fronts. These days, 90% of the time I'm either at the West Side Tennis Club or home, a 12-minute walk away. I often do my BASF work out of the club's library, and make nearly daily use of the tennis courts, pool, gym (not as often as I should), and bar (more often than I should). The club also hosts summer concerts at the stadium and special events in the clubhouse like trivia nights and karaoke, so we're there a lot. It's the first time as an adult I've felt like I had a home away from home. In fact if we could take our dog and a couple sleeping bags there, we'd probably never leave.

My country club swim
team portrait, 1986.

When I was growing up in a suburb of St. Louis in the '80s and '90s, my family belonged to a country club across the street. My mom spent a lot of time there, playing golf and bridge. I was on the swim team as a kid and played a little bit of tennis as a teen, and we dined there at least once a week. It was a beautiful facility, and the source of fond memories (although, admittedly, young me wasn't always jumping for joy about dressing up in a coat and tie to spend three hours at dinner). It also lived up to some of the negative reputations of country clubs -- formal, stuffy, exclusive, pretentious. Fortunately, our tennis club in Queens is casual, relaxed, welcoming and jovial. More importantly, we've developed genuinely meaningful friendships that have seeped into our broader lives outside of just tennis. Throughout most of my 30s, I didn't have a lot of close friends physically nearby. Now I've made some, and it's added a lot of enrichment to my life over this past year.

Our church during the
Easter Vigil service.

For almost a year now, James and I have been going to church every Sunday. I'm Protestant and he's Catholic, so we were alternating between two nearby churches. A friend from our spin class encouraged us to audition for the choir at the Catholic one, Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. We joined, and now perform every Sunday morning, and rehearse every Tuesday evening. Being in the choir has had a lot of benefits. It gives us an opportunity to work as part of a team, be rewarded for practice, and hopefully enhance mass-goers' experiences. And I've learned a lot about Catholicism, which initially intimidated me. Singing with the choir has ended up being one of the most emotionally and spiritually fulfilling endeavors I've undertaken. And my late brother was a devout Catholic, so I also feel like this is a way to continue to honor him and keep his influence relevant in my daily life.

My BFF from high school
took me to a "Golden Girls" drag
show for my 40th birthday.

I turned 40 in December, and overall I'm excited about this age. I launched this blog when I was 30. When I reflect on the past 10 years, what I mainly see is growth (professional, personal, spiritual, physical), resulting from a nontrivial amount of effort, sacrifice and even pain. Unlike my breezy but stagnant 20s, my 30s saw a battery of challenges, confrontations, rejections and losses that forced me to dig into who I am, what I believe, and where I want to go with my life. I think elderly future me will see my 30s as a period of investment in what I hope will be bountiful subsequent years.

James and I celebrated New Year's
Eve 2018 at a Yale friend's wedding.

My 30s had joyful times as well, of course. I met my partner, explored many new parts of the world, met dozens of fascinating people who'd have remained strangers had I stayed in Texas, adopted a wonderful dog, and rediscovered various passions and interests I'd let expire. Now as I move into my 40s, I feel more optimistic than I have in a long while. I'm excited for what's next.

See you next year!

Where He Is Now: Seven Years Later

Me at Yosemite National Park in California, two weeks ago.

Today is Commencement Day for the Yale School of Management's Class of 2018, making it seven years since I graduated from their MBA program, and one year since I last posted an annual update.

The two biggest updates from the past 12 months happened last fall. On the professional front, there was good news: I got a new job. But there was bad news on the personal front, as less than a week after I accepted that offer, my brother Rick died.

My official BASF photo.

I'll start by elaborating on the professional news. In November 2017, I accepted a job offer at BASF, a German chemical company, and resigned from Deloitte, the consulting firm I joined out of business school in 2011. The new role offers better pay, a slower work pace, greater emphasis on my areas of interest and, most importantly (to me), the flexibility to work from home, which has been a game-changer in terms of my overall wellbeing. So even though Deloitte is a great company, and I grew tremendously while there, ultimately this was the right offer at the right time.

Me with my new team after
"escaping the room" in December.

My new title is People Consultant, which is essentially an internal management consultant who focuses on HR projects. I found out about this opportunity through a head hunter to whom I was introduced through an MBA classmate, adding yet another reason why an MBA was a good investment -- the network really can pay off. Even though the work is similar to what I did before, it's my first time working in this industry, or in this function, so I'm learning a lot.

Rick and I, November 1984.

Back to the personal news, my brother was 49 when he passed away on Nov. 2, 2017. He had struggled with alcoholism since he was 13, and in this case suffered a relapse from which he didn't recover. I had seen him just a few weeks before when I was in St. Louis for my 20-year high school reunion, which happened to fall on his birthday weekend. We saw each other three times, so I'm grateful we had those moments. Nearly 200 people attended his funeral, many of whom I hadn't seen in decades, and his burial was in Nashville in our family plot, which goes back five generations to the 19th century.

Rick and I on his birthday,
October 2016.

Rick was a personable, irreverently funny intellectual with a passion for history, including our family ancestry. Although we all grew up Presbyterian, he had been devoutly Catholic since converting for his first marriage, and was a single-issue voter on abortion (anti). But he had a strong rebellious streak, too. He'd gotten around via motorcycle since I can remember (see drawing below for evidence) and had several prominent tattoos, including one on the back of each hand. His nickname for me was Fuzz; he's the only one who ever called me that, and that's the only thing he'd ever call me. He left behind a daughter, who recently turned 14 and lives with her mom, his second ex-wife, in Michigan. (Here's an old post featuring them, from 2009.) I'm angry, sad and annoyed he's not here anymore. At least once a week, something pops into my mind that I want to tell him, or ask him about, and I remind myself that it's too late.

A family portrait I drew in third grade.

Mom reads her 75th birthday present.

Depressing, right? Yes. But on the bright side, it's prompted me to do a lot of reflecting about the long-ago past, and take solace in these memories. And the real takeaway, of course, isn't to wallow, it's to appreciate that our time here is pretty short, and that it's important to invest that time wisely, especially when it comes to connecting with loved ones. For example, a couple months ago, my mom turned 75. For a gift, I did what I did for my father's 75th birthday six years ago and leveraged my newspaper design skills to create a faux front page in her honor. It was a time-consuming endeavor, but well worth it, and I'm thankful I was able to see her read it in person.

A Boardwalk Empire-themed
New Year's Eve!

Beyond all that, the past 12 months were generally pretty good. James and I, as usual, managed to take a few enjoyable vacations. Most recently, we went to Puerto Vallarta for a friend's (surprise) 50th birthday, and the following week spent time in California, including the Bay Area for a Yale classmate's wedding, followed by a few nights in Yosemite National Park, and wrapping up in James' hometown of Los Angeles. James has been focusing most of his energy on growing audience for his website (TheGLife.com). Since we both work from home now, we rejoined our local tennis club and have been making the most out those facilities, along with our memberships to a nearby gym. Almost every day we do something active like tennis, weightlifting, swimming, hiking with Derby (our dog), or taking an exercise class at the gym like spin, yoga, abs or Pilates. At the beginning of the year, I vowed to lose 40 pounds for my 40th birthday, which is this December. I was trending in the right direction until these past couple weeks of vacation, so weight loss will be a top priority over the coming months, as will post-vacation financial frugality.

See you next year.