I ran some more

Running a half marathon was decidedly not on this year's to-do's. The plan was just to run, and to sort out the relationship I'd like to have with the sport going forward. It wasn't to become a total trope of a nearly-middle-aged person and go all gung ho on the distance running. But I got an invitation, and my general rule of thumb is to not say no to anything that doesn't seem terribly wrong and could make for a good story. So I said yes. And now I can add "run a half marathon" to my bucket list and promptly check it off.

Unseasonably good weather in SF for the Presidio Half Marathon today!

The crazy thing is I'm running fast and feeling good. Unlike the 5k at the Oakland Marathon I ran back in March, I didn't cross the finish line nauseated and hating myself: this time, I was pumping my fist and cheering myself along while somehow running an average pace of 8:36/mile (discounting the time they forced us to spend walking under the Golden Gate, crammed together like sardines, mid-race, making dragging my official pace to an 8:50). I'm still not sure I self-identify as a runner but I've got the feeling that's starting to change.

Back from away

On Prince Edward Island, as my dad explained it, there are four directions: up west, down east, north shore, and south shore. Anywhere else is away, be it just over the Confederation Bridge or on the other side of the planet. Infamously, a cousin of his moved to Moncton, New Brunswick, a city in the neighboring province, and was referred to as living "overseas." After nearly a quarter century since my last visit, I was finally back from away.

Life is simpler and the pace is slower up in PEI. While I imagine I'd go stir-crazy long-term, it was a peaceful week away from the normal responsibilities of living. We tacked on an extra hour and and a half to our average nightly sleep time, and I knocked out two and a half books during the time disconnected.

Our journey kicked off in New Jersey, where my cousin Jake married his long-term partner, Sarah.

Jake & Sarah - Cape May, NJ - June 7, 2025

During the festivities, my grandpa began anxiously calling the aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, that's a thing he does these days, and it's incredibly hard to gauge the level of seriousness. He might call twenty times in an hour because he can't figure out his remote control. So when my aunt instructed his caretaker to turn off his phone and tell him it was out of battery so we could all enjoy the evening (unfortunately without him as he'd become too frail to come out), we didn't think more of it. The next day, however, he couldn't get out of bed. A trip to the hospital didn't clear things up: turns out he'd developed sepsis and wasn't responding to aggressive antibiotics. As we weaved our way up the East Coast, my mom's family group chat was exploding with updates and opinions.

We stopped for a night at my dad's cousin's Joan's home in southern Maine and hit up Acadia National Park on day 2. After a stroll and a dinner in Bar Harbor, we battled fog so thick we legitimately feared the hidden moose and called it a night as soon as we'd crossed the border, setting up camp in a minimalist but perfectly clean motel room in Saint Stephen, New Brunswick.

Acadia National Park, the major pitstop on our road trip from Pennsylvania up to PEI.

On day 3 of the road trip, we made it home with time for a beach run and shower before catching sunset with the family over the ocean. On the Aloia homefront back in New Jersey, things progressed and by the next day or two, arrangements for hospice care were set in motion.

It all started feeling real over the Small Halls concert on Friday night. In a decommissioned church built to resonate like the inside of a violin, surrounded by simple beauty, in a world where folks chase manageably-sized dreams, I struggled to figure out how to accept the changes in my station in life, as I stare down the loss of the last member of the generation two notches ahead of me, and as I watch my position within my family structure shift. I'd never quite fit in to begin with, but the years spent living so far away, the vastly different paths we've taken, and the differing interests have led me to a point where I don't quite know how to connect with my cousins, and the feeling's clearly mutual as I wasn't extended an invitation to the goodbye calls arranged with Grandpa. I've never figured out how to be me and also be a member of this family.

The heavy news was sandwiched by the embarrassingly good, the kind it didn't feel right to receive while grieving. The Neuralink valuation, which we'd been waiting on for the past two months, was finally released. It was good, better than even the most optimistic guesses I'd been hearing around the office. And for us, assuming our participation in the upcoming tender offer isn't overly restricted, it means we've got the funds we need to become parents on our terms. It was time to start crunching numbers and reaching out to various financial and logistical contacts. Sitting front-row on the sidelines as my mom and her siblings navigated the loss of their parent while establishing the conditions under which Nico and I will become parents felt overwhelming. The juxtaposition was too stark. Fate felt cruel, especially as the news isn't something we can send my grandfather off knowing: he wouldn't understand IVF, frozen embryos, and gestational carriers. It also means he'll never know about his future great-grandkiddos. Life can be so unfair.

In between it all, I kept running. I admired the lupins. I climbed the red clay rocks at cliff edges. I squished seaweed between my toes and smushed the sand under my feet as I ran barefoot through the water's edge. I breathed in and out. I felt alive.

Snapshots from runs around the Island

We explored the Island. We went to the Anne of Green Gables House. We sampled the "best lobster rolls on PEI" (according to my parents). We explored the Bottle Houses. We listened to live music. We went to a show. We (re-)met loads of family. We made sandcastles under the tutelage of a professional sandcastle artist. We ate ice cream. We learned about Acadian history. We ticked off all the tourist boxes. We relaxed. We just were.

A whirlwind of PEI tourism

And then we went home. We were lucky enough to have a recovery holiday the day after our flight, and we hit the ground running. I had about a half-dozen errands, a lyra (aerial hoop) class, and my one-on-one goodbye call with Grandpa, facilitated by Aunt Marie and Aunt Lisa, who kindly did a lot of the talking on his end of the line since he'd already slowed down enough that it was hard for him to speak. It's funny thinking of what to say to someone when you know it's the last time you'll ever chat. What do you tell them? What can you? I talked about my upcoming half marathon, and he asked how fast I'd run. I showed him videos from my lyra class earlier that day, and brought our pup Lily and all three cats onto the video call. The animals made him smile. It's surreal sending someone off on their end-of-life journey through sharing the mundane, though I guess that's what relationships chalked up to - a series of shared moments that one day draw to a close - and it was a privilege to have one last chance to share, knowing it was our last. Seeing him there, not scared but just tired, comfortable and at home, surrounded by loved ones doting on his needs, honestly, made death feel a little less scary. It's a very big thing to offer someone as your final goodbye: comfort that the end doesn't need to be scary.

So it was simple and it was a lot, and that was our big vacation for summer 2025.

Rekindling my relationship with running

To bring anything less than my A-game doesn't come naturally. Whatever the rules, I'm down 110%, and the rules of racing are easy - just go faster. Doing something for fun, for pleasure, and with no intent of being the best? That isn't exactly my strong point. I've been hoping to work on that as I establish a new relationship with my old sport, running. We're rekindling things after a couple of decades off, and I'm trying not to fall into the old patterns that left me injured and heartbroken when I had to walk away after freshman year in college. 

The bulk of my runs involve mornings with Lily along the Bay. Though I did dabble with treadmills starting after the biking accident kept me off the pole for a few months in 2022, my first outdoor run in well over a decade came during a gap mid-fertility treatment late last summer while chewing on some tough decisions. The strict warning against any running during treatment gave it a forbidden allure. We definitely made the right call to push through the final cycles last fall, but somehow the running bug stuck. Fully unburdened from medical constraints, 2025 is becoming my year of seeing just how far my legs can take me.

Bay to Breakers was the perfect opportunity for me to test out my new relationship to running: a chance to dress up, to be silly, to not run my fastest, and to be present with friends and a wider city full of folks weird enough to be up before 7 on a Sunday morning in their finest costumes (or lack thereof) to join a moving party. There were dancing penguins protesting tariffs, packs of feuding red-clad cardinals and white-clad popes, human car washes where you could get spritzed and bubbled, and so much wonderful chaos. I was running in neon yellow fishnets, a sparkly pink tutu and a neuron tee, some weird hybrid of Barbie and a scientist: 5-year-old me would be so proud. 38-year-old me enjoyed every moment.

Only the 8th time the race came around since my move to the Bay and I can finally ran it. Not sure why I didn't jump on this bandwagon sooner.

My curiosity over just what my aging body isn't yet too old to do kept me from walking the "race". Before last Sunday, I hadn't run 12km non-stop since high school cross country! And, since last Sunday, I cranked it up a notch and ran a full 10 miles with coworkers just three days later at a sub-10-minute/mile pace. And still no cramps or next-day aches. How much further can I go? (As I said, slippery slope over here.)

Getting a taste for distance: Bay to Breakers stood as my new distance record for all of 3 days until I ran 10.12 miles at a 9:57/mile pace with some coworkers this week.

I'm trying to make sure I run playfully, adventurously, as a way to build new relationships, so as to not create yet another space where I have to perform at risk of letting myself down. This isn't even my main sport: you can still find me climbing silks and flipping around the trapeze most weekends now that that, too, is no longer verboten.

No more fertility treatments means I am back to circus full force, now also featuring trapeze!

It's pleasantly unexpected to discover new skills and strengths hidden inside me after a year of having it hammered into me that I was rapidly rounding the corner on my expiration date. I'm not sure quite what this relationship with running is turning into, but right now the goal is "go as fast and as far as is fun." So far so good.

Human connections in a digital world

I've been a bit of a recluse online, retreating into my own blog, a sort of long-form journal that's technically public but no one really cares to view (and I don't care to promote). I see it as a glorified photo album and my own personal pensieve, for the Harry Potter fans out there. I do deeply value this medium. Every time I switch to a new blog, I convert the old one into a physical book, and when I most need it, I sit down and literally flip through the life I've led. I get visual and written reminders of the journey that's gotten me where I am, and the person I was along the way. But it's all about me.

Like most early millennials, I was thrilled to get my .edu email address that opened up access to the world of Facebook, a social media platform for connecting with my friends as we took our first steps into the shallow end of adulthood and started learning to swim. I loved posting silly thoughts and photos, commenting on my friends updates, and learning about the milestones and accomplishments of the people I loved (or loved to hate). But over the years, as the platform became crowded, as the algorithm evolved to pull us into camps and push us towards extremism, the once joyful digital town square turned dark. I stopped engaging, and didn't quite know where to turn.

On Nico's encouragement, now that I'm a runner (I guess), I joined Strava. It's a platform to share your workouts and accomplishments. It's mostly centered around GPS-tracked activities like bike rides and runs but I'm stretching its limits by folding in my circus work. And I kind of love it: suddenly, I'm sharing things; I'm getting kudos; I'm seeing and celebrating all the awesome things my friends are doing! It's a wonderful reminder of the early innocence of social media. And I'm realizing how much I've missed those human connections, something that Strava can't really solve: Foremost among Strava's shortcomings is that hardly everyone is on it: I've only got about 10 friends there.

Through Strava, I've been rediscovering the joys of simpler social media. And I'm not sure how to feel about it.

Like a coin running ever tightening circles around a funnel, I'm feeling my excitement over this new platform drawing me to the inevitable conclusion that it's time I crawl back to social media. But I also hate social media, enough that I'm writing this whole blog post. I hate the posturing. I hate the performative nature. And I hate being a product consumed by some amorphous tech giant munching data that I haven't even knowingly generated. I don't like the machines knowing me better than I know myself. (Rich coming from a person literally designing tech to read straight from your brain, I know.)

In the best of worlds, social media can be a beautiful way to extend contact with loved ones. It can also drive extremism, FOMO, and a complete conviction that everyone else is happy and definitely knows what they're doing and is living a life according to plan without any hiccups or detours. There isn't really a clear answer, though in the absence of moral imperative, pursuing happiness is probably right. I am just surprised this is the route it's taking me, and unsure how to take the next step.

In a post-pandemic/Trump 2.0 era, as someone who's officially no longer young, as someone who plans to soon have responsibility over the lives of one or more tiny human beings, what even is the right way to engage with social media? What do I share? What do people care to know? I don't have the answers. Sometimes being human is just so exhausting.

Operation Surprise!

For the first time in over a decade together, I successfully surprised Nicolas! Admittedly, I hadn't necessarily been trying beforehand. Nonetheless, I—we—pulled it off without a hitch. After Nicolas had rejected all my suggestions for bigger birthday plans, he'd agreed to go to his favorite pasta place, Passione Emporio, an unassuming Italian restaurant in an industrial part of southwest Berkeley. Upon bemoaning to Tatiana my inability to do anything more special for his birthday, she hatched a plan. What if our whole extended Bridgewater crew—our family here in California—made a surprise appearance at the dinner? One quick group chat later and the plan was on. I made the reservation and Nico was none the wiser of the headcount.

Despite us walking past the window revealing all our friends, and even walking past a friend awkwardly hiding her face at the register as we entered the restaurant, Nicolas did not suspect a thing. Our crew erupted in a cheer of "surprise!" that filled the room, and surprised he was. Although, being Nico, there wasn't really much of a reaction. He immediately went into hanging-with-friends mode as though this had been the plan all along.

Surprise! Nico's unexpected birthday party. 

The years of chugging away and connecting with humans along our journey has really gotten us a lovely and supportive community. Sometimes it feels scary to imagine leaving it all in a few years to start fresh again. But that's not a today problem. Today, there aren't really any problems in our little universe—a weird thing to acknowledge when it feels like the world around us is burning. As guilty as I feel admitting it, for us, these are the good times.

My kind of weird

 In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss,

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

Those words certainly rang true today, on our 8th anniversary. As I prepared to take Lily out on her morning walk, I spotted a suspicious crumple on our patio. I soon discovered she'd helped herself to a bit of dirty laundry and munched her way straight through, not for the first time. We were due for a new laundry basket, preferably of the dog-proof variety.

Thirty minutes later, voilà, the contents of our Amazon shopping cart, ready for check-out.

A reasonably dog-proof laundry basket, complete with separate hampers for lights, darks, and delicates!

But let's be honest, those new cloth hampers are just asking to be labeled. Now, if I were an instagram arts-and-crafts type, there'd be lovely embroidered text, maybe color-coded or in an impossibly cute font. But as much as I can dream, that's not me. I know I've found my person when the following patches to label our delicates, lights, and darks get both a haha and a solid green light.

Clockwise from left, our new labels for the delicates, lights, and darks laundry.

If I had to sum up the daily joys of marriage in a snapshot, this might just be it: finding that person who equally appreciates the dark humor and absurdity, and is completely on board for this interpretation of adulting. We don't need anyone's permission to live out loud exactly as we are, and hopefully enjoy a laugh together along the way.

Here's to the first 8 years and many more.

[Update: finished product! 🤣]

A pupdate

Dog parenting is not the same as cat parenting. Any vaguely animal-aware idiot could tell you that, but living it is another thing. We've logged nearly two years of dog parenting by now, and have mostly gotten the swing of things. Diarrhea? We know the routine. Dog sitter, dog walker, and dog boarding facility are all practically on speed dial. But between the responsibility, there is also some fun: the beach days, the belly rubs, the best friend encounters (I still cannot get over how dogs really do make specific doggy friendships), and the ongoing mission to win over the cats. I figure we are overdue for a bit of photographic evidence.

Lily: beach bum, cat lover, and big fan of Koa the husky-pomeranian