First "vacation" of 2024

Between all the excitement of Neuralink's big news, I nearly failed to mention I was up to some other things last weekend as well. In between doing my part to ensure Neuralink's first human surgery went off without a hitch, and while subsisting on far less than an appropriate amount of sleep, I was also traversing the state! Months prior, I'd thought it sounded like a great idea to rebook the LA trip we'd originally planned with our foster kid to a completely inoffensive time of the year, just long enough after the holidays to not get a side eye for taking a long weekend, but not soon enough into the new year for anything too important to be happening. Famous last words.

We had an interesting sort of remote work day.

I spent our train ride down to Los Angeles furiously tethering myself to my personal hotspot and hammering out down-to-the-wire code changes, all while frantically dreading the inevitable dead zones on the journey. I sent screenshots and software instructions well past midnight from our hotel room. I tracked the final day's countdown while creeping through the mazes in The Last Bookstore. We toasted to a Chi Connection while crossing my fingers there'd be no last minute software requests pinging me between sips of wine. And we both quietly celebrated while reflecting on art in The Broad, aching that we couldn't share our biggest news of the day while catching up with family. We breathed easier over Sunday night dinner in an English pub in Santa Monica (quite the destination) when I got a proper shout-out in Slack for my software's seamless operation.

A trip to LA isn't complete without a stop by The Last Bookstore.

We visited The Broad (free modern art museum) for the first time on this trip.

We couldn't call this a relaxing weekend, but it was an excellent way to spend those precious moments while holding onto such big news, waiting for the rest of the world to find out.

All too soon, we were back to the grindstone on a Monday morning train, still dizzy from the excitement and the sleep deprivation, with incoming software requests piling up as I fought with my hotspot en route back home.

We did it!

Neuralink - no longer just for monkeys (and other furry friends)

It's been seven years in the making for the company at large, and a week shy of six that I've been a part of it. The marathon of sleep-deprived nights, tears, frustration, and joyous breakthroughs all led to this Sunday morning. And now a new countdown begins: days since Neuralink has been a device used by humans. It's still surreal - I may be furiously crunching numbers streaming from our clinical trial participant's brain, but I don't even know his first name. Nicolas put it aptly as though we're Apollo 11 and we've just stuck the landing. We're on the precipice of that one small step, but the shuttle door hasn't opened just yet. I can't wait to help make this giant leap for mankind. But for now, I should probably sleep, if I can still remember how.

All the feels

The app that is my latest obsession

This little Spring Fertility app is my latest obsession. Any time my phone pings during business hours, I immediately wonder if I got some new message or test result, and I also panic about any coworkers seeing my phone's home screen notifications. 

I don't know if I want to cry or do breathing exercises or furiously Google my next concern. Stress is precisely the thing to avoid, but I can't seem to think about anything other than this stupid egg retrieval process and my eleven suppressed follicles. Eleven: "low end of normal." Suppressed because that's what happens when you spend thirteen and a half years on birth control. The suppressed thing isn't a deal breaker - a month or two off the pill should shape things up. The low number just means I've got to cross my fingers and toes that those little gals are healthy. "Quality over quantity."

It's all rather confusing to be freaking out about something I don't actually have my heart set on. But there are a lot of layers, so welcome to my therapy session. We've got a lot to unpack.

I am a nerd. I love the idea of combining my genes with Nicolas's. This is really weird and nerdy, but imagining totally new cells with my chromosomes all snugged up next up to his makes my heart happy. I don't love babies, but I love the abstract concept of a half-me-half-my-favorite-person human. It's someone I'd mourned and accepted I'd never meet well before fully embracing foster parent life, so to have this tossed back into the fray creates a frenetic excitement.

Finances scare me. The price tag of this whole endeavor isn't exactly a recipe for avoiding stress to make healthy eggs. Why am I about to dive into something that will wipe out most of my liquid savings to potentially be exactly where I am today, just poorer? There is of course an answer: to have the peace of knowing I tried, to have explored an alternative route to parenthood compared to last year's stab at it. Because eleven follicles isn't a low enough number that there's no hope in trying. But imagining me in a few months with no healthy embryos and a very low savings account balance makes me feel terrified.

Aging is coming on too fast. I'm not ready for my internal organs to keel over and call it quits on me. 36 feels way too young to start dying, but statistically pre-menopause isn't that far away. I'm afraid part of me sees a successful egg retrieval as some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that allows me to escape the first milestone in my body's steady march towards the grave.

I never half-ass anything. Foster care? Let me read all the articles, search every state's fost-adopt rules, find us that "perfect match" and dive in 110%. We all saw how that went. Now it's egg retrieval and I'm frantically trying to figure out what sort of lifestyle and nutritional changes will give me the best possible outcomes. "Take it as it comes." Have you met me??

I don't deal well with uncertainty. The outcome of this egg retrieval could be profoundly life altering either way. There are so many things to consider. So many contingency plans! The wheels just don't stop spinning.

Is this even ethical? If this egg retrieval and fertilization works out, is it even fair to make another human to whom I risk passing on my various neuroses and anxiety? And who am I to decide that another person has to exist in this world of increasing inequalities, political tensions, and global warming?

The wounds of last year haven't fully healed. Embracing this possible path to parenthood is forcing me to face down the disappointments of the past year once more, which twists the knife.

I'm scared of getting my heart broken. I know how it feels to lose a kid who was never really yours. New year, new flavor of pain-of-losing-someone-who-was-almost-your-child isn't exactly my idea of a fresh start.

It's tough to have to hide this journey. While I can share with friends, this journey isn't kosher for either of our families. On my side, if we do manage to fertilize any embryos, the Catholics will believe those babies already have souls, and I don't want to be viewed as committing some sort of heinous crime. (Remember the whole aim of avoiding stress?) I also don't want to get up their hopes or break their hearts. On Nico's side, the judgments around why we won't just try for a normal pregnancy aren't something we're prepared for.

Maybe word-vomiting all these feelings into this blog will leave my brain a little more quiet for bed time tonight.

Courtesy of (aka used without permission from) the Word Vomit podcast

Hoping your new year has begun with less anxious questioning of your entire life journey.

New year, new bucket list

We survived the holidays (just barely counts) and have rolled into 2024 full steam ahead!

Survived Christmas 2023 - and yes, that matzah ball soup and the latkes were worthy of the highlight reel.

One week into the year, we've already knocked out a cat surgery, our first test run of an electric vehicle, a day trip to Santa Cruz, a preliminary fertility screening (complete with horrific bruising), a theater performance in SF, and a new non-alcoholic strawberry mojito recipe worthy of the cocktail book. (Some people spend decades amassing and perfecting their personal collection of recipes to pass on to future generations - my recipes just happen to be a bit more liquid.)

One week down, fifty-one to go. Bring it, 2024.

Though we've never been much for New Year's resolutions, we've made ourselves a 2024 "bucket list" which seems to mean we've resolved to properly embrace life here in the Bay Area. We've come up with restaurants, cafés, bars, parks, hikes, and events to hit up. I'm excited to see what we'll knock out and how the list may morph by year end. Lately, I've struggled a lot with finding a sense of purpose or motivation for existing. I'm not the sort to derive meaning primarily from work, which often makes me feel the odd one out in the trenches of Silicon Valley. This bucket list feels like a declaration that I still exist outside of my 9-to-much-later-than-5. 2024 may not be the year we pack up and move back to Europe (as far as we know), but I'm hoping it'll be the year I start feeling more like the sort of human that my European life allowed me to be, one who isn't primarily defined by the contents of their LinkedIn profile.