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.