8.11: a little exhausted

i slept in past noon for the first time in a while

Good morrow to most of my (East Coast) readers whom I assume are reading this over breakfast and/or coffee and/or procrastinating catching up on their morning emails. I hope everyone has a good work day ahead of them, although I think mine will be pretty stressful. I and two other junior devs are expected to finish this task by EOD Tuesday and we’re pretty much all in agreement that it’s an unrealistic deadline, but we’re also scared to push back on my manager about it. There is something nice about knowing that I’m not in it alone, though.

Now that I’ve moved so close to Los Gatos, I’ve been taking full advantage of my proximity to line dancing and church by biking everywhere—the dry summer nights have honestly been sublime biking weather. It was pretty funny though, because I biked to line dancing on Wednesday and also to Bible study on Thursday, and then when asked about how I was going to get to Outside Lands on Saturday (more on that later) I said I’d catch a work shuttle up then e-bike over. Throw in the fact that I biked to downtown San Jose another time and this one girl Roxanna (Caleb’s friend who had only seen me biking) genuinely asked me if I didn’t own a car. Honestly, I’m fully leaning into the car-less allegations! Gotta pad those Strava stats baby.

Also yes, I did go to Outside Lands on Saturday; I signed up for this program through work where I volunteered in the morning (insanely early shift, like 6:30-11am) and got a free ticket for the day. Having Nate and his girl(??) Annah with me for the whole thing, as well as Nate’s old teammate Mac, definitely made it way more bearable because at least we were exhausted together. Tyler, the Creator and flipturn were easily the standout performances of the night.

I was going on maybe 3-4 hours of sleep at a music festival, also having spent 4 hours walking around picking up trash in the morning, but a bunch of my friends all drove up into the city to go out to Westwood for Faith’s birthday so of course I had to rally for that!! Honestly, was not looking forward to it on the e-bike ride over but as soon as we got in (for real this time) I was so back—they were playing some bangerrrrr white girl music. By the time I got home I had fully been awake for 24 hours and probably logged like 40k steps on the day so I totally slept through church but my body needed every minute of it.

Then on Sunday night we all went over to Faith’s house for dinner and it was really sweet getting to celebrate her, as she’s quite quickly become a very important person in my life—she, Caleb, and Gabi are easily my closest friends that I have in California. Her friend Abigail asked her, “who’s someone you met this past year” and her answer was instantly “Kenny, duh” which was obviously very sweet but also made me realize just how rapidly we’ve all gotten so close. I’ve probably said this a million times now but God really does show up for me in the craziest ways—I could not have dreamt of a community this tight-knit this quickly as I packed my bags and moved across the country by myself.

And I’m so privileged to be so excited about coming back home this weekend too! As I’ve spoken to more people, I’m realizing how rare it is to still be so close with people from high school; I honestly think I have my unintended gap year of living at home to thank for most of my rekindled friendships. It’s kind of wild to think that, if I had things my way, I probably would’ve just moved to NYC immediately after graduating. I’m sure that would’ve been really great too in its own right, but then I never would have gotten to revisit dormant friendships lost in the transition from high school to going out-of-state for college, nor would I have met anyone in the Bay Area. In hindsight, I can totally see how God has just been proving me wrong time and time again in that what I want is not always necessarily what’s best for me, but I have this nasty habit of doubting His plans every time. Surely I will internalize Isaiah 55:9 someday.

Finally hopped on the Venture X wave so maybe my next Kennymail will be written from the airport lounge! I’ll see you all then.

Kenny