I’ve had a slow start to the year in my personal life. Some of this was planned, some the result of extended holiday breaks for some of my regular events. On Sunday evening, I walked over to the performing arts center and took in a traveling Broadway production. I found a discounted resale single ticket in the middle of the front row of the upper deck and snagged it for an unobstructed view. The only things I knew about the show before seeing it were the name of the show (Girl from the North Country) and that it was a musical set to Bob Dylan music. Other than that, I was going in blind, which is not how I normally operate.

This was my second event at DPAC. For a city the size of Durham, it is an amazing venue. This was also my second time in the third deck but I don’t feel compelled to spend more money to be lower down, especially at the price I was able to get my seat. There were lots of stairs to climb since I didn’t want to wait on an elevator, but I went ahead and got into my seat early so that I could get settled in and claim the armrests before the seats filled up around me. I was on the younger side of the attendees but a few young people were there with their parents so I wasn’t the youngest.

The show itself was melancholic. It was set in late 1934 against the backdrop of an impending Minnesota winter. There were a few jokes and some cursing that brought some levity but the show stayed serious as it progressed. Not one of the characters had a happy beginning, nor a happy existence during the play itself, nor was any blessed with a happy postscript. It was an appropriate tone for a performance in the relative cold of early January and Bob Dylan music is hardly upbeat and cheerful. The set design and choreography were reminiscent of the mid-sized productions I’ve seen in New York. I actually expected more of a drop off since this was a traveling production so that was a pleasant surprise. I don’t see myself buying a season ticket this year, or for the foreseeable future, but it is nice to know that I have the option of a different type of entertainment within walking distance.

At the beginning of 2023, I left Raleigh and went to the beach for a period. I deliberately set off on January 1 as a poetic gesture to myself. The idea was a new direction and new plans for a new year. Those plans didn’t manifest as I thought they would even though I snaked my way across America and all the way to the Pacific coast before I finally turned around. I didn’t come back to Raleigh, instead opting for a new start in nearby Durham. I have definitely felt that 2023 was a year my life spent in neutral. I made the right decisions in the end even if I had wishful tunnel vision at the start.

I’ve joked recently that I no longer make five-year plans. After the way last year panned out, perhaps I shouldn’t make plans beyond the current quarter. And while that may be an exaggeration, that is roughly what I’ve done. I have work plans for the quarter and goals for the year. In my personal life, I’m currently evaluating and ruminating during the January M&A doldrums.

As 2024 begins, my focus is on adding and not subtracting—activities, trips, and friends in my personal life and systems in my professional life. I’ve committed myself to the Triangle Region of North Carolina. Now with that decision made, I can turn my attention to building my life here. Maybe I’ll even find some grace for myself in not making that commitment sooner. After all, it takes time to sink in roots and patience has never been my superpower.

This week took me to Nashville for Christmas, the same place we’ve celebrated for over a decade. There was a time when we’d celebrate early, as soon as a school semester finished, but now we navigate work schedules instead. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’m able to work from anywhere so my schedule didn’t figure into the determination. I did shepherd a closing on Thursday but after that my 2023 matters were completed. Bill is still pushing hard for at least one more 2023 close but now all I can do is offer secondary support and set the outreach agenda for next year.

This weekend was the first time I’d ever seen a concert at the Ryman Auditorium. It is an old-time venue with significant history and incredible acoustics. I didn’t know all of the songs and the pews didn’t make for the most comfortable seats, but there is something magical about watching a show in a place like that.

We only experienced a childhood Christmas this year through a phone screen. It looked like a chaotic mess with the kids hyped up on sugar and dancing and running around the living room. I’m sure they crashed not too long after they showed us their new baby dolls and Flintstones car.

This was a rare year when I completed my gift shopping before Christmas Eve. My gift wrapping was still last-minute and shameful but it’s more about what’s inside the wrapping than the wrapping itself. Overall, everything was great. At least until I ate myself sick on Christmas Day, but that’s a boring story for a book I’ll never write.

For the past six weeks, I’ve attended an improv comedy class. Well, I missed the first week with COVID but I’ve already told that story. This was my second improv class. I took another one when I lived in DC. That one had a younger crowd of people in their 20s and 30s. In this one, there was much more variation in age among the participants. This one also had a public graduation show as a focal point instead of just doing exercises.

I took an improv class again for two reasons. One was to have an opportunity to meet new people and make new connections. This didn’t work as well as I’d hoped but I’ll keep trying. The second was to force me to be more present and spontaneous in conversation. Sometimes my conversations with prospective clients can get repetitive, introducing a danger that I go into autopilot, miss their core concerns, and lose out on the business. A similar dynamic can occur in my personal life as I focus more on what I’m going to say next than on what my conversational partner is saying now. In improv, you cannot get away with doing that. You must be present with your scene partner and in so doing get out of your own head. That alone was worth the time and money I invested into taking the class.

On Saturday, we had our graduation show. Only 8 of the 13 people who started the class were there for myriad reasons and there were only about that many people in the audience. Two of the audience members were even people I’d invited. My set was with 5 of the 8 as there were two sets during the show. During the set, I gave a monologue about a certain groundhog (or more realistically series of groundhogs) named Rufus that resides under my parents’ shed. This idea resulted from a prior scene where a young child named a racoon. My three scenes weren’t great in my own assessment. I inadvertently took over the first one about a frog from my scene partner and it stalled. A second saw me trying to buy a Christmas present while hopelessly lost in what became a French shopping mall. And I could not even remember my third scene at dinner afterwards. Overall my performance was better and I had more fun during the practice show we did on Tuesday, but that was largely immaterial.

Will I take more improv classes next year? Maybe. I don’t feel any compulsion to make a run at becoming a cast member of SNL. It may depend on scheduling and what other activities I find.

I flew down to Miami on Friday afternoon, took a rideshare to my brother’s apartment, and then waited for my sister-in-law to get home from work. We ate an early dinner at a place I’d eaten at with them previously, a rare-in-Miami southern place with some very good fried chicken.

I’m not a beach person, much to the constant chagrin of my hosts. This meant that we spent Saturday afternoon walking through Coconut Grove instead of going across to Miami Beach. There was also a visit to another holiday market, my third of the season after the two last week. This one was the worst of the three, even worse than last week’s that was interrupted by a protest, because we also had to drive quite a distance to get to it. We gave up very quickly and ordered pizza to pick up on the way back. On Sunday we did go across to Miami Beach but not to the beach itself as we walked through a section of South Beach before a quick visit to Brickell (after waiting what seemed like forever for a drawbridge in downtown because that’s a thing in Miami). Then we ate dinner at a new cocktail bar that was still finding its feet with its food offerings.

I spent most of the workday Monday watching continuing education videos. It might help my sanity if I spaced those out throughout the year, but I no longer beat myself up over having to endure two days of CLE per year. Only four more hours to go this year. Yay.

The plan was to go to the Titans game against the Dolphins on Monday Night Football. That was the original justification for my visit. Ultimately, we decided not to spend the $200 per person to drive 45 minutes up to the stadium and sit in the nosebleeds. Instead, we opted for a group parrilla dinner at an Argentinian restaurant. On this evening, it would have been warmer had we actually been in Buenos Aires and the meal would have been much less expensive. The amount of English spoken in the restaurant, though, would have been almost exactly the same.

We then returned to my brother’s apartment and watched a roller coaster of a football game that had one of the craziest endings I’ve seen in a long time and left us ruing moments earlier in the season that led to losses that will make it almost impossible for our team to make the playoffs. I’m not disappointed that we watched it on television instead of in person. We yelled just the same and at least this way we weren’t in any physical danger when the Titans pulled off the upset.

I went to two different holiday markets on Saturday, one in Raleigh and one in Durham. Neither was a first-choice activity for me but both were opportunities to spend a few hours with friends after a stop-start workweek.

The Raleigh event was in the early afternoon. It took place in the middle of Fayetteville Street, the main street downtown between the few skyscrapers. It was too warm for a holiday market but a few of the vendors had Santa-themed wares on offer. Did I accomplish any Christmas shopping? Of course not; it’s far too early for that. I also didn’t eat lunch before going. That was a mistake as it left me with a bit of a headache walking around. The dumplings that I ate when I finally did get lunch were very good though, better than my previous experience at the same restaurant.

The Durham event was centered around the lighting of a big Christmas tree in one of the angular plazas downtown that were created by the weird street alignment. The market was set up on a closed side street and there was a stage set up in the plaza for different entertainment acts. When my little group arrived, there was a Latin band playing. The sound was hardly festive, but it was at least thirty decibels too loud to make up for it. None of the vendors seemed to have gotten the holiday memo either as no one was selling anything that appeared seasonal to me. There was even a free Palestine protest starting to add even more confusion to the scene. We ended up punting on the whole idea and walking a few blocks to a place for burgers and fries. None of this was a disappointment to me but I suspect it was for my companions. I enjoyed dinner and interacting with their little one who is really starting to grow into his personality.

I was in Kentucky for most of the last week as I opted to go to my parents instead of having them come to me. Deer season was still open in Kentucky and so going to my parents meant I’d get the opportunity to hunt. I took a small buck, one of two deer we harvested on Friday and one of four for my family this season. It only took two hunts for me to tag out and my brother took only one, a stark contrast from our childhoods and a testament to all of the work that’s taken place over the years on the reclaimed strip mine we call the farm.

I ate the Thanksgiving meal with my immediate family and some of my extended family. The best part might have been the surprise on the little ones’ faces when they walked into the living room and saw that more people than just their mamaw and papaw were there. I was sure to pick them up when they ran to greet me. From what they would tell me while we ate, school is going well. The oldest is at an age that was not much fun for me so that was good to hear. Their brother wasn’t any more interested in me than he was the last time I saw him but I’m not going to give up that easily. We’re going to be buddies.

The rest of the weekend passed in relative ease. I floated several possible trips for 2024 but didn’t receive much interest from anyone, not that that will stop me from acting on any of my ideas. I’ll also have a new batch of ideas by the time we convene for Christmas, but there will be a few adventures between now and then.

I subscribed to ESPN+ a few months ago so that I could watch some sports that I’d been missing out on after some of the recent account sharing crackdowns that have taken place this year in the streaming world. This has created opportunities for me to watch a few sporting events that are relatively obscure in the United States.

Over the past month or so, the cricket world cup took place in India. These games started at 4:30 AM (3:30 after daylight savings time) and lasted through the morning. That meant that I had something to watch when I couldn’t fall back asleep. I ended up watching parts of several games through the tournament.

The final was on Sunday. India, playing at home in front of over 100,000 fans in a packed stadium, came up against Australia. India was favored. India was undefeated. Australia won. It wasn’t Brazil 1-7 Germany, but it was still painful to watch as a neutral. We don’t have anything quite like that in the United States, no sporting event where the collectively expectations of our entire nation rests on the shoulders of those on the field. Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we did as that would at least give us a single thing to rally around as a country.

I have spent most of the last week going from my bed to my chair and back and not doing much else. It didn’t impede our work as I haven’t had very much in recent weeks but that offered only limited solace given the way I felt. COVID has now taken over five weeks of my life directly, not to mention its many other effects on my life. It is certainly one acronym I wish I had never learned.

The worst part of this round of COVID is that I definitely got at least one other person sick during the period when I thought my symptoms were allergies and sinus issues after the temperatures dropped over forty degrees in under forty eight hours. My offer to purchase groceries was ignored, but I will be picking up the tab the next couple of times we go out for dinner. That still won’t help me feel any better about what happened.

The second worst part of this time was that I had to cancel all of my plans. I’ve worked to pack my fall calendar full of opportunities to do things and meet people and this sort of setback, even if temporary, doesn’t help. Everything this year has taken longer than expected and this was just one more example. I’m ready for that to change in the new year and accelerate some of the positive aspects I’m working to build in my life.

In any event, my symptoms have now cleared and I’ve resumed regularly scheduled activities. Now it’s time to throw myself into some activities before the holidays force me to hit pause again.

I attended my ten year college reunion last weekend. In some ways it feels like I only left a few days ago and in others it feels like I’ve lived lifetimes since then. Given the small size of my alma mater there weren’t activities specific to my class, just areas within larger events for various classes all reconvening in some form. That felt about right. Alumni relations aren’t a strong suit.

I didn’t feel compelled to speak with too many people. It was nice to hear how a few people are doing, but I wasn’t interested in hearing any braggarts. That was one of the reasons I opted out of social media. I will admit to making a few snap judgments looking at people. On that score, I’ve taken decent care of myself through the years. It was also odd that there were several people I spoke with where there really wasn’t anything to talk about. These were people with whom I’d spent many hours in college but we’d drifted apart. I haven’t had such a concentration of those encounters before so that was new.

This was also the first time I’d been on campus in several years. There were new buildings everywhere: dorms, academic buildings, athletic facilities. The basketball arena looked very nice, a stark contrast to the old bleachers that would sway under your weight if you jumped up and down on them. Part of me still loves an old basketball gym though. There is something magical about those places when they are really rocking. That said, if I get invited to speak as part of any prelaw event on campus I would like to see a basketball game in the new arena.