I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this post for several months now. But writing like this requires a certain headspace, and I haven’t found the time to get there recently. Life is busy, and while I have downtime there has always been something else to capture my attention.
I’m writing this post, or at least the intro to it, on a train from London to Bristol. I’ve always found that I don’t work well in silence; I need a certain level of background noise and energy to reach the level of focus needed for deep work. So I’m hoping that the rush of the wind outside the train (this is England, where they have proper high speed trains) and the gentle murmur of nearby conversations give me the motivation I’ve been missing.
It’s not that I needed to fly to England and ride a train through the countryside in order to write a blog that very few read and which I don’t advertise. Rather, it’s that times like this, when I’m pulled out of my routine and experience important moments, push me towards remembering by writing. A friend mentioned that in fact it might be the ephemerality of these moments which give them their importance, and I think that’s true.
Life feels like it has been accelerating lately, and this is an attempt to catch hold of something before I’m swept away with it. In the three and a half years since I last wrote like this, I have: proposed to Sarah, married Sarah, honeymooned in Costa Rica, interned (twice) at Apple, published two papers, skied Mt. Shasta, ventured into the world of multi-pitch and trad climbing, learned to surf, and ridden bikes a lot. There’s been good and there’s been bad: skinny-dipping in Hawaii, shoulder surgery in Santa Cruz.
There’s not too much I want to say on marriage, honestly. There’s symbolism to it, which I like, wearing the rings we gave each other (although I have already broken two, oops). There was the magic of the day itself, but I didn’t cry, too caught up in following the prescribed steps: kiss, drink, eat, dance. We didn’t have sex that night either; it and the crying came later. More than the marriage itself, I like the building of life we’re doing together, moving from Santa Cruz to San Jose to Palo Alto, dealing with fruit flies and stubborn garage doors, lying in bed with our no longer a puppy Hunter, who insists on being in the middle. And always, through all of it, my love for Sarah has grown.
I started itching to write this post a few months ago for a specific reason, but knowing what I know now, I am glad I waited. Perhaps I will look back a few months from now and wish I had waited even longer.
I am in London for a conference, Principles of Programming Languages (POPL). More specifically, I am here for a workshop at the conference called The Future of Weak Memory, which happens to be my specific research area. It is being organized by a professor who is on my thesis committee, who invited my advisor Tyler or I to give a talk. Since Tyler is busy with the new quarter at Santa Cruz, we decided I would go, and make it a larger trip by visiting several universities around London to meet people and give a seminar on our work.
Normally, I wouldn’t attend POPL, as most of the work is formal and mathematical whereas my research is more applied and experimental. The same is true of weak memory models, with many researchers focusing on formal semantics and proving properties of languages and architectures. So presenting our work to this group, including many researchers who have built the foundations of the field and whose papers I have religiously read the last three years, was intimidating. But listening to their talks, finding I could understand and follow the subtleties, then giving mine and seeing their attention and interest, I began to realize that I am becoming part of this small community. When several speakers made jokes that the majority of the people in the world who understood them were in the room, they were including me.
I have attended several conferences in my relatively short career as a computer scientist, but by far this is the one where I felt the most engaged and where I came away with the most ideas and avenues for future research and collaboration. To be in London, in a city full to the brim with life, and to go to dinner and the pub with perfect strangers who I have only known as names on papers and et als. on slides, and to come away feeling like I had just spent a night with old friends, is a feeling that I do not think can be replicated in many ways. And in a time in this world where so much anger and hate reigns, connecting with people from different continents and cultures over our common direction was refreshing, a reminder to myself that there is a world worth building.
There are parts of life that are private, and then there are parts of life that are so private that you can’t help but share them with others. I am just starting to learn what that means, and I am making mistakes, but so far it is worth it. Sarah seems to be better at this than I am, and I am glad that she is alongside me. We have been together for eight years now, the large majority of my adult life, but I think I am only beginning to fully realize and appreciate the connection we share.
Four years ago I was in the middle of chemotherapy, but also in the middle of applying to PhD programs, a strange dichotomy of fighting for my life and planning for the rest of it. Now I am four years in remission, and with every passing day the chance of relapse decreases, statistically. In two years, I won’t even have to go back in for follow up scans, and my risk of cancer will fade back into the noise of the population. I don’t want to live my life defined as a cancer survivor, but I also don’t want to bury it; it will always be a part of me.
Gradually, then suddenly. How to go bankrupt, but also how life happens. I’ll try not to miss it.
The day we got engaged while surfing (I used a fake ring).
The first day of the rest of our lives.
The high Sierra with a wild wagamuffin.
Sedona, seven pitches up (big ledge, no ropes needed) on Sarah’s first multi-pitch.
Shasta summit, probably as close to a religious experience as this secular Jew will get.
Squamish granite. Trusting my life to friends is easy, because I trust them.