My birthday is one of the most optimal dates of the year for a birthday to land on.
By being close to — but never on — Thanksgiving, I don’t have take time off to visit my friends and family. Plus, I often move my birthday party to get nicer gifts after Black Friday.
Since it’s nearly a month before the end of the year, my birthday also provides a good moment to reset and refocus ahead of new resolutions. In undergrad, I was in a club that always debriefed events by asking what worked and what could be improved. Beyond recognizing the efforts of those who pitched in, this exercise was a great way to talk through issues and find solutions. In that spirit, here’s a mini review of 22.
What worked: Setting up a blog.
No Hameras were harmed in the making of hamera.org.
What could be improved: Maintaining said blog.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to post to this site ten times. This post puts me at 20% there. Whoops.
The problem isn’t that I didn’t write. I wrote constantly — from notes app entries on the bus to journaling sessions in airport terminals. I even drafted a few posts for this blog, but talking about the new cities I visited or the time my dad took me to see jackals just didn’t feel…relevant? interesting? both and something else? enough.
Sometimes I would come close to something that I found meaningful enough to share, but sleeping on it would bring a new clause to what I thought was a finished thought, a new sentence fragment to what was already functionally a blackout poem of my thoughts. Although the hesitation is something I want to work through and gain a better understanding of, putting a quota on how often I should be writing wasn’t the best approach either. So next year, I’m planning on putting less importance on a specific number to instead favor posting when it feels right.
What worked: Macklin Celebrini reviving any hope I had for the Sharks.
What could be improved: Jessica Pegula winning a slam next year.
What worked: Signing up for paid research studies.
In January, I signed up for a research study my friend was involved with. I told her that I was excited because I always wanted to see a scan of my brain. Perhaps it was dumb luck, perhaps it was a Monkey’s Paw, but my brain has been scanned from all kinds of angles since then (there’s one where my nose looks really good, btw).
Three months after that first MRI, I was diagnosed with Radiologically Isolated Syndrome, an asymptomatic condition that often acts as a precursor to multiple sclerosis. While most people find out that they have MS after developing some kind of symptom, RIS involves the presence of brain lesions without any clinical presentation.
Being diagnosed with RIS means that I have the opportunity to proactively (ish) treat the condition. Since then, I’ve received my first doses of an immunosuppressant and started taking Costco vitamins, so I’m feeling pretty optimistic. More than anything else, I’m grateful for the care of my doctors and the opportunity to have a positive outlook, all things considered.
What could be improved: Insurance.
I cannot overstate how little I knew about MS. When I first heard the word “sclerosis” that day, the only thing that came to mind was ALS and the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Since I hadn’t expected the scan to lead to anything, I walked to meet a friend for dinner, but my mind was racing with questions I didn’t have the answer to. I put on an explanatory podcast about MS and it began with one of the hosts describing how his friend had died from complications related to MS. I almost turned it off at that moment. Why was I even listening to a podcast? I wanted to turn away from it all.
On the one hand, it felt like my life was closing in on me with a distant, yet fixed clarity of demyelination, degeneration, deterioration. On the other hand, I had no symptoms. I had no idea what exactly this would entail because it was all in my head.
They say that a healthy man has 1000 problems while a sick man has just one. Since I’m asymptomatic, I frankly have the privilege of my biggest problem being insurance claims. My doctor wanted me to start treatment. My insurance rejected it.
The process of appealing this decision killed any belief I had in the idea that the American healthcare system operates in any semblance of good faith by helping pay for services rendered. While I waited for a decision, I kept thinking about how I was initially denied the treatment because I didn’t have a symptom. RIS is inherently asymptomatic. For me to develop a symptom, my condition would have to worsen and my diagnosis would change to MS. Although my appeal was eventually approved with the help of an amazing team of medical staff, I walked away with the realization that my insurance wanted me to grow sicker before treating me.
I’m lucky enough to have good health insurance, kind doctors, and a decent grasp of the healthcare system. What happens to those who don’t?
What worked: Flighty flight tracking.
One of my favorite things about being the child of immigrants is that we constantly remix traditions. While we still don’t make turkey, my family devours pumpkin pie and gathers around Thanksgiving to celebrate my birthday. When I was across the country at school, I could celebrate with friends before heading home to gather my family on whichever Saturday worked best.
The past two years have been defined by this perpetual feeling of being a long-distance-something and while I’ve appreciated the opportunity to go to new places and meet fresh and familiar faces alike, it feels like I can never bring together everyone I care about. After graduating college, it became trickier to see people who were important to me. For the first time, I noticed just how far everyone was. My friends also began to ask for Saturday dinners because Friday after work was too much. Favorite faces couldn’t make it and the ones that could had to run to catch the last train.
Adulthood has proven to me that showing up paradoxically doesn’t always involve being physically present. From surprises outside of cafes in New York to Venmo gift cards for my favorite restaurant, my friends and family have helped me realize the beauty of this stained glass life instead of fretting over each separate piece.
What could be improved: My cousin’s backhand.
One of the strangest things about turning 23 is that it’s the first age where almost no one has good things to say about it. From what I’ve gathered from my friends, it’s an unreal purgatory that you enter as a dancing queen only to leave with an HSA. The most famous song about this age literally says, “Nobody likes you when you’re 23.”
It’s been pretty difficult for me to move, to say no when asked to stay, to only see the people I love through FaceTime screens and periodic flights. Coupled with the fact that I now I have biannual infusions of memento mori-cillin, I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating what exactly I want the next year to look like.
When I was cleaning out the stuff I have stored at my parent’s house, I came across five rackets. Even I could acknowledge that this was maybe a little excessive, so I decided my responsibility as the eldest cousin was to teach all the rest an essential life skill: tennis, as the French call it.
After giving each child a racket and lessons, I can say that they frankly suck. Some of them clearly are screenagers with horrible depth perception while others are okay, but depend too much on lobs. I don’t think I will be Uncle Toni to any Rafa Nadals, but seeing their enthusiasm for the sport and being asked when we can play again helped me realize what really matters in life: a good backhand.
The ability to keep going even when you’re on the back foot, even when you get to a hit later than you wanted to, even with a single hand, matters so much, even if you can’t do it perfectly. When I teach my cousins how to put new tape on my old rackets, I’m happy to know that I’m helping them develop not just a decent grip, but a hobby that they keep up with even when I’m not there.
About a week before my birthday, I asked my mom if she had seen my tan Yale hat. I found it two days ago under a couch in Portland. We are always leaving behind pieces of ourselves. I once read a poem that said something like that, about how strands of our hair stick to subway seats after we get off at our stops and dead skin cells cling to cards from old lovers. I tried looking up the poem, but I can’t find anything. Maybe it’s just another piece of litter that I’ve come to care for in this patchwork heart.
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