A Peripatetic Life: 2023, 180 Days in
“When it feels scary to jump, that is exactly when you jump, otherwise you end up staying in the same place your whole life, and that I cannot do.”-Abel Morales, A Most Violent Year
And so they continue—those dream-like foxtrots and flirtations with planetary orbit that year and in and year out we apparently undergo. The end of June brings us to a midway point. 2023 cut in half, the sternum between two round breast implants that would, if put together, form a perfect sphere.
Some might call the milestone arbitrary. But seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, and years are as good a goal post as any to stop and reflect. On where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
When people ask where I live, I alternate between any number of answers. Sometimes I’m homeless. Sometimes I live in the hearts of the people who love me. Sometimes New York, Paris, or Sydney.
Six months in, this is a little snapshot of my year in review.
January
2023 began for me over Guinness and espresso martinis at an Irish pub in Yorkville. There are few things in this world that capture the magic, madness, wonder, desperation, and promise of New York on New Year’s Eve.
Early in January, I found myself in New Orleans for a party put on by Quillette, the magazine I used to run. I saw old friends, made new ones, and witnessed a Bourbon Street wedding.
At my hostel, I met a guy from New Jersey who had lived in Sydney right before I had. We had a mutual friend. At a Big Easy restaurant, I ate praline bacon and pecan waffles and drank Sazeracs. At a jazz bar, I met a bartender from Alabama named Katie.
In Australia, during the first round of lockdowns, I lived with two Austrians, a German, and an American who now resides in Boston. I met him in early 2023 for a weekend together in a quiet suburb outside New York. We burned logs, smoked cigars, drank whiskey, ate diner food, and reminisced.
Late in January, I went to Utah for a short ski trip. The American West, Frederick Church style.
Those Westerners out in Salt Lake and Park City are onto something primal. What that is, it’s hard to say. But they reminded me in some ways of Australians—laid back, granola, tapped into the energy of the wind and the snow. IPA drinkers.
February
Having resolved during my weekend of cigar smoking and whiskey drinking with my former Australian roommate to high-tail it out of the Northeastern corridor of the United States, I went to Argentina, where I stayed for almost two months. There, I drank red wine and ate red meat and absorbed a technicolor world.
One quote, from the Argentine film Mi Obra Maestra sticks out:
“Buenos Aires is the best city in the world. But paradoxically it may also be the worst city in the world. And that contrast is what makes it so seductive. Another thing that sticks out in this city: the people. I have travelled all over the world: New York, London, Tokyo. But the pretentiousness and craziness of Buenos Aires make it absolutely unique. Someone said it was the capital of an empire that never existed. It has some of the sophistication of European capitals, but with the right and necessary share of decadence. What makes it not have the cloying beauty of Paris? Buenos Aires is chaotic, unpredictable, cruel, contradictory. But it is precisely these effects that make the city breathe. Anything can happen in Buenos Aires.”
March
In March, I went to Newfoundland for the Ski Club of International Journalists’ annual meeting. There, I met a wonderfully diverse cast of characters from Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Argentina, France, Belgium, Chile, Andorra, Iceland, Sweden, and wherever else. In total, there were 95 of us from 23 countries. My favorite memory was nations night, wherein in each team prepares a dish from their home country as well as (usually) alcohol of some kind. It’s festive, fun, and truly heartwarming. Skiing together and sharing schnapps, the issues that plague our politicians fade to something even less than irrelevance.
For my 25th birthday, I hosted a small gathering of family and friends at my childhood home in New York.
April
Early in April, I flew to Lake Charles Louisiana for a literary awards ceremony that—by what could only reasonably be explained as a clerical error—was honoring The Night Before the Morning After, my first book. Somehow, I’d won.
Later that month, I attended the graduate student prom at Princeton. It was good to be back.
At one point, a Dutch and a Dane with whom I was close during the Australia years came and stayed with me for 10 days in New York. We ate bagels.
May
For the month of May, I stayed put in the city, riding bikes in the park with family and seeing old friends. Working on the business. Going to the gym. Stretching. Drinking Athletic Greens. Eating more bagels.
June
In June, I attended a wedding near Naples. No bouquet was caught.
Shortly thereafter, I moved to Paris, where I currently reside.
Work is good, busy. Big developments brewing. The ribbons have been cut on 27 Rouge LLC. Our podcast and substack have been launched in earnest. Meanwhile, we’re building out an agency, a referral business, and a consulting/coaching arm. Courses are in the works. As is another book, Somewhere Sometime: The Australia Years as I Knew Them.
2023 has been a year of renewal, restoration, and imperial exercise—of self-creation and of investing in those aspects of everyday life that constitute eudemonia. It has been rich, varied, exciting, and at times overwhelming. But through it all, I maintain a simple principle: I want to be better every day. I know what my goals and dreams are. And each morning, I push those forward bit by bit, making baby steps in a general direction. Mary Kay Ash was right: “The first step is the hardest.”
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