The sight of cars spinning their wheels on moderate but icy hills was not uncommon – both Christina’s car and the rented truck were subject to acceleration without movement. Once moving, the pedal that would usually stop a moving car sometimes did not – in these moments, I reached for the parking brake. On the 395, passing maneuvers were rare, the use of hazard lights was frequent, and the flow of traffic on a four-lane freeway stayed consistently below 35 mph with all possible civility.

That civility was hardly limited to paved surfaces. While moving the bookcase into the truck, a neighbor of the seller offered a shovel to clear the bed of snow. The seller himself hoisted the piece into place for the road. We considered taping cut-up garbage bags over it and then decided not to – the air was sufficiently cold that the snow would not turn to water (and the bookcase wouldn’t soak it up) while we were driving.

And so, we made our way to Arlington and (with the better traction attendant to carrying a heavy piece of furniture on the back of a rear-wheel-drive truck) up the hill on Daniel Street to the front of Christina’s building. As we haltingly shoved the bookcase from truck bed to snowbank, one of her neighbors (en route to a party) offered a hand and very quickly the unwieldy piece of furniture was in her bedroom and closely matching the woodgrain of her folding bench seats. He took a beer in thanks and welcomed her to the neighborhood.

On that day when snow covered the lane markers and signposts and other artifacts of traffic law, we were treated to a climatized manifestation of the illustration of a street intersection in England from Jonathan Zittrain’s TED talk on random acts of kindness on the internet. His illustration was to support a point that in the absence of directives and laws, civility prevails (and therefore, Wikipedia maintains a reasonable standard of information quality).

Philosophy and human nature aside, civility indeed prevailed on that afternoon. And however you may disdain precipitation and bitterly cold weather, that civility may not have revealed itself – and we may not have had need of it and therefore a venue to appreciate it – otherwise. It’s part of the reason I love living in a place with a bit of a winter.

And in this weather, I learned how to use a parking brake and hazard lights as part of a driving routine, that wood furniture is better transported in snow than rain, and that strangers can be immeasurably helpful and civil and a default position of ’scared shitless’ towards unknown persons is sometimes untenable.

And on Sunday, I learned to never never walk barefoot in the snow.

After a euphoric 26, 27 so far has been a bit of a grind: while my new employer’s bureaucratic expansion and reshuffling has not diminished the pleasure I take in my work, last semester, I felt little traction with my academic pursuits, my health was inconsistent, creative output stalled.

Whither those mixes in progress, my untended portfolio, my old pencils? They’re everywhere but my fingertips.

And it occurred to me not long ago that I didn’t send a postcard in 2009, and in the year since I last travelled, I have misplaced my mailing list. In advance of a slate of new destinations in 2010 (Houston to meet Christina’s family, Italy and Mexico in the summer – exurbs and romance), if you derive joy from receiving landscape photos and gaudily filtered type on 4″ × 6″ cardstock via snail mail, let me know the best address where I can make your day.

Between travels, I’ll be making an effort to write here with greater frequency. Though I may only compose a few sentences at a stretch, I need to practice for postcards, need to reestablish my flow – the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that I exist.

And I need to remember I have a guitar and a promise to keep, and my fingertips have to make some undesirable noise before I can rock out again. Bear with me.

Consider: as workplace seniority becomes less valuable for employers and less likely for employees, the merits of working in one place from college till done are … what? As the pensions of generations X, Y, and so on hurtle towards a gauntlet of debt obligations, retirement as we know it seems less likely, and given our probable physical fitness (and my personal hope for mental fitness) in the years we will be considered elderly, we’re going to work when we’re older and probably be okay doing it.

This isn’t to say that retirement is impossible. In fact, I’m thinking I’d like to retire sometime in my 30s. And again in my 40s. And 50s – once a decade until death.

You can call it an unsubsidized sabbatical, because that’s what it is. I prefer to think of it as retirement in bursts: after saving and investing at a moderate to high rate for about eight or nine years, take 12~18 months off then re-enter the workplace. I would have to save more money to stay liquid during that time of unemployment (and hope for good health), but the tangible benefits of saving would be revealed to me sooner rather than later. Knowing I would be seeking new employment at least once every decade, I would be forced to maintain leading-edge expertise in my career(s). And, of course, I’d get to enjoy some rest and relaxation, to invest grand swaths time in pursuits other than, well, saving for retirement.

Among the caveats is that health care for the unemployed in the United States is a curious menu of undesirable choices (though continued residence in this country is not mandatory). There’s a possibility I’ll end up with a longer burst of retirement than I anticipate and run out of money before landing a new job. And though I’d like to raise a family, my savings rate would likely suffer under the fiscal weight of a household of more-than-one, the aforementioned curious menu would be untenable to my wife and children, and the discontinuity inherent to this approach would likely emotionally strain people around me (given they’re not also disposed to the idea). Institutionally, the structures built around the model of retirement at a later age – Medicare, Social Security, IRAs, the AARP, daytime television – reinforce the traditional model of working until the seemingly arbitrary age of 65 and thereby also burden younger working generations with the cost of elderly care.

Living as a 38-year-old with an ostensibly twentysomething physicality, I’ve clashed with this institutional structure, and though in 40 years (if it’s still around) I’ll be its benefactor, I desire more greatly to live independently of it and be less burdensome to youth to come. As a fan of retirement, however, this solution effectively uncouples long-term relaxation from aging. And by this retirement calculator (given an annual percentage rate of 7%), my first retirement at 35 is pretty manageable – even 32 is a possibility. So, to that end, among the things I acquired for myself on this birthday was an individual investment account – a few sound bets on blue-chips in a weak economy should make that 7% achievable.

I am also acquiring a new MacBook and hosting local friends for adobo on Saturday.

The day I turned 26 was conferred best day ever status by a confluence of events; the year since has been true to that rainy evening’s promise. Today can’t match it and few days in my life will compare, but I pause to recognize now the feeling of being loved and appreciated and the fact I have friends who write stuff like this. This will be the year I take up guitar and investing. In the meantime, Christina plans to lavish me with dinner at Restaurant Nora.

When Indi greeted me a happy birthday, she told me she hadn’t yet sent out my gift, the Lost Buildings DVD. A copy of it arrived shortly before my pilgrimage to Fallingwater a couple weeks later, and I watched it with Shiella, Roanne, and Jerry in Pittsburgh the night before our tour of the house. When I called Indi to tell her about the trip and thank her for the gift, she apologized that my gift was still on her dining room table as she’d hoped to wrap it with a card before sending. The copy I received in the mail the week before didn’t include a receipt; the return address on the padded manila envelope was the NPR store in Chicago. I wondered who might have thought to order a copy on my behalf, who in the world would know how this slim volume occupied the intersection of my interests in architecture, the work of Chris Ware, and This American Life, know such an object existed, and feel inclined to buy me a birthday gift. It was a short list.

After some talk among friends I might have an admirer, I called my parents and discovered it was from them, something they knew I’d like from consulting my wishlist. I asked if they knew how it ended up there, and in the midst of explaining why I wanted it, my mother asked, Why does it matter? I began to think that document of stuff I want is like an answer key to a test, a series of questions about my taste, interests, and aspirations. The maxim it’s the thought that counts found relevance — though it’s a gift I love and something I plainly wanted, the material possession of the gift did not, as I realized gifts are supposed to, signify an understanding of the receiver by the giver.

The Friday after that road trip, I took lunch with Christina. Waiting for our table at a sofa by the bar, she drank a cup of tea and I ordered coffee. A waiter set a tray with a French press and accoutrements on the low table before us. At a break in our conversation, I leaned forward to add cream and sugar, and in my periphery, I noticed she was leaning too.I want to know you take your coffee, she said.

As it’s Christmas morning somewhere in the world now, gifts seem an appropriate subject. I wrote once that though it’s my spoken ambition to calibrate my existence to the basic unit of a transcontinental flight, my worst-kept secret is that I’d like to land somewhere and know, quietly, sincerely, that I’ll be understood. And it could be my fault that it took so long to feel I was approaching what I wanted: although I gave away the answers, perhaps the questions were too obscure. Maybe nobody really got me because I didn’t give enough of myself.

After the Fallingwater trip, Roanne and I discussed the appearance of our mutual interest in architecture in the conversation that prompted the pilgrimage. I observed that I tend to conduct my relationships around a specific range of subjects and that conversations rarely extend into my other interests. We agreed that we owed it to ourselves to have whole relationships, to let networks mingle and see what happens, to make commonplace these moments we are at once comfortable and complete.

And I guess that was the existential crisis — the struggle to be comfortable and completely myself in an existence where so little of myself was applied, among people who really couldn’t be bothered to appreciate with half my zeal a building, public radio, graphic novels, road trips, and everything else. When I say it’s the thought that counts, I mean the thought is everything — a gift without it is scarcely a gift at all. Sentimental as it sounds, these may be the best we have to offer each other: the curiosity, perception, and memory of how we take our coffee, and the space where, without first asking forgiveness, we can be completely who we are.

To those who celebrate it, merry Christmas.

When reflecting on what I wanted to say about the end of last month, I read the first in this series, written in 2003. It started: It’s that time again—when I stay awake for 98, 73, 61, 55, and so on hours on end, barely snatching sleep in car rides provided on someone else’s dime as they’re worried I’m too far beyond needing sleep to safely maneuver a motor vehicle on my own … .

This was the first late November of the last five where I’ve been forced to acknowledge I’m no longer 21 and capable of such feats of sleeplessness. And for what it’s worth, though I’m too familiar with the frayed edge for my preference, at least I’m better now at recognizing it.

II

In case you missed it:

• Only Collect, written by a 23-year-old historian.
• Singing: The Key To A Long Life, written by the venerable Brian Eno (via kottke).
• All Streets, a map of all 26 million road segments in the continental United States.
• A Happy Sky Over Los Angeles, Astronomy Picture of the Day for 3 December 2008.

III

A tour of Fallingwater was the birthday gift I couldn’t give myself for the last three years, and I’m glad I waited to share the experience with friends.

More pictures right this way.

The trip inspired me to spring for the 50mm f/1.4 lens, to take better pictures, to re-learn how to focus.

IV

I spent my first Thanksgiving away from family with classmates under similar circumstances. I baked cookies, drank beer, slept in.

V

The toll for November 2008: two scarves — vestiges of my first DC winter, two USB drives (one recovered), a debit card, the truck I grew up with, five pounds of fat, innumerable hours of sleep. As much as I regret starting graduate school during an election year, I’m glad I’m making the commute, skimming 300-page books every weekend, fiddling with WordPress, and writing papers where I have to cite my references.

I’m also in the market for a new scarf.

VI

There is no number VI.

VII

That said, December 2008 may yet be worse, roiled by more conflict between things that have to be done, things I’d like to do, and total time in which to accomplish them both while maintaining my mental and physical health.

While I know some classmates are living in dread these next couple weeks, I’m sincerely enjoying writing my final paper. I think it’s because — even though I scarcely plan what I learn — I’ve long known why I write, why I force my language into and upon that accrued knowledge. When people ask what I intend to do once I’ve earned my degree, I answer it’s too soon to tell. The career isn’t the point, and though I acknowledge that the lines on my résumé are helpful, the degree isn’t the point either.

VIII

To a degree, I know what I’m after in life, and I know that it just doesn’t happen spontaneously.

And I know I’m almost demonically lucky. Still, I burned — worked tirelessly, desiccated emotionally — to arrive at this point.

I believe that when opportunity knocks, it knocks quietly and leaves quickly, like a shy child selling candy. It is incumbent upon us to listen intently, to recognize that trembling door. And when we greet opportunity on the other side, rarely does it enter. It expects us to follow.

IX

Friday morning now, and my typing for the remainder of the day ought to be spent on CSS rather than introspection.

That first paragraph written five years ago ends: So much has come and gone in four days. I don’t really know where to start or why I’m writing this. Same reasons I’ve always written, I suppose.

For now, back to work.

It didn’t define who we were as a family, but it was a pliant witness to our own definition in southern California, the vessel we steered on paper routes in the San Fernando Valley, the commute to Riverside, then Anaheim Hills, then Cypress, the distance between contract work in City of Industry and classes in Irvine, the journey from Downey to anywhere. In some way, we were defined by how we interacted with the Los Angeles sprawl, how far across it we were willing to travel to grasp our ambitions.

It seems appropriate that the story of an immigrant family is not one of nobility but mobility, the nomadism etched into our DNA. In early morning hours of my childhood, my father would shine a flashlight on a driveway and me or Mikey would throw a copy of the LA Times into the target. Some people start all-nightering in college; I had my first when I was eight years old, in the bed of that truck, surrounded by newspapers. There was no air conditioning and no clock, one cupholder, and a radio with perpetually shot speakers, even after Scott and I installed a new pair (along with new headlights) in between oil changes at his house. Arguments over who would drive it and when were a feature of the thicker years of my sibling rivalry.

Angelenos are prone to defining others by the cars they drive, and at the University of Civics and Integras, the truck was an anomaly. Driving it in Orange County at odd hours of night inspired my dread of racial profiling — I have recently ceased the habit of checking my tail lights, but it was most often the falsified probable cause for traffic stops. I befriended different people, dated different women because of what I drove. If we are defined by the company we keep, the truck allowed a less materialistic conduit for my definition (that was inevitably inextricable from helping people move).

And as a family we also defined our setting. In its dents and leaks were scars of my father’s impulsiveness, my brother’s entropy, my workaholic fatigue. Depending on who was driving, the seat moved forward or backward, but the side mirrors always remained in place. Between classes I would recline in the passenger seat and take naps and awaken to find the windows fogged. In that passenger window, I could still make out the faint imprint of the original dot-matrix printed sticker. It cost my father around $11,000 when he bought it brand new in 1990. He named it Bear.

I remember the day I passed my driving test, that moment leaving Arthur’s for the Bell Gardens DMV where all those years of playing catch with a set of keys were rendered practice for that moment when two divergent schedules would make it necessary. I drove it to Las Vegas less than a month later, got a speeding ticket for going 101 mph downhill after the San Bernardino Mountains, and on the drive back home, called my mother on her vacation in New Jersey to explain why there would be a citation in the mail. The debt from that incident would deepen and lead to the start of the Spazowham Design Group. I remember picking up my father from work once after a long rush-hour commute and being angry with him for making me wait at the parking lot of his office, arguing with my mother about money and driving away. It was a vehicle of my rebellion.

I remember driving to Long Beach Airport with two suitcases in the bed in June 2005. This was the last day I would claim Bear as “my truck.” My brother called me today and told me the head gasket blew on his way to work last week. The repair would cost thousands of dollars, and he said it felt like putting the family dog to sleep. After I hung up the phone, my colleagues remarked it sounded like a pet had died, or a relative. But for an inanimate object, steel and plastic and rubber, it was special to the men of my family because in those 18 years of California traffic it seemed we spent more time with this machine than any of our friends, and perhaps with each other. It was a vehicle of our solitude.

From the Church of Christ parking lot next to that tiny Lindell Avenue apartment and the Corinthian on Florence, I moved about 3,000 miles to Washington, D.C. We’re a family awash in iPods with a son in graduate school. My mother no longer needs to work for us to make ends meet. We waste food. Over the post-mortem phone calls, I asked what’s next, if there’s another Bear in their future. Mikey’s buying his first brand-new car next week, planning to spend just a shade under $20,000. If we wanted to buy another Toyota truck, for another 18-year-run, we could.

If you ever want to quantify how far you have to go to make it in this country, for reference’s sake, my family put 258,346.6 miles on Bear. It was a vehicle of our social mobility, reminding us of where we started in 1990 as a young, fractured clan with a tenuous grasp of our new cultural context, of where we had been everyday in making ourselves (to a degree) a functional family at ease in America. Some choose to buy new cars to express their achievements to the world, to mark the level of success they enjoyed; I think we kept driving the same old truck as a reminder that we still have farther to go before we’re satisfied.

That, and to haul shit.

This is required viewing for anybody who confuses sporting a lapel pin for true patriotism (nicked from The Daily Dish). I question and doubt my government because I want it to be better, because its impact on the world is undeniable. All those baseball games where people stood respectfully and listened to a celebrity of dubious talent sing the national anthem were just practice for this moment. Eddie Izzard said about the American national anthem: “70% of what people react to is the look, you know, it’s how you look; and 20% is about how you sound; and only 10% is what you say.” But that crowd on St. Mark’s Place knew and believed 100% of what they were saying. The awkward pause before ‘banner,’ where the crowd collectively catches its breath to belt out the last three words of that phrase, gives me chills.

Courtney took this picture of me in the crowd at James Hoban’s. Even if in the future I am happily married with five children, this past Tuesday may still be one of the top 5 best days of my life.

And just as 25 years and 364 days is just a night of sleep away from 26 even, I know that though the president-elect is now preparing for the quantum leap into residence of the Oval Office, the deep, fundamental flaws that bore this cynicism and disbelief have yet to be addressed. The ecstasy that washed over crowds was just rain water; the ground supply still needs to be cleansed of its bitterness. Until then, I still worry. I’m always prepared to be let down, to be told I’m wrong again, to be part of a minority stewing over beer and waiting for vindication.

I’ve been listening to “Changes” by 2pac pretty much constantly since the morning of 5 November. My iTunes library is rarely sorted by artist, but that morning, it was, and this song was at the top of the list. I remember riding around Irvine with Rishi and Ky Vinh, this song blasting and us commenting in between laments about our respective existential crises that it was still relevant in 2005. That two lines of that song — and although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to see a black president — were rendered moot in one night is why St. Mark’s Place burst into song, why I can’t stop grinning, why I stick my tongue out at the sky not to spite the heavens but to catch a drop of rain.

After the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, I became acutely aware of how voter fraud and suppression are perpetrated and how the simple process of tallying a majority can get so damn complicated. I don’t doubt that it happened again yesterday, that there were places where voters were intimidated, places where good citizens were confused for felons, places where the vote just didn’t work. And I don’t doubt that it will happen again. I fear this is just an inherent assumption of the millennial voter.

But those practices don’t scale, not for a margin of victory like this. I undertook my birthday rituals — noodles, haircut, and more liquor than advisable — but I don’t know how to celebrate something like this, how being in a majority is supposed to feel, how to feel when something I’ve wanted for years is uncompromisingly, by law, scheduled to happen. It wasn’t just some random lesser-of-two-evils Democrat who won but the one who when I watched the DNC keynote in 2004 I knew instinctively had to be president in my lifetime.

And that instinct, over time, was confirmed with a political platform and manner reasonably proximal to mine for him to earn my vote yesterday morning. And though I may come to regret this decision in November 2012, I doubt it. I know this feeling well, perhaps too well, and for as improbable to me as that outcome is four years from now, I regret more now the times in my life I was certain of a future but unable or unwilling to defend my vision. Yesterday’s euphoria was borne of that vindication, that private victory that marked the end of my September, writ large for over 63 million people hardly a month later.

When I left the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street yesterday morning, I put my headphones back on and the Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow” was playing. And it asks, this time tomorrow, where will we be? This time tomorrow, what will we know?

Over dinner, I raised a glass to victories, big and small, for us to celebrate something everyday. When I left Bourbon, not even last call when Obama had finished his victory speech, I told the cab driver my address and sat silently for the ride home through a light rain. I don’t know how to celebrate something like this. All I got for my birthday was a big, stupid grin and I’m still wearing it.

I woke up at 9 am to my Umbrella Today message, half an hour ahead of my alarm. E Street was strafed with jackhammers. I’ll retire FiveThirtyEight from my daily surfing, frame the cover of my DC Voter’s Guide. And the big, stupid grin: I could get used to it.

Design is inherently a practice of problem solving, and the problem was that in a brawl of brutes, Kristy, Patrick, and I would not be favored against these two. (How many pitchers of Coors would I have to imbibe over how many decades to be at once that intimidating and pathetic? There’s a Fermi problem for you.) But designers never solve problems in vacuums (unless you’re James Dyson, but I digress). Our solutions must always follow contextual parameters, and if you’re resourceful, in those parameters lie the keys to those solutions.

I immediately surveyed the room for a pool table — none. No pool cues or balls. Cues can make clumsy weapons, but they’re effective for creating a defensive radius while employing a projectile offense. In any case, no need bring out the amphibious invasion strategy guide for a landlocked country.

Liquor bottles can be dangerous either as projectiles — they’re heavy enough to have a predictable trajectory — or lacerating weapons — though there’s a high likelihood of injuring oneself as well as an opponent if employing a bottle as a breakaway club. I wanted to harness a beer tap — solid wood and built to grip. It would be the closest thing to a Major League Baseball bat readily available. Patrick mused that one could brand an opponent’s face with the etched-metal Magic Hat #9 tap.

Kristy and I were working on wine, but Patrick had beer served in an acrylic pitcher and glass mug. Hold the bowl of the mug inside the fist (loosely so it won’t shatter) with the thick glass handle facing outward — aim for the teeth. With a hand wrapped in cloth napkins and holding the acrylic pitcher, one of us could distract with a splash of beer and follow it with devastating plastic battery. Aim for the neck.

The tchotchkes on the walls, the contents of the speed rack, lonely drinkers in dubious football jerseys, failing pickup artists, girls-night-out girls, bartenders and bouncers — all contextual parameters, all potentially problematic and indispensable to the solution. There was no way to consider all the possible outcomes and iterations and the half-price cabernet wasn’t a boon to scenario planning. Besides, I tend to favor diplomacy: solve the problem by negating its existence.

But Patrick and I agreed: we’d both, inexplicably, wanted to be party to a bar fight. These two guys with their asinine burger orders (just say ‘medium well,’ no need to explain the physical properties of charcoal) and jingoistic politics who’ve probably been in bar fights before have won some and lost some and lived to tell. Maybe they go out looking for a fight; maybe bad beer does that to a man.

For me, for as much as being a designer requires a thorough understanding of context, often in the form of immersion, it is also characterized by a kind of academic remove. It’s just research, just business. And so often, I just negotiate, compromise, move on to the next job. But one day soon, I’ll skip that diplomacy stage and just solve a problem in the thick of it — wield a beer tap, maybe kick some ass, maybe take a beer mug to the teeth. Because bar fights, day jobs, love — it’s all in the context. And soon, I’ll knock ‘em all out.

Between Once and Man on Wire, there’s an undercurrent in my choice of cinema this past weekend of little things — pop songs and filament-tied-to-an-arrow — urged by good-humored gamines and can-do cads toward the seemingly impossible. I’m not in touch with most of my mentors from five or six years ago (and in some cases not on speaking terms), but I sense they’d smile knowingly at the return on their investments of encouragement and time (if not straight cash), the dividends paid to progeny. I didn’t know then clearly who I was or what was next, but their guidance in entrepreneurship, design practice, and, let’s face it, psychological warfare — and away from hourly retail in indistinct suburbs, indefinitely — capitalized the belief that I was meant to transcend the path my history implied, make great art, write a killer thesis, see the world. And lately, though it’s been a difficult belief to sustain, I’m here. The band’s in the studio; the cable’s between the towers.

It’s daybreak, and it’s time to dance.