Volume 11: The Power of Nostalgia

I am taking a little break from the HR content in this volume and instead trusting in my instinct and powerful compulsion to write about my experiences, and namely the almost familiar nostalgia I encountered yesterday, and at how delightful it was.

Join me for a second as I describe some of the events that happened in my life, namely on an Amtrak train going from from Boston to NYC in a beautiful autumn evening...

It was early November of 2018, I had just returned from Bogota, Colombia - where I had just spent a week with a man named Christian, a new friend I had made earlier that year.

When I first visited Bogota in May of 2018, Christian was my local guide, he took me to a few museums, to lunch and even showed me some of the famous street art of Colombia. We became friends and I went back several times in 2018 to hang out with him and some of my friends - and had just gone to Bogota to spend Halloween there at his invitation.

But this time, something was different. When I left NYC and landed in Bogota on October 25th, Christian was a friend. When I left Bogota literally a week later, he was something else...he was everything.

Falling in love is one of our most universal shared experiences. It's delightful when it happens and causes us to live in pure joy for a good year or two. I had fallen in love at 16, at 21, and at 31. I didn't think it was possible to fall in love again at 39, but I did.

And so - on this 4 hour train ride from Boston to NYC, I admitted to myself what I had been trying to deny for a week upon returning back to NYC from Bogota. It didn't matter that he lived in Colombia while I lived in the US. It didn't matter that he only spoke Spanish and I can only speak an Intermediate Level of it. It didn't matter that he was 30 and I was 39. None of it mattered, the truth was there. I was in love, and once I accepted it, my heart was happy and I felt the strange stirrings of butterflies and magic.

On that long solitary train ride home, finally admitting the truth to myself, I looked at his instagram profile. I went back 6 years of his life, I mentally downloaded his entire history through pictures. I noted how much he had changed in his late twenties, how he always seemed to post pictures of food, himself at fun locales, fitness and family. That he seemed to start going bald when he was in his mid-twenties and then owned it. I saw his fashion styles change, his friend groups grow older. I saw him in a light I never I would be interested in, I became a little embarrassed and flushed as he posed in a speedo at a beach and I felt overwhelmingly charmed when I saw a picture of him sharing a bowl of ice cream with one of his exes.

The entire time, I just almost amusingly analyzed myself. Where the hell had this come from? The other times I had fallen in love, I was so busy being in love I was never really conscious of the actions, this time maturity and awareness were there. All of these feelings were lovely, but seriously - how had this started?

Over the next month, he and I had so many fights over WhatsApp, over the stupidest things that it's a wonder we eventually got to the truth. He could make or break my day by saying the wrong or right thing in the morning, he told me at one point he was so frustrated by something I had said he couldn't even go to class that night. We'd be passive aggressive, give each other one word responses, ignore the other and just generally snipe - it wasn't until we both realized the truth that it all melted away. We both had developed feelings, and neither one of us knew what to do with it.

Almost a month later, as he was with friends at a Christmas party, and I was on a plane going to Amsterdam, did we finally just tell each other the truth, and we became boyfriends and it all fell into place as 2018 turned into 2019.

Each quarter in 2019, I would take that 4 hour train ride from NYC to Boston to visit my other Spotify office, and each time I would remember the one from November of 2018, and bask in all of the wonderful warm feelings. Each time I took the trip, he would get a mushy text as I told him that night my destiny was changed and at how much time I spent looking at his instagram profile, and he would send pictures of himself smiling.

Unfortunately, in June of 2020 we broke up because of COVID. When the world shut down, how does a long distance relationship last. It was the most mature break-up I ever had - we cried together on facetime and promised each other at some point we would talk, but for the mental health of us both, we should block each other. I can't speak for him, but life for me has been very hectic, the loss of a parent, moving out of state, content creation, opening and closing a consultancy and a recent move to North Carolina and a decision to move back inhouse and starting an amazing new job. I can only imagine that in the 2+ years since that last conversation that life has also given him his own challenges and joys.

In July, I decided to leave New York City, and in September I decided to relocate to North Carolina. I also decided to close my consultancy and work inhouse again and found an incredible opportunity that I am so excited by, part of my onboarding is to go to their headquarters that's about 4 hours away.

So last night, I was once again on an Amtrak, on a 4 hour trip, deep in thought of my life, how it comes full circle, how the ups are wonderful and the downs are challenging, and I lost myself in long period of nostalgia, feeling incredibly grateful that around this time 4 years ago, I was about to start one of the happiest times of my life.

Sending you all some love!

Dan