Good to hear again from you pabs!

Anyway, it all sounds simple and great when I put it on paper, but it was a whole lot of fuckery I put myself through the last near-decade, so I guess my biggest fear is that my memory of the important details and lessons-learned will fade before I really get a chance to leverage them in my forthcoming civilian life.

I'd urge you to write it down. Or shout half an hour every day into your phone's dictation tool. Not to create something coherent now, but to allow yourself to let go of the thoughts and experiences. And who knows, maybe a decade from now you you'd like to have something to return to.

900 days is a long time. Let's see. Last time around I was just over a bout of long covid and we moved into our first home. Little did I know LC would come back that winter with a vengeance. At rock bottom I was unable to shower because I lost the stamina to stand for longer than two minutes at a time. I went through extensive physical therapy which I still am grateful for for putting me on a long, arduous path of recovery. Just as I was making some amount of physical progress, my company fell apart at the seams and I had to put any energy I had gained into finding a new job. Which I thankfully did - I'm now a policymaker at the (Dutch equivalent of) state level.

I am still thoroughly enjoying that. In a week or two, the big research project I spent the past year on is finally publicized. It's a 80-page report on transport justice (my thesis subject) but written from and for my government agency, so I'm expecting some real change and feathers to be ruffled by it. My next big project is to build a bikesharing system from the ground up - think Citibike, but then trying to get it to work in a more rural environment.

Last year was all about another project - getting married! I'm now the proud owner of a beautiful ring on my hand. We had a phenomenal day and went three weeks to lovely Spain to recuperate.

Another more personal development is that I'm practicing meditation regularly these days. I can't think of a time in my life when my mental health has been better than now.