2021

We certainly started off the year with a lot of expectations for positive change after a brutal 2020. Most of those expectations were met. Some not. That’s life.

As an extrovert, 2021 continued to be difficult with fewer opportunities to spend time with people. So many times I wanted to call up friends –– or people who might become friends –– and grab a beer, go bowling, hear a concert, have a BBQ. And we did our best. I played in the Baton Rouge Ultimate Frisbee league over the summer, which gave me a social, physical, and competitive outlet. We also took a trip to Boothbay Harbor, Maine for nearly two weeks and then spent the weekend in DC for our close friends’ wedding. It was during July, which was that strange, brief period of time when we were fully vaccinated but the delta variant hadn’t emerged. A contingent of our family joined us for a long weekend at the beach in Florida, which was just perfect.

The coolest thing about this year is that we managed to expand our family presence here in Baton Rouge. Most notably, we had Alice. My mom and brother Martin also moved here. Martin is doing his master’s at LSU in Leadership and Human Resource Development. While I don’t think I’ll get to teach him a class, I did guest lecture in one of his courses on International HRD. That makes two of my siblings that I’ve had the opportunity to teach (I taught Glory at Payap University in Thailand during her gap year). Having more family here has been a blast. Martin and I went to four LSU football games and we had an epic night in New Orleans over Thanksgiving!

Alice is precious. We named her after Khai’s grandma, Alice Zinkowski (Patty’s mom) and my dad’s mom, Alice Crocco. It’s such a great name. I’ve always loved British literature since taking Ms. Macmillan’s “Brit-Lit” course in high school, and Alice is a classic British name (despite roots in French and German). She is so different from Aden, which excites and humbles us. Most of what we thought we knew hasn’t applied to Alice. She didn’t like being swaddled and prefers to feed herself. She’s independent, smart, and social.

I finished my book and it was published this year, which was definitely a personal highlight. Like most of life’s accomplishments, I reveled in it for a while but quickly normalized the accomplishment. Write a book? Sure, no problem. Funny how our brains do that. Speaking of books, I’ve been reading a lot more these days. One of my favorite new authors is Cal Newport. I finished three of his books this year. The most recent one I finished, Digital Minimalism, inspired me to spend less time on social media and more time doing things I like. My Screen Time on my iPhone has shown that I’ve cut my time in half since reading his book.

We had to cancel our trip to Thailand this year as the Omicron variant spread around the world. This was extremely disappointing for me because I worked incredibly hard to get that course off the ground. I was also looking forward to Alice and Aden spending time with their Thai family. That’s okay. We’re already well into 2022, so we’ll take what we’ve got and keep moving forward. Life is so full. We are beyond fortunate.

Onward.