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I got a great voice message from my anonymous reader to say I’ve been too silent, and that the world is a worse place for it. As our crazy two weeks of traveling across the United Kingdom comes to an end, I can finally pause at the keyboard to put down some thoughts.

1. It’s way too cold here
2. I set a latitude record by heading to Forster Castle in Scotland. I’ve now achieved 56 degrees north which is one degree further north than my previous record of Moscow
3. Scottish dancing is as crazy in person as it is in the TV shows
4. I can’t understand a word that anyone who I’m not related to says in this country

And with a year-end review to come, I bid you good night, but with high hopes that there will be another article tomorrow.

The good moments/learnings/thoughts/regrets of the decade in no particular order:

• Meeting Micky & marrying Micky
• Moving to California
• Learning how to build a product
• Luka
• Amelia
• Getting OpenTok built, and convincing Ian it was a good idea
• Birthday break up
• Growing up, and building a team at TokBox
• Building a product that got acquired
• Buying a house
• Traveling to new places
• Supporting friends in their new marriages
• Cooking an awesome baklava
• Keeping friends who I’ve known for a long time
• Making new friends who I’ll have for a long time
• Losing my fear of the unknown
• That crazy trip to NYC for New Year’s Eve
• My bachelor party
• Most things to do with Las Vegas

I’m sure there’s so much more, but I just can’t remember it all 🙂

The bad moments/learnings/thoughts/regrets of the decade in no particular order:

• Amelia’s surgery
• Birthday break up
• Shep leaving San Francisco
• My family falling apart
• How hard it is to call people on the East Coast
• My dependence on always being connected
• Losing touch with playing soccer more often
• Losing any semblance of athletic conditioning
• Being above my target weight at the end of the decade 🙁
• Not exploring other work opportunities to better understand what I want to do
• Not starting my own company
• Not being a better engineer
• Not spending enough time on charity/giving
• When Ron got kicked out of TokBox
• Friends getting divorced
• Not learning to trust more

Well, I’ve run out of ideas, and steam. So today’s post will be a photo gallery of the last 10 years. Thanks for keeping up with me 🙂

(Post-looking up all of the photos… holy shit what a great decade)

Biggest moment #4 – Amelia’s surgery

Don’t get me wrong. The babies being born were big moments. But their births don’t really define a person as much as people make it out to be. The whole, “Greatest moment of my life was my kid’s birth” line doesn’t really appeal to me. I think it’s because I don’t see those moments as terminal. They aren’t an ending. They’re a beginning.

In a lot of ways the biggest moments are actually endings of some sense. All the ones I’ve listed so far were pretty major endings to pretty major periods of my life. Amelia’s surgery was the same.

It was after she woke up, and everything was ok, that I lost all of my pessimism about the world. Because between 25 and 28 I tended to be down more than up. At TokBox especially. In my personal life outside of Micky definitely. Well…

Actually, it wasn’t pessimism… it was fear. Before the kids I was afraid of all the choices I was making, and I was even more afraid of all the ones that I wasn’t making. But not the kind of decision where you see that your 3 year old is climbing the 5 year old ladder at the playground, and they’re going to fall. I feared tomorrow. Or maybe unknown outcomes.

And more so, as I think about it, it isn’t actually my fear of unknown outcomes that ended. It was finally being able to comprehend and accept what mortality really meant. That there is a lifecycle for things, and that there is inherent risk in doing something today that may affect where that lifecycle goes tomorrow.

That we could, as loving, first-time, scared shitless, and alone (God, we were so alone) parents, that we could give Amelia to a team of surgeons, head up to the cafeteria, and just not know what was going to happen. That you could fall in love with someone so much at 10 months old that the thought of them being less than everything they could be was a worse outcome, than the thought of losing them to a surgical procedure. And yet sitting in that cafeteria eating really shitty scrambled eggs, and wondering what was normal ever going to be like again.

When she woke up, and we had faced that moment of mortality, when we had taken Kierkegaard’s leap of faith, that moment of being moments from losing everything to being free to have anything, I lost my need to hold onto today because it was to scary to look into tomorrow.

Maybe this is such a big moment because when Amelia woke up, I learned how to fly. And, in the damnedest of roll reversals, she was the one carrying me.

Biggest moment #3 – Getting married 🙂

This one had to show up as well… but in a good way 🙂

I asked Micky’s dad for permission to marry her the first time that I met him. That was scary as hell. But Mike’s amazing. First class. He said to me, “Well what if I say no”. And I really had nothing to say. But at that point, I knew it was meant to be I guess.

Then buying that ring almost killed me. I’d never spent that much of my own money on anything. Holy shit, I almost died. I brought Lauren with me to ask her if it was a good ring. She said yes… but I don’t know if I believe her 🙂

Being engaged wasn’t that different than living together. Our biggest wedding fight was over whether I’d booked the DJ or not. That one almost killed us. But we survived.

The honeymoon was my big splurge. Turtle Island was amazing though, and so worth it.

The location was a great compromise. Inviting all the Turkish mafia was meant to be a good compromise, but my parents found something to complain about anyway. That was pretty disappointing.

Mehmet being the officiant was fantastic. I thought his speech was really great. I thought the guitar player was great as well. Jill was amazing. The pies and cupcakes rocked. And the aforementioned DJ was a hit.

The rehearsal dinner was awesome. Not necessarily the event itself, but the food definitely was.

The night was really magical. I cried a lot. I think I was just overwhelmed with too much going on. The people who were there. The people who weren’t there.

There was an amazing after party, and that really capped the night off wonderfully. It will go down as one of the best weeks of my life, and definitely goes in the top three highlights of my twenties.

Biggest moment #2 – The break up that rocked my world

It had to show up at some point.

There were only really two relationships in my life during my twenties. The one that worked, and the one that failed spectacularly. It just took five years to get there.

When Giana broke up with me (on my 25th birthday, over the phone, while I was at work), I was destroyed. I took half of December off of work claiming to be “burnt out”, and just went home to try to figure out what the hell had just happened.

It really messed me up, and there are parts that I’m definitely still unable to piece together.

But holy smokes was it the best decision for both of us. Not simply because of Micky and the kids and how wonderful everything is now. But because we were actually awful for each other.

Giana would have held me back, and I would have drowned her. Our families would be even more incompatible than I assumed at the time. And I think we ultimately wanted very different end games out of life, and that would have led to a lot of friction.

I couldn’t have seen it then, but Giana was right to end it. And I genuinely think we’re both better off five years later.

It’s crazy that this will end up on both the best and worst things to happen to me this decade lists, but I guess time and reflection have an amazing way of painting such a picture.