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here-after · 5 years ago

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Before Sunrise

Saying goodbye is the hardest thing, especially to someone you love. Last August, my own relationship with my girlfriend began seven hours before we had to go our separate ways for the foreseeable future. We began our relationship in earnest as a long-distance couple. Our relationship was founded on a long goodbye.

But goodbyes aren’t what they used to be. Before Sunrise is a bit like if my girlfriend and I had met in 1995, without the internet to connect us. I saw—no, felt—myself in every time-stopping look or touch between Jesse and Céline.

Before Sunrise captures the feelings of love and intimacy with astounding purity. Love, and relationships, are about many things other than feelings; in a genius way Linklater’s script has Jesse and Céline explore these other themes—communication, trust, support, breakups—through their conversations. However, the achievement of this film is the feeling it left me with, a true encapsulation of love. Stripped of all other concerns—friends, family, or real life in any meaningful way—Jesse and Céline fall into each other completely. The film’s long, cut-free takes reveal the succession of moments that make up love. Every glance, suppressed smile, laugh, or touch is absolute.

Not so long before the sun does rise, Jesse talks about being tired of oneself, how it’s no wonder that people dislike themselves. After all, we never get a break from being us. But, he says, Céline does make him feel like he is somebody else, like he’s unstuck from himself. Visiting my girlfriend for a weekend reveals a wonder experienced only before a goodbye. I don’t think I would know this feeling if we lived in the same place. I found Before Sunrise to be transcendently happy, even if Jesse and Céline never see each other again. There is existential beauty in absolute connection, however fleeting.

The time before an inevitable goodbye is both the longest and the shortest of my life. Each moment stretches into eternity, and hours pass by suddenly, all at once. Vanishing eternal moments, stitched together, creating life.

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here-after · 5 years ago

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Unfinished Business

The sport that doesn’t love me back.

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My college ultimate career was over, whether I liked it or not. For five years, I have committed myself to college ultimate at the expense of nearly all else. You would think I’d be torn up about my career’s abrupt demise.

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I made Georgia Tech’s A Tribe Called Tech (Tribe for short) as a freshman and committed myself immediately. College ultimate was a mythic thing to me, so I dove in. My freshman class was large and bought in across the board. Through practices and tournaments and long car rides full of conversation, Tribe became my friend group, my haven from school, and the defining part of my college experience.

But on the field, for my first four seasons, I was stuck. Injuries derailed part or all of every season. Freshman year: torn quad, missed all of Fall. Sophomore: hamstring tendonitis, missed all of fall. Junior: strained quad, missed all of regular season. Senior: torn hamstring, missed all of regular season. I tried different PT’s, different workout regimes, and took considerable time off from playing club to focus on training my body. Nothing stuck.

I was effective when I was able to take the field but was certainly not living up to my potential. I made Chain Lightning when I was 19 and subsequently had an excellent sophomore season in what would prove to be my last fully healthy Spring season. I have not reached the heights of that season since.

For my first four season, Tribe was stuck. Every year, we showed glimmers of potential and had lofty dreams, but even reaching Sunday bracket play at Regionals—where college ultimate teams truly prove themselves—was out of reach. We placed worse at Regionals each successive year. We began 2019 Regionals by taking half on the tournament one seed, UCF. 2.5 games later, our tournament was over. Three games, three losses, done.

Over my four years on Tribe, I had committed myself more and more to the team. I was team President by my third year, Captain by my fourth. I took over planning our team’s workouts, created team bonding activities, and did my best to create a program out of a team.

After our 2019 Regionals loss—our fourth consecutive disappointment—I sat with Micah Jo, one of my freshman class and now my co-captain, and mulled over years of work and continual disappointment. We had one more chance.

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My 2019-2020 season was certainly promising: I was leaving the previous season relatively healthy for the first time in years, so I committed myself to training like never before. I had a workout plan I was incredibly confident in (shout-out GPP!). Everything was set up for me. I was past dreaming of individual accomplishments that I had sought as a young player: to be one of the Region’s best players, to be nominated for the Callahan Award, to dominate games like my college ultimate heroes, Now I would be satisfied with helping my team win, no matter my role. Was this my year?

Our 2019-2020 season was certainly promising; we graduated few players, retained many, and added proven talent via transfer and exchange. The past three seasons had been an emotional rebuilding process for Tribe. We had gone from a disjointed, fragmented team to a unified one thanks to the efforts of previous captains Brandon Chen and Ashwin Anantharaman and new coach Cate Woodhurst. My co-captains Micah, Arthur Shim, and I decided to push the team to be as competitive as possible. We had laid the groundwork of positivity, now we needed intensity. Although Tribe hadn’t done much of note in the last 4 seasons, we had goals of playing deep into Regionals and dreams of making Nationals. Was this our year?

At our first Spring tournament, T-Town Throwdown, my first game began unevenly. I made some good plays but also had some bad drops. I was rusty (not a novel condition for me). I had missed the whole Fall semester with a mysterious knee ailment (after a healthy Summer, I injured my knee at my first Fall practice); an MRI was clean, but pain persisted. I was a game-time-decision for T-Town, but my knee felt relatively okay, so I suited up for my first regular season game in 3 years. I finished the game with no worsening of the pain, so I kept my cleats on for our second of the day. Three points in, I collided with a teammate and badly contused my face. I was done for the tournament. My injury worries hadn’t been left behind after all, and while my face would heal quickly, my knee would not be so lucky.

At our first tournament, our first game began awfully, generously speaking. We went down 2-5 to the bottom seed in our pool; doubts immediately crept into my mind: “would this season be another disappointment? Have the last 9 months been for nothing?” But, defying the weight of our collective past, we pulled out the game and won our pool. Tribe showed newfound resiliency. Eventually an injury-shortened roster would catch up with us, but we placed third, an encouraging if not perfect start to the season.

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As Tribe’s season was building towards something great, mine was rapidly deteriorating. Since the Fall I had been battling repeated illness, and the numerous bouts finally caught up with me. I was robbed of consistency in my training and in practice attendance. After T-Town, my knee pain returned with a vengeance. My season had fractured from my team’s and would only continue to diverge.

Ultimate has long been my refuge, but it was becoming my torture. The weeks between T-Town and our next tournament—Florida Warmup—were some of the lowest of my Tribe career. Sidelined or home sick for practice after practice, I became angry and bitter. Negative thoughts dominated my mind: I could do that better or why does nobody care? or why are we fucking that up for the fifth consecutive year? Subsequently, I would think get your head out of your ass. I worked hard to suppress my personal torment, but it was undeniable that five years of personal and teamwide disappointment had gotten to me. I was forced to admit to myself that frequently I wanted to be anywhere but at practice; I invariably left practice seething with anger. At my team, at my body, at the pain of wanting something so badly and watching my time running out.

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Tribe had not been invited to Florida Warmup since 2015, and we again began on the wrong foot, to say the least. In our first game, Tufts took half 1-7, only for us to battle back and tie the game. We lost on double game point, but Tribe again showed immense heart, the likes of which I had not seen before. We finished pool play 4-2 and squeaked into the bracket. Our reward? A quarterfinals rematch with Tufts, who had gone 6-0 in pool play.

The game that followed is the best I have ever seen Tribe play. We began the contest too amped up, and both teams made dangerous bids and committed overzealous turnovers. We played under the lights on a field equal parts dirt and grass. Dust flew with every step.

A handful of points in, Tribe found its footing. Our decisions became smarter and our execution cleaner. Tufts continued to throw their bodies around and into us; we matched their intensity but exceeded them in judgement. They laid out into our backs; we got massive clean layout D’s. They grasped for what was just out of reach; we were in control. We took half 8-6.

In our first game against Tufts, we had turned the tide by switching to zone in the second half. This time around, we didn’t need a plan B. We crushed with our discipline and our legs. The dam broke: they stopped getting separation and were reduced to endless swings and wishful hucks. We stayed our course and played the game I had long hoped we had in us. When the dust settled, we won 14-7. Vindication.

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We went on to lose a double game point heartbreaker to Texas in semis, and then lost the third-place game to Carleton and finished in fourth place. It was not a perfect tournament (we went 5-4 after all), but it showed that Tribe finally had real ability and the mental fortitude to go with it. Simply put, it was the best tournament performance by Tribe in my 5 years on the team, by far.

Florida Warmup rejuvenated me to some degree. I re-found my voice as a sideline and leadership presence and lost myself in the game. It was terrifically fun to watch my hard work bear fruit even if I could not contribute on the field. And yet, once practices started up again, I fell into many of the same old feelings. My knee was not improving, and I dwelled on how fun and rewarding it would be to truly be part of the team’s success. I considered asking for time off from practice to make my peace with my role.

And then, of course, coronavirus upended the world.

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Weeks of uncertainty followed. It seemed like USA Ultimate was marking time by periodically releasing progressively worse news. The college season was essentially totally cancelled. Even as I dealt with the abrupt loss of our season, I also felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I was free.

I slowly made my peace with our circumstances. I imagined telling the tragic tale of my fifth year; somehow, the sudden end of the season felt right. If my college career felt cursed, why not its ending?

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Then, USA Ultimate made rumor into reality: fifth year players would receive another year of eligibility.

In a way, USA Ultimate’s decision creates the cruelest possible timeline. My team is graduating ten players. Only three have the guaranteed option of playing for the team again. Many of the remaining seven will apply for graduate programs, but that is much less than a sure thing. Even if they enroll in a master’s program, they will also be working full-time.

But I am one of those lucky three players with a guaranteed opportunity to run it back (I will be in grad school at Georgia Tech). A sixth year will in many ways feel like a fake season, a shadow of the fifth year that could’ve been. Every sixth-year player will be a reminder of those that couldn’t be there. No result will be satisfying—in victory I will wish my teammates could be there with me, in loss I will have infinite what ifs.

I already feel something akin to survivor’s guilt. My sixth year is not an opportunity I am ready to accept.

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I miss playing ultimate. More specifically, I miss playing for Tribe. More truthfully, I miss what Tribe could’ve been. What I told myself it would be. What, for a brief time, it was.

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here-after · 5 years ago

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Taste

I doubt this is an original thought. But that’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it?

Maybe this is a unique interior experience. But how can I tell unless I risk expressing myself?

I think sometimes I forget what it is to have taste. To have personal preferences. The idea that there is some objective truth in art creeps into the forefront of my brain from time to time until I shake it loose once more.

Of all things to rid me of this notion, Steph Curry returned yesterday. I had to watch his first game, I had to. He brings me such pure joy that it takes me out of worrying what others think. Is this an experience that others have? perhaps it is a function of my personality, undoubtedly it is. To me there is something magical about discovering something that I love to the degree that I will hear no disagreement.

Taste is such a function of what you believe about personality, about expertise, about if people can change.

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here-after · 6 years ago

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Twitter & Grantland & Twitter

An essay I wrote for my Design of Online Communities class! Fairly proud of it so I thought I’d post it here. The topic was my “best online experience.”

At some point in high school, I decided I should start a Twitter account. I did so with no intention of tweeting, and indeed I never really have. I joined because it seemed like the place where things happened, and I wanted to follow the action. The ensuing years have proven that to be true – Twitter is still the best place for in the heat of the moment action and reaction. But that tagline belies my experience on Twitter, which exposed me to an entirely new world and irrevocably shaped my interests and passions in the process.

My entrance into Twitter coincided with a couple other events in my technological life: I discovered podcasts (this was circa 2013, before the podcast boom) and I discovered the website Grantland. Really, those things are one and the same, because for years the only podcasts I listened to were Grantland podcasts. I was fiercely loyal. Grantland was a site dedicated to sports and pop culture and… life? Surely not, but that is what it seemed like to my teenage self. It was everything I had ever wanted about the things I loved (and the things I loved but just didn’t know it yet). It was the perfect site for that time of my life. It made me smarter and more curious. Grantland was my first and only true internet love.

But, back to Twitter. I had just started reading Grantland, so what did I do when I joined Twitter? I followed as many of the Grantland writers and editors as I could. I started with a handful, but Twitter is good at giving you more of what you like (too good, as we will see), so a handful quickly became many times that.

Twitter was a new frontier. My feed was split into two distinct sections: news – the original reason I joined Twitter – and people I wanted to hang out with. Grantland writers certainly were the founding members of the latter category. Logging on and seeing what Brian Phillips or Wesley Morris or Bryan Curtis or Rembert Browne was doing right now was an incredible rush. I was already reading their every published word; now I could get the un-published stuff too!? I rapidly followed more and more people; once I exhausted the ranks of Grantland, I moved on to their friends and colleagues, or people who wrote things that the Grantlanders admired. I continued to follow enough news outlets to stay current, but Twitter primarily became a place for me to hang out. And for a while, it was a great hang.

Through Grantland, I became deeply interested in film, music, basketball, and writing itself. At the time, few of my friends were as invested in the year’s best movies or the new album I was fixated on, let alone how those things were being written about. So, when I wanted to find a discussion about these obsessions, I turned to Twitter and the cohort of writers and personalities that I followed. During a live event, there was nowhere else I would rather have been. But my experience transcended the event-centricity of Twitter. I went to Twitter to have fun in the moment, but also to look for the next great essay or story. Twitter became my hang-out, my battle place of ideas, my land of discovery. I cannot overemphasize to what degree Twitter changed my viewpoint on the world and my own life. I am pursuing HCI because of Twitter, and I may yet pivot even further towards the arts. It exposed me to wonderfully written, world-shattering stories. The personalities I found on that site have not ceased to inspire me.

On the internet, good things must come to an end. Grantland did in 2015, a few months after I started college. When I read the news, my roommate thought something was seriously wrong, and it was. I struggled to explain to him how losing a website could be an intense emotional experience. My existence on Twitter stuck around for a few more years, but eventually I moved on. I still check it every few days, but without fail I am reminded why I left. Twitter, with its infinitely scrollable feed, is my addiction. When I open it, I reflexively scroll and scroll and scroll and become blind to the world. In 2016 and 2017, this was a multiple times a day occurrence. My land of discovery became unhealthy.

I do not know what my breaking point was, but I know I would have reached it with or without Grantland in my life. I still love the content and personalities that I follow on Twitter, and if I could experience them in smaller doses I would. Unfortunately, I know now that Twitter is not designed for that reality, and through its use I successfully rewired my brain to further undermine that possibility. Twitter wants you to read unblinkingly read tweet after tweet. Why look up when the world is happening right on your screen?

After leaving, I thought about a second flaw in the ecosystem I had set up for myself. I was constantly absorbing information but not transmitting any. In my years on Twitter, save a handful of replies, I have never written a standalone tweet. Although I would argue this does not invalidate my experience or the sense of community I felt, I decided to seek out online communities in which I can participate in engaging discussion, not merely absorb it (this remains a work in progress). Twitter served its purpose by efficiently exposing me to incredible amounts of information, but Twitter as constituted cannot be a part of my solution moving forward. With some tight-knit groups excepted, Twitter is mostly lots of people talking past each other. It is designed for people to perform, not converse.

My time on Twitter was a formative experience for me and remains my happiest period on the internet. Its semi-sour ending cannot ruin that for me. It changed my perspective in innumerable ways and open my eyes to ways of thinking that I did not know were possible. Maybe someday I will get around to writing a tweet.

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