One Year On in Our Nation’s Capital

I started 2019 with apprehension and excitement.

Most people always begin the new year with plenty of huffing and puffing about all of the things they want to accomplish under the haze of celebration and bravado. They are getting that new job. They will vanquish all of that belly fat with a tough gym regimen and a strict diet. They are going back to school to nourish their minds and get smarter. And so on. Some achieve these goals and then some, others regress or stand still having accomplished nothing.

My goal for 2019 was to get settled in a new city far, far away from home. I had a job, but no permanent housing. I had no friends where I was moving to, but hoped to make some new ones. I had dreams, but they weren’t reality yet.

Most of all, I resolved to avoid homesickness. Homesickness was death, the end of any rational thinking if I allowed it to take over my fight or flight instincts. I feared that I might get so homesick that I would call it quits, book the first flight back to Boston that I see on Google Flights, and run straight back to the security blanket of my mother’s cooking and the streets I knew since I was a baby. There would be relief in going back home, but embarrassment too. If I came back home without a good reason, I would have failed myself.

I resolved not to let that happen, but who knows. My risk aversion was sometimes greater than personal logic.

I said my good-byes, packed up all of my personal belongings, and conducted a few last errands during the first few days of the new year. Then, on January 9, 2019, I boarded an Amtrak train heading to the city where I was about to spend life for an unknown number of years into the future: Washington, DC.

I arrived at Washington’s Union Station late that evening on the 9th. Walking outside the station, I got into the front seat of a cab after loading my luggage in the back. The cabbie was a middle-aged black woman. DC is well known for its large African-American population, and I bet strongly that she was a native to the region. I gave her the address of the Airbnb I had booked weeks earlier and we departed.

“So, what brings you to DC, young man? Just visiting or staying?” the cabbie asked.

“Staying. I’m starting work with the federal government next month.”

The woman sniffed a little. “You know the government’s shut down, right?”

I nodded. “I know. But luckily my agency is funded.”

“That’s good. Business has been very tough lately… It’s a company town here, once that spigot of government money dries up, it just stops flowing downstream to working stiffs like us.”

“Yep…” I turned to face the window. A light rain had coated it in droplets, distorting the view outside a little.

When we reached my destination, I gave the cabbie a $5 tip on a $10 ride. She thanked me and helped me get my luggage out of the car.

A short while later, I reached the apartment that I had booked. The door was unlocked, as the host had mentioned. A number of young men were gathered in the foyer. A young black man walked up to greet me.

“Hey! You here for the Airbnb?”

I put down my bag. “Indeed I am.”

“What are you here for?”

I took off my coat. “I’m here for a job. Planning to stay here for a while.”

“Well, welcome to DC, dude!” The young man reached out and shook my hand.

It was the first of many welcomes I would receive over the next couple of weeks.

My first month in DC was perhaps one of the best months of my entire life. It was not particularly exciting but it was so different from my routine in Boston that I relished in the novelty of living in a new city for the first time in my 27 years. I missed being a native son, but at the same time, one sometimes cannot be a native son forever.

Furthermore, I just fancied not working. It was the first time in years that I had an extended vacation of any kind exceeding five days. Giving myself a month to settle in DC was definitely the right move. I got up late every single morning, watched lots of TV, enjoyed the sights and sounds of our nation’s capital, and even started dating again a little via the apps. (Most of those dates went nowhere, but it was enjoyable to meet new people nonetheless and have them show me around.)

Funemployment is the best sort of unemployment.

A few months in, I was settled into permanent housing in Capitol Hill. I had started my new job with the federal government’s audit and oversight apparatus, as another faceless civil servant seeking to root out fraud, waste and abuse from government programs. To make friends, I played social sports and attended Reddit meetups. I was becoming more familiar with the city, and have already developed preferences for my favorite bars and nightlife haunts. I had a small, growing, yet somewhat volatile network of acquaintances that would come and go, but that’s the nature of making friends as an adult.

Yet despite this volatility, I did find some diamonds. One of them was a young woman by the name of Madison, who I met through a Reddit meetup. Madison and I became very quick and close friends. She was bubbly and friendly and unlike some of my other acquaintances, always ready and willing to hang out. As I was lacking good friends in DC at that time, she filled the void, and eventually we began confiding in each other about our respective anxieties about living in the nation’s capital.

One night, we were dining on cheap mass-produced burgers at a well-known burger joint with golden arches for its logo.

Looking up from my half-chewed burger, I looked at Madison and asked, “Do you miss Seattle?”

“Sometimes…” Madison paused. “I moved away initially because a lot of my friends at the time had moved away and I was feeling lonely and wanted to try something new. But a lot of my old friends are apparently back in Seattle now and I do miss them.”

She then looked at me. “Do you miss Boston?”

I nodded. “I do. But sometimes you don’t know what you miss until you are away from it.”

Truth be told, I missed Boston very, very much. I wasn’t lonely per se, I had plenty of acquaintances in DC on call and was out doing something social nearly every single weekend and at least once a week after work. Yet I missed Boston’s familiarity. I missed my friends and family too, but it was going outside and being unable to navigate the streets without Google Maps is when it usually hits me. I’m not home anymore. I needed Google for my street knowledge now, it’s no longer native to my brain. Granted, it never was since I am in a new place, but it felt that way.

Sometimes I would browse federal government job listings for positions in Boston that I qualified for, but would tell myself to step back from applying unless it was a role that was an upgrade to what I was doing. Other times I would read /r/Boston on Reddit, all encased in the bubble of local news and memes that momentarily relieved me of flareups from my homesickness.

As my absence from home lengthened, many of my relationships with friends and acquaintances in Boston atrophied. After all, the unseen and the unheard are gradually forgotten. At first, I was sad, but as my relationships in DC grew, so did my wistful thinking for these old, Boston-centric relationships. I maintained the five best relationships I had in Boston and culled the rest. If and when I return, I’ll defrost them, but for now, they belong in mindful oblivion. Most friendships are local. I am not local to Boston to anymore.

Eventually, Madison left DC herself, though not out of homesickness, but for the love of her boyfriend in New York. I was sad, but proud to see her making a decision that was right for her. We recently exchanged Christmas cards.

Nearly a year on, I have developed a begrudgingly yet increasingly warmer opinion of DC. A legal happy hour regime for nightlife, an excellent mass transit system (despite all of the people on the Internet who tell me that DC’s WMATA is somehow worse than Boston’s MBTA), and excellent working conditions in the federal bureaucracy certainly help. I grow more and more familiar with the streets of our nation’s capital every single day. My social circle is gradually becoming more stable with a cast of familiar faces I can call friends at last.

I almost never came to live in our nation’s capital. I had other job offers in Boston that I considered carefully, but I did not want to turn down an opportunity to work for the supreme audit institution of the United States. If I turned it down, I would never see it again. That said, if the Government Accountability Office did not extend me that job offer, I would have not left Boston. Regardless, I am forever grateful for the opportunity to live and work in our nation’s capital and I would do it again if given the choice once more.

During a recent phone call with my parents, my mother mentioned an old Chinese proverb: “Better to walk 10,000 miles than to read 10,000 books.”

And that proverb rings very true. There is nothing better a man can do than to nourish his own perspective than by experiencing something different or trying something new. Experience, not empty knowledge, drives the engine of self-reflection and growth. A man cannot improve himself unless he challenges himself to do the new and hard thing as opposed to the old and easy thing.

In light of the new year to come, I encourage all of you reading this essay to try something new in 2020. It doesn’t have to be moving far, far away to a different place, but can be as simple as trying a new weightlifting routine at the gym, reading a book from a genre you usually do not read, or cooking a dish from a cuisine you are unfamiliar with. Change brings about challenge, and overcoming challenge brings about self-confidence and conviction, which allows one to try even more new things and overcome their associated challenges. As they say, luck is often a product of trying something many different times. You will not be lucky until you try. Grit leads to success.

I will not lie: I was terrified by the thought of moving to Washington and leaving all that was familiar behind. But for me, a desire to serve our country and try something different rued the day, and I am very proud of how I didn’t run back home at the sight of first difficulty. Moving to a new place is not mechanically difficult, but requires great mental fortitude, and a desire to keep the fire burning. Boston gave me knowledge; DC gave me conviction. With that conviction in hand at last, with the knowledge that I can succeed if I just try, I am hoping to try even more new things.

As I look upon the dawn of 2020, I am looking forward to more of life in DC to come. Happy new year to you all.