Portland / Seattle / Next Steps

Hello friends. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy doing stuff in PNW for the past week and before that I guess I was just being lazy. 

I left for PNW for a change of scenery. I’ve been living at home for the past 1.5 months. Home is nice. Home is safe and clean and full of love but it’s hard to shake the feeling that life is somewhat on pause. 

Portland

Met up with Andrew and went up North for a few days. We started in Portland.

cool pose Andrew

My perception of Portland before I went was mostly stuff I gathered from Portlandia

  • Lots of hipsters

  • Good coffee

  • Laidback

Much to my chagrin, I saw almost no hipsters. After five days in Portland, here are my perceptions of the city

  • Great food scene

    • So many options. Portland seems to be known especially for coffee, donuts

    • Neighboring Beaverton had some really great restaurants too

  • Beautiful / Proximity to nature

    • The area we stayed at (Northeast Portland) had a lot of unique houses

      • Maybe Mom’s constant advice to buy a house is getting to me. Some of the houses in the area were pretty cheap compared to CA and looked really cool

  • Lots of weed shops. Didn’t expect that before I went.

  • Not that much racial diversity

    • Very few non-white people. There’s a neighboring city called Beaverton which is a little more diverse

  • A lot of homeless people. Downtown Portland looked almost like a tent city in some areas

  • Great town for biking

    • First day in town we biked from Downtown Portland to Milwaukie. Beautiful trail right by the Willamette river.

    • Lots of bike paths so it’s relatively easy to get around solely on a bike in some areas

  • Cheap?

    • No sales tax.

    • Our Airbnb was pretty cheap too. ~730 for 2 people for 5 days

Highlights include

  • Eating Puerto Rican food at Boriken. Best (and first) Puerto Rican food of my life. Had the Trifongo and a super tender fried pork chop. Also tried a really delicious vinegar based sauce called Pique. This is a Puerto Rican sauce where everyone has their own version of the recipe. Super addicting / versatile and I could see myself using it on every meal.

  • Road tripping out to the Tillamook cheese factory and driving up the coast

    • beautiful beaches where the fog hasn’t yet lifted shrouding the coast in a dreamy mist that made it feel like Inception

did not realize the coast was so accessible from Portland

  • Driving out to all the Asian grocery stores in Beaverton. We were surprised to see so many Asian things after not seeing them in the rest of Portland so we drove out to four different Asian grocery stores (shoutout to G Mart the Beaverton knockoff of H Mart)

  • Getting a drink at Steeplejack Brewery. They made a brewery out of an old church! Baller

  • Delicious Thai food at Eem. Really interesting / well executed dishes including white curry with brisket and cauliflower

Really glad I checkout out Portland. Had so many of the things I love. Coffee. Great food. Beaches. Trees (I am starting to become more of a nature person). Biking.

Towards the end of the trip I felt like I got everything I wanted out of the city / wanted to move on. I think I’ll make a detour and visit again next time I go to Seattle.

Seattle

Swung by Seattle for a few days and crashed at Andrew’s place. This was my second time in Seattle.

  • Had delicious avocado toast two days in a row at Cafe Con Todo. Cool cafe where they have hammocks hanging from the ceiling

  • Drove out to Snoqualmie Falls. Great spot for a short hike surprisingly close (45 minutes) to the city

  • Visited Jessie. She is living the fine life out there. Huge house (compared to my spots in NY) in the suburbs living with her boyfriend and her dog.

  • Went clubbing with some of Andrew’s friends. Also met Steve again. We first met at an event at Amherst College and went to school together in Berkeley. Had lost touch but he’s been roaming around and seems to live an interesting life these days

    • We all went to Vue which is apparently “where all the Asians go”

    • I don’t think I’ve ever had a GREAT time at a club. Maybe I go too sober.

And that’s about it.

Next Steps

Now’s about the time that I reflect and figure out how the rest of my year or quarter will look like.

Been oscillating between roaming and settling but I think I’ll go for a hybrid.

I want to stay in a place 1-2 months at a time so I can establish a daily rhythm and feel like I’m making progress towards my goals but I don’t want to be toooo tied down to a place. To that end I’m going back to NY for ~1 month and going to Mexico City after that.

Some general thoughts over the last few months

Housing

Where I live matters. Last time in NY I lived in a tiny shoebox to save money and that hurt more than helped.

Regardless of where I end up living I want to keep up a standard of living where I can comfortably/consistently make progress.

Committing

I’ve wasted a lot of time not committing. Fear, laziness, all the usual suspects. I used to think balance might be achievable but balance is harder than committing all the way.

So for now let’s get rid of balance and just go for it. At this stage in life there is no such thing as working tooooo hard and I should just cross bridge when I get to it.

TLDR: shed distractions ruthlessly, be less wishy washy about things and make progress.