From the Editor’s Desk: Good (Premium)

Twice this past week, I’ve experienced a familiar out-of-body sensation that used to occur much more frequently in my travel-heavy pre-pandemic days. Lying in bed in the dark of the early morning, I heard the instantly recognizable sound of a trash bin being rolled across asphalt. That sound came from my right, which made sense, given how our bed in Pennsylvania is positioned and where our bedroom is. It was just one of our neighbors putting out the trash, a normal and uninteresting event.

Except that it kept going. For some reason, the rolling trash bin sound didn’t stop. This was curious to my addled brain. There are only four condos–or townhouses, or whatever they are–in the area in which we live, and the distance from the garage where these bins are stored to the front of the property where they’re later collected is perhaps 25 or 30 feet. What the heck was one of our neighbors doing? It was like they were rolling the bin around in circles. Why would they do that? And why so early?

The confusion was enough to wake me up more fully. I opened my eyes, but it was dark. The sound continued. Otherwise, everything seemed normal enough. And then I finally realized the problem. I wasn’t in Pennsylvania. I was in Mexico City. And the sound I was hearing was continuing because it’s a daily ritual that was then recurring all over this city in which workers roll trash bins out of their storage areas–in our case, a place attached to the local park–and head out on their routes, keeping the city clean. The sound continued because this person had a long way to go, city blocks worth, I assume. And it’s as normal a sound here as it is in Pennsylvania. It just lasts longer, and happens every day, not once a week.

And so I was fully awake. And there was nothing to do but get up, get dressed, and make some coffee. It was all good, but this second early morning wake-up in the past week got me thinking. Thinking about how much has changed.

And it’s been quite the decade. I left my job at Penton at the end of 2014 after higher-ups laid off everyone but me and one other person, and I joined George at BWW Media to launch Thurrott.com in January 2015. In 2017, we moved to Pennsylvania after spending the previous 18 years–and most of our lives–living outside Boston. In 2020, the global pandemic changed everyone’s lives, of course, but the most notable event for us that year was my daughter being robbed of having a prom and a proper graduation from high school. Our son graduated from college in May 2021, and then we visited Mexico City for the first time. After a few more trips there, we decided to buy an apartment in early 2022. In 2023, we sold our house in Pennsylvania and downsized, and George handed Thurrott.com over to me, making me a small business owner. And in less than two months, in late 2024, our daughter will graduate from college, though she’s not done with school quite yet given her post-graduate plans.

There’s more, of course. But in laying that out, mostly for myself, two starkly similar events stand out: Our move to Pennsylvania and the apartment we bought in Mexico City. Both events were deeply surprising to almost everyone we knew, disappointing, even. And we still have some family and friends who don’t understand these choices. I can’t explain why, exactly, but I’ve been thinking about these two events, these milestones in a decade of change, a lot lately. I’m glad we did both–so much of life happens to you and is reactionary rather than planned or proactive–but I also wonder whether I could ever do anything like them again. Or would want to.

When we’re in Pennsylvania, we go to a little local restaurant every Wednesday after I’m done recording Windows Weekly. It’s a place we first visited because we could easily walk there from the apartment we lived in during most of 2023, right after we sold the house. We still go there every week, even though we moved further away in late 2023. But now we go mostly to be among our friends and the many other familiar people we see during each visit. It’s turned into quite the group, and just before our recent trip to Mexico City, six of us went out to dinner at a different place. And we collectively decided to turn it into a monthly tradition that will include another couple that couldn’t make that first dinner.

Shortly before that happened, we were driving there on a Wednesday in September, and I blurted out a conclusion I’d come to.

“I think I’m good,” I said.

“Good?”

“Yeah, I’m good where we are, done moving. I don’t think I can move again.”

“Like move to another home?”

“No, no. I mean another far-off city or another state. I just don’t see any way that happens again.”

This will seem disjointed to you, you’re not in my head. But I didn’t have to explain it to her. My wife and I discuss this type of thing a lot, and we spend even more time watching videos and reading about related topics. For our entire adult lives, we’ve wanted to travel and then start splitting our time between two places, one international, when the kids were out of the house. We researched what it means to do that, what has to happen, and how it might work. The pandemic change agent played a role in us buying the Mexico City apartment, a decision so rash and sudden and so thoroughly unlike us that I understood deeply why it was so confusing to so many. It’s not the type of thing we would have done if COVID hadn’t so rudely reminded us to focus on what’s most important in life.

But we watch and we read and we talk. We watch videos about other states and the places we may or may not want to “retire” to, a term so far outside our reality that it literally doesn’t apply. But I know we’re not going anywhere. Like I said, I’m good. And I’m good not because of the cost of living, the climate, whether or not a particular state taxes retirement savings, or anything else like that, though I’ve spent decades looking into all that and more. I’m good because starting over–really starting over–is of zero interest to me. We have friends and family in the Boston area and in Pennsylvania. And now we have a growing group of friends in Mexico City, too. It’s enough.

No, that’s not it. It’s more than that. It’s good.

It was difficult leaving our friends and family behind in Boston, but we took that step for the right reasons. It was also an important proof point for me that our talking about doing things differently after the kids were out of school wasn’t just talk. That move showed my wife and me that we could do this thing. Pennsylvania is close enough to Boston–about a five hour drive–that we can both go back as often as possible, and we do, and friends and family come to visit us as well. That one of my closest friends back home is now fighting an unwinnable battle for his life makes the coming visits all the more important.

But we also have family in Pennsylvania, and that helps. My wife and my oldest sister had spent the previous 10 or 15 years becoming friends thanks to frequent trips with our respective kids in both directions, and our kids became close with their cousins over that time. And if it weren’t for our kids’ lives growing up in Boston, we probably would have moved sooner. But it was an easy transition, and we now spend a lot of time with my sister and her husband, including even some travel. It’s good.

I was 50 years old when we moved to Pennsylvania. And I was pretty much set in the friend department. I didn’t expect to make any friends in my new home, and I certainly didn’t try. But life is interesting. We have close friends there now, several couples who we care about quite a bit and see regularly. In a strange coincidence, one couple is my oldest sister’s husband’s older brother and his wife–good luck sorting through that one–who are in that group of 8 planning monthly restaurant nights out.

This, too, is good. But these friends make visiting Mexico City difficult. We miss them when we’re there, and we miss Mexico City and our friends in that place when we’re in Pennsylvania. Our dream of splitting time between two places is now achieved, but it’s also a source of uncertainty.

But as noted, we’re in Mexico City now, having flown to Dallas for a work event last week. That event was interesting for all kinds of reasons, but I was happy to see work friends I used to run into more frequently before COVID changed everything. In most cases, it’s been over five years. Too long. But it was good to see them, and I was reminded of how the best people in our lives are those who you can pick up with immediately as if no time had gone by. Last week was like that. It was good.

We left Dallas to fly Mexico City two weeks ago this Thursday, a delightfully short flight. And we did what we do each time we come here and reestablish a familiar routine, one that is similar but also different from what we do at home. Because, yes, I also think of Pennsylvania as home, as I do Boston and Mexico City. It’s good.

After arriving, we unpacked and headed out to catch up with some friends. But we weren’t even 30 feet past our apartment when we ran into someone we know here. He hopped off his bike and embraced us both. We all smiled at each other and caught up, in our broken Spanish, and he asked us a question that would be repeated again and again over the next few days. “How long will you be here this time?”

This exchange repeated itself at the end of the block, where we know the owner of a restaurant on the corner. He doesn’t speak any English, and we only speak broken Spanish, but his face lit up when he saw us, and he jumped out his seat to exchange greetings and ask that question again, the second time in just minutes. And then again a few blocks further at two other restaurants where we, go figure, know the owners and other employees there as well. (We know at least five people who own restaurants in this city for some reason.) There were hugs, catching up, and stories in both directions. And always that question. We’ll soon celebrate one friend’s birthday here, for the second year in a row. And we’ll watch the baseball playoffs and World Series here with friends, again, as we did last year. It’s good.

Over the next few days, this exchange repeated again and again as we ventured further from our apartment. There’s a man we met while walking in the park a few trips back, an extranjero like us. We had seen him several times in June and then again on our first morning walk on this trip, this “hello” person I feel I know better than I do. How long are you here? When do you come back?

When we’re in town, we’re regulars at a restaurant and bar that’s a 10-minute walk away, and on our first visit, we were asked that question again and then were invited to a party they were throwing to celebrate its anniversary. On our second visit there, last Wednesday night–we have a different Wednesday night routine here, of course–one of the people we know there suggested we go to a concert because a friend of his is in the band. It kind of came out of nowhere, but we’d discussed music once and how I was growing more familiar with Latino pop and rock.

The concert was the following night, a Thursday, and because this is Mexico, it wouldn’t start until 9:30 pm. This would normally be a non-starter for my wife and me. A work night. One day’s notice. And we wouldn’t get home until after midnight. I mean, there’s no way.

But there must be something in the air here. Because we know this guy and really like him, because this is Mexico City, because–I don’t know–what the hell, the next thing I knew I was buying tickets for the event on my phone. The concert was fantastic, a crazy circus-like show with surprisingly faithful 80s rock music that lasted almost three hours. So we didn’t get home until closer to 1:30 am. But we were happy to do it. It was good.

We were happier still to tell our friend about the concert when we saw him again a few days later at the restaurant’s anniversary party. We were laughing and joking about his friend, who is an intimidating presence and an incredible guitarist, when a couple walked in. It was the guy we’d spoken with while walking in the park on multiple occasions, but with his wife, whom we’d never met. So we got to know her a bit, and the next thing I knew, he was asking whether us we’d like to go out for dinner sometime in the coming week. Of course we would. Of course.

Last night, we headed out late for dinner, wandering up the street and hoping to try a new place. It was dark, and it was Monday, so over half the restaurants in Mexico City were closed, and the place we intended to go was full. And so we found ourselves standing on a corner of a busy street, stuck in a familiar pattern, as we experienced last month during our trip to Berlin. Hmph.

I was determined to not let that happen again, so I recommended a place we had walked by over the weekend that looked good. And for once, it worked out. The restaurant was further away than we usually go, and in a different neighborhood, but everything went great. The waiter understood our Spanish, we understood him, and the food was both fantastic and inexpensive. We were especially delighted when an American couple sat at the table behind my wife and the same waiter ended up having to speak with them in English. It’s the little victories. So good.

And then the strangest thing happened.

A voice cried out with delight and I turned around to see one of our closest friends there, out walking his dog and rushing toward us to exchange hugs and catch up. I have no idea what he was doing there, he had been away when we arrived, and this place is as far from his home as it is for us. But he was back. And here we were in this city of some 22 million people in a faraway place, somehow running into a friend. Someone we care about and see as often as possible. It was disconcerting and wonderful and unexplainable.

I’m good.