Landing the Plane @ Chicago, IL

A couple months ago we promised to share pictures from Italy, and we will, but first we want to address the current state of things. Last year we quit our jobs on June 30th 2024 in order to enjoy a year of extravagance. We traveled all across Asia and North America, we collected numerous passport stamps, and reveled in being able to spend so much time with our favorite person. The impetus for the year was that we wanted to move to Chicago, and a rough timeline of our life goals revealed if we pushed off our trip even one more year we wouldn't be able to do it. So we quit. Sold all of our things. Packed up the Subaru. And only looked back a couple times.

While quitting our jobs was maybe the scariest, we knew that the hard part of our journey wasn't going to be our big exodus. The hardest part was going to be starting over somewhere new and for the last 6 months, we’ve been in it. We’ve been trying find jobs, furnish a new apartment from scratch, and plan our wedding. We've had to navigate the waves of self-doubt that come when a company elects to “proceed with other candidates,” the exhaustion of moving into a 4th floor walk up without movers, and the stress of planning a wedding without an income. We had to deal with a bittersweet loss of autonomy as we lived with Adam’s parents for 4 month (who truly could not have been more supportive). We put quite literal blood, sweat, and tears into making our Chicago apartment into a home we feel proud of, and could potentially love as much as our Haight and Central one bedroom. And we've found new routines as Helen has returned to the working world.

With that hard part behind us, the year is starting feel like it was all worth it. We’re finally settling into Chicago. Adam recently signed a job offer with Reddit and, Helen’s learning the ropes at Northwestern's Flow Cytometry Core Facility, and we even joined a morning run club called the Glen Glens. So while there’s still more work to be done, it feels like we’ve finally landed the plane. We do miss our San Francisco friends, and our motorcycles, but we’re excited about the new opportunities that Chicago will afford us and being able to spend so much time with Adam’s family has been a blessing. We can’t express enough gratitude to Adam’s parents for hosting us for 4 months while we got back on our feet, as well as taking care of Kovu while we were out of town, and generally validating our hope that Chicago would deliver a strong support network for us as we transition into the next phase of our lives.

To be fair, the last six months haven’t been all work and no play. In between interview prep, we’ve enjoyed a trip to Italy for Adam’s cousin’s wedding, we spent a dream of a week diving in Bonaire with Helen’s mom Rose, we got to meet Adam’s niece Ella for the first time, and we attended a beautiful wedding in Akron Ohio (some call it the “the Bologona of Ohio”). We took a few pictures along the way:

Now that we’ve successfully reintegrated with our severed selves, we’re sure our post on this site will be less frequent, but stay subscribed and check back in every once in a while (email is a fickle beast and there’s a high chance of our emails going to spam). Maybe we’ll share some more stories in the future. It’s truly been an incredible 16 months and we feel so fortunate to have lived it. It wouldn’t have been possible with all the support we received from family and friends. To all of you, thank you and we love you.