I was coming home late tonight and maybe it has something to do with the quiet Friday night - it is my favorite time of the week because it is a time when I get to see other people at leisure - but I started to think and reflect for the first time in a while. You see, last week was my birthday and I turned 28.

I really cannot believe it - the progression of a decade (which seems like an unfathomable amount of time) since my high school graduation year. You know, when I was 14 or 15 I had been so afraid of turning 18, turning into an adult and going to college by myself, that I had resolved to end my life before I ever got to that age. As you might expect, I didn’t do that and I blew through 18, 19, 20 … and so on.

They say that you turn into an adult when you turn 25, and maybe that was true in my case. I don’t remember much of 25 or 26 but 27 was a momentous year. Reflecting on it now, it was the year when I jumped back into iOS programming, wrote a book on Instagram, and finally resolved to leave my job and take some career risks. Personally it was a year of much growth. I managed to move past my fixation on Jenny, make friends abroad (Heck, TRAVEL abroad), find myself immersed in moments of true connectedness with the vastness of our world, and even somehow be seen as a mentor (Have I really become that old?).

When I tally it all up, collate it together, and summate it at the bottom, I find that what has been most special for me this year - the key that turned the lock for my year of 27, has been the realization that I have to let go of the thinking that everything that I work for and optimize towards should have to do with the almighty dollar. That all the money that I’ve scrimped and saved for over those years have done nothing to protect me from getting hurt. That what is so much more important and enriching to my existence are the people around me. That it is totally worth it to stay late, bear with a two hour commute home, to have dinner with that one friend who I have not seen in a while. That I have been extraordinarily lucky to have genuinely good people around me who care for me and laugh at my jokes and cry at my pains and get mad at my injustices. I love all of you, each and every one.

And while 28 is going to be a new year of change and volatility - I have some crazy, totally unsolidified plans to freelance abroad in another country, to travel spontaneously, and definitely to write a few new books - one thing that I will work to keep from changing is this progress that I have made with other people.

I think I’ll leave this cheese-fest with a quote I have seen on my friend’s Facebook post - unchanged - for over 9 years. I looked at it many times over the years but never really stopped to consider it on a second level until recently, and now I realize I love it too.

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool. “ - Lester Bangs, Almost Famous