Ep 45 - Summer Reflections: Missing Flights, Cohabitation, & Speed Dating Event Planning | A Solo Episode

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast.  I am so excited to be recording again. You know it's been a minute

 This is a first time I am recording an episode in several months. I literally had to dust off my microphone and try to remember how to even use all this equipment.  The last episode we released was in may and today is Friday, September 22nd. As I'm recording. 

  And this was like my first true break from the podcast. Since we started back in 2021.   , you know, I was definitely getting to a point where I was burning out. I needed a break and I thought the summer would be the perfect time to take a break , because one, I was going to be doing a ton of traveling. 

And then too, I knew I was going to be really busy with planning and hosting a speed dating event. Fallen. Malia love. Which if we're connected on social media, you probably saw me talking quite a bit about this summer.   Both of which I will briefly share. 

On today's episode. Needless to say it has been a hectic and jam packed last four or five months of the year. And I am just settling back into regular life now, you know, I feel like the sign, that this break from the podcast was worthwhile was that. Toward the end. As in like these last few weeks, I have felt really excited to come back to podcasting and excited to create an interview and things like that. And I think that's how it should feel when you take a break from something, you know, the point of it is to allow you some time to step away from it. 

And by the end you come back feeling energized and excited. And that's how I feel today. Um, this episode today is not going to be the usual. We don't have a guest. We're just simply updating on life . And this summer, I'm going to talk about some of the things that I did. What I learned, we'll keep it really light today. So if that's not your jam, that is totally fine. You know, what's funny is that I don't really care to share personal details on social media, but I do like sharing. 

On the podcast, the podcast feels like a very safe place. It feels like a very special and safe place to share, uh, about these types of personal details   so. Let me go back to April. , pretty much all of April and may. I was traveling a ton for weddings engagement parties, work travels. 

I had a wedding in Galveston, Texas at the end of April for one of my closest college friends. And then immediately after that, we had a wedding in New York. For my boyfriend's high school, best friend. So we flew out to New York. And so for that wedding, we decided we would stay in New York a little bit longer. So  we got an Airbnb in Brooklyn for about 10 or 11 days,  and it was supposed to be me, my boyfriend, and one of his best friends and his best friend's girlfriend. 

So it was supposed to be the four of us.    That got this Airbnb together. And then that couple,  ended up breaking up, like just shortly before the wedding. So then it was just me, my boyfriend and his friend. And. . We had such a great time in New York. We ate a lot of New York pizza, ate a really great New York restaurants. We played a lot of Scrabble each night and it was just a really nice trip. You know, I think there's something so special about New York city. 

. If there's a place that I could go live in for like a year or two that I haven't lived in, it would be New York. I always wish I had a New York era, , 

  Like when I was in college, my dream was to move  to New York after, uh, after graduation. And I remember applying for jobs like crazy left and right. During my senior year of college to go out there, I had this massive poster of time square hung up on my bedroom. 

. And it never happened. It was just not in my cards, I guess. And so. 

Spending, you know, the 10 or 11 days there was really nice.  So I  currently live in Austin, Texas. And my plan is to escape Texas every summer because the summers are just   Awfully  hot,  110 degrees hot. And so, um, we've talked about maybe spending next summer in New York or other future summer. So. 

 that was. Pretty much April and early may. And then the rest of may, I spent, , several weeks in Chicago with my parents. I had to be there anyway for my cousin's engagement party. And then I had to be there for work. About a week later. And,  , I just figured, well, I might as well just stay for a few weeks. 

And I had the chance to emcee my cousin's engagement party, which if you come from an Indian background, or at least if you come from like a Molly alley Christian background, you know, there's this thing called being Indian engaged. 

And it really is like a mini wedding. You rent out a banquet hall. Usually there's  two to 300 people. There's dancing. There's entertainment, the whole shebang. And my cousin, a  few months before texted me and was like, Hey, I have a huge favor task. Can you be one of the MCs? And I'm like, I'm thinking in my head that  sounds terrifying, but also yes. 

Like I just instinctively said yes. Because one of the things that I've trained my brain over the last decade. Is to just say yes to new things. if I get asked to do something and it feels terrifying because of the fact that I've never done it before, or it sounds like it's outside my comfort zone, or I could possibly fail at it. 

I always take that as my sign that I should do it. And I look back at like so many things that I've said yes to while being terribly afraid. I have always been so glad to have done it, you know, when it was all said and done. And so I said, yes, let's do it. And you know, I was one of the MCs for his engagement party and it was, it was a really fun and positive experience and,  

and I honestly felt really proud because 10 years ago I had such a paralyzing fear over public speaking. So. To be on the side where. Now I can get in front of hundreds of people, including, you know, in front of my own family and friends and be on a mic and feel just fine. It was a really empowering feeling. 

Knowing that that also came from years and years of practicing and saying yes to, similar types of situations, putting myself in environments where I had to face a spear head on. And little by little that confidence was built.      I had lunch with a mentor. Over the summer and he is a professional motivational speaker.  And gets paid to travel around the country to speak at different conferences and conventions and things like that. And he was saying that he treats every speaking engagement, like it's his first one, even though he does it so regularly as his career. You know, he practices, he makes notes. He goes into empty rooms and speaks as a visa in front of an audience. 

And he is one of the best speakers I know. And he does an unthinkable amount of preparation before every speaking event that he's hired for.  

  And so I think that's important for the rest of us to remember. Cause we all watch him and think, wow, he's like so good at that. It must come so naturally to him. 

, And so I just think it's just important to remember that You know, success or doing something well. Is rarely  an over overnight achievement.  Most of the time it's not just, oh, this person was born that way and that's why they can do the things that they do. , there's a lot of hard work and persistence and consistency   that has proceeded that. 

   I feel like I get a lot of people, especially from our Indian community who say to me like, oh, I wish I could do the things that you do. , and I'm like, you can, you definitely can't. You just have to start. you take baby steps and over time. Those little things that you do add up, and it often comes at the cost of being really uncomfortable, Being bad at it before you get good taking calculated risks.      Having people look at you, like you're crazy sometimes, , but that. 

Is what you have to do.  , think of life, like a series of little experiments that build up over time. Um, so I just kind of went off on this tangent, but let me circle back to my summer. , so I spent several weeks in Chicago. pretty much all of may. I was in Chicago at the end of may, after spending about three weeks in Chicago, I came back to Austin for like  one day before I had another wedding to attend in 

To Mexico. And. I'm sure some of y'all have missed a flight in 15 years. I have missed two flights. And I'm going to tell you a story about how, when I was planning to go to To Mexico. I got to the airport two hours early, sat at the gate and miss the flight. I intentionally do not get to airports early. Like I am someone who does everything possible to minimize my wait time at the airport. So if my flight says boarding starts at six 20, 

I plan to get to the gate at six 20, or sometimes even 6 25. Cause you know, there's the boarding of kids and families and military and blah, blah, blah. Um, I probably got on a flight on average one time a month. And I pretty much only get there,  right as they start boarding and it works seamlessly every time. 

And so now my flight to Silento was a little different. So this wedding and Salita was during Memorial day weekend. So of course the flight tickets were so expensive. Uh, but I saw that flights out of the San Antonio airport, which is about an hour outside, Austin was significantly cheaper. It was like $400 cheaper. So I thought, of course, no brainer. I'll do that. 

  I've never been to this airport, but seemed worth it to save $400. So the day of my flight, I accounted for potential traffic. I had an uncle like sort of uncle, family, friend, uncle, who. Lived in San Antonio. So I was planning to leave my car at their house,  and so I'd left more buffer time to see them to confir Tropic, et cetera. 

But I still ended up getting to the airport like two hours early, which for some people that's normal. For me, that is not normal. I was actually low key annoyed at myself for. Having gotten to the airport as early as I did. and of course, , because the San Antonio airport is. 

The smallest airport known to man getting through security with precheck was 15 seconds. Right? Okay, hold on. I have to plug in my computer. 

. So I find my gate, my gate was supposed to be eight, 10, and I get to the gate and this gate is tiny and it is jam packed with people. 

So I thought, A 10 is packed. Let me go sit in a 11, which was   footsteps over. And I see that both a 10 and a 11. We're both going to Mexico city. So my, so the wedding was in  the closest airport to Garda. And so my flight had a layover in Mexico city. It was supposed to be a really quick layover before arriving in Puerto Vallarta. 

And so I saw both gates were headed to the same destination, which was Mexico city And  they had the same departure time. So , I was very foolish and I assumed that these gates were one in the same meaning like. The gates are so small that they didn't have enough room to accommodate everyone from the same plane into a single gate. So they just split everyone into two gates. 

Uh, long story short, that was not the case, the case. Yeah. So I go over to gate a 11. I find a seat. I plopped open my laptop and I just start doing some work, you know, turning out emails, et cetera.  And our role is by an hour and a half rolls by, and it's still packed. But like the environment around me didn't seem like it was moving a whole lot. You know, like nothing was really changing. No one was boarding, anything. 

And I started to wonder, like, why aren't people boarding? Like there must be delays right.  And then on top of that, like the entire time, the signs, the boarding signs for gate a 11 never changed. And so my flight's supposed to leave at, I dunno, I think it was like one 30 and now it is one 10, maybe one 15. 

And I'm like, Hmm, what's going on? Let me get up and ask someone. So I get up. I walk again,  footsteps over to gate a 10. And I'm like, Hey, are you guys, you know, boarding? I'm supposed to be on this flight.  And they're like, ma'am are you Julie, George? . And they're like, we've been calling your name so many times we've finished boarding. We've closed the gate. The plane has already started departing. 

And I look outside and my jaw literally drops because the plate is there and it's starting to move. Like I see it is just starting to move  inches. And I was like, , no, no, no, no, like, please, please let me get on this flight. And these two attendance, they were, you know, looking at me, just shaking their heads as if they see this happen all the time. And they're like, ma'am, , there's nothing we can do. The plane is already moving. 

And I just, I just stood there in shock that I missed. Getting on this plane when I was sitting there for two hours. Just footsteps away. So, I stood there for about  five minutes kicking myself and then I was like, okay, ., I've got to get a new ticket. And I looked for a new flights. I paid a ridiculous amount of money to buy a brand new flight ticket, which included, I think there was like I had to wait at the airport, another eight hours, and then I had a 14 hour layover in some other city before I got to my destination in Puerto Vallarta. 

Um, and I was supposed to meet my boyfriend in silo. It was his friend's wedding. And we were both really looking forward to spending time together in Mexico, after all these weeks of traveling individually. And we had all these plans to arrive early and do some.  Fun things, which, you know, had to be cut short and or canceled because of me missing this flight. And. 

God bless him.  , I think it's, it's moments like this that make me really appreciate him even more because he has such great emotional intelligence and understanding and empathy, like. He obviously knew I was already feeling really dumb for missing this blight, especially under these types of circumstances. And then I also felt terrible because that had impeded on the plans that we made and. 

You know, he didn't make it worse by trying to make me feel bad about it. Like. He just showed a lot of support . All those qualities. I love about him as a person came out in the way that he handled that situation. And. You don't I read about. This type of stuff,  all the time in little brown diary, Facebook group, which if you're not familiar is a Facebook community of  40,000, south Asian women. So south Asian women, there's all these different subgroups that are part of the main group. But I read often about. 

 Women brown women who are married to. Brown men who aren't capable of showing empathy or, you know, emotional regulation and things like that. And them venting and asking for advice to the group. And, and I've also dated men who are like that. I've worked with men who are like that. I've dated men where this type of situation would have blown up into like a huge. 

Fight or a huge ordeal. And I don't know. I think about these, these small moments of conflict, you know, whether it's big or small, these are all clues that you should take seriously, as you are. Assessing the compatibility and quality of a life partner.     I am turning 33 here in a few short months. And if I think about a timeline, like I will probably be 34 when we actually get married, probably pushing 35 or 36. When I try to have my first kid, God willing, which you know, all of these things by the standards set by our community. That's a very late timeline. 

But I will say that I would not change a thing. Like I wouldn't change anything about my life, I think that waiting to find something that is truly good for you. And is actually going to make your life better. It's always worth the wait then rushing into something because of what other people around you think you should be doing or whatever. 

and so. . you know, other than that kind of moment of realization, what I also learned was that this is why I don't get to the airport early because I will somehow lose track of time or not pay attention and then  miss the flight.    

And I feel like there are people listening who understand. And so anyways, lo and behold, I did eventually make it to Mexico. I made it just barely in time for the wedding wedding was  fun. Silento was  fun. Uh, we came back. To Austin on May 31st or something. And then on June 1st, we started our road trip to spend the entire rest of the summer out on the west coast. So Texas is very hot in the summer. 

And so the plan was to leave Texas for the summer. So. Me, my boyfriend and his dog, we were going to  go out west. We both live in Austin, Texas. We do not live together. We don't plan to live together until we're married. That's just something that we both have talked about. We've agreed upon, you know, we like the idea of having something to look forward to. That's different when we are married. 

And I don't personally feel like I need to live with him first in order to validate that marriage is the right next step. You know, I do think that I will. I learn new things about him whenever we do live together or whenever we are married and live together. But I don't feel that what I will learn or realize is going to. 

Change my mind about wanting to get married.  Like we've been together for two years. 

 And we've talked in depth about everything under the sun, like, uh, at length about. Our values, our faith, finances, kids,  our kids. Having social media. We've talked about , 

Devices and kids we've talked about things like how we would take care of our aging parents, gender roles, gender expectations, like all of these super important topics,  because we've established that we're aligned in these areas. And we have like a foundation around these, these topics. 

, Everything else in my opinion is just like the nuts and bolts that will work itself out. And I know people have different opinions on this topic. Like obviously do whatever makes sense for you and your relationship and what you're most comfortable with. I'm just simply sharing my personal opinion on it. Right. 

 what is surprising is that, you know, like I think one of the biggest. arguments that we hear about people living together before marriage is like, You have to live together before marriage in order to make sure that you've kind of crossed all of your. T's and dotted all of your eyes , and  use that as a means to make sure that, you know, this is the person that you're supposed to marry. 

Um, what's interesting is. there's, there's like newer data and research that actually indicates there's a higher rate of divorce for couples. Who live together before getting married, which I thought was interesting. And, you know, Bear in mind. There's so many studies that have been done on this, 

, For every one study, you find that supports one argument. You can find another study that doesn't so, you know, whatever I'm going to share, take it with a grain of salt. Okay. One study that was done by the Institute of family studies, , suggested that like, 

 One explanation for why couples who live together before marriage had a higher rate of divorce was what they refer to as the inertia of cohabitation, which is this idea that people who are sharing a home together. There because their lives have become so integrated. It's easy to get caught up in a lot of inertia or momentum that makes it harder to break up. 

And so I kind of interpreted that as being similar to like the sunk cost fallacy of like, oh, I've already invested this much. At this point, we can't break up. Um, and so. I don't know. I think at the end of the day, there's so many factors that play a role in the success of a relationship or marriage. 

,  how skillful they are in like working through conflict, conflict resolution, how financially compatible they were, .   How.  They are at being able to like regulate their emotions individually. Um, we could talk about this forever, but , my point is I'm not going to live with anyone before marriage, but this summer, because we were traveling together, we did  live together for the summer. 

And.  It was such a good experience and we   debriefed at the end of summer and  honestly, nothing changed about the relationship other than realizing two things.

One. We definitely need a larger space. Like two people who work from home cannot be crammed in small quarters. 

 And then too. We both realized how easy it is to get caught up in the day-to-day and busy-ness of life that. Just because you're living together and spending 24 7 together doesn't mean that you're actually together and spending quality time with each other. So, you know, before the summer,  we went from seeing each other pretty much only on the weekends and maybe like one or two times during the week, but really just prioritizing weekends as like our quality time. 

To then living together for the summer, but actually feeling less connected during the summer. Because of the day-to-day of life and not having. The same dedicated time to prioritize a relationship. So I think that was something we started to realize like halfway through summer was okay. We need to distinguish. 

Actual quality time. Versus just being together in the same room because of the fact that we were , Living under the same roof, 

   I don't think anything major was revealed about each other in terms of habits or pet peeves or anything like that, because. We were already aware of those things to begin with  because of the fact that we're two people in a relationship while living in the same city. 

Like we live 15 minutes away from each other. So we already spend a lot of our time together. Which has allowed us to learn about each other's lifestyles and habits and things like that. Yeah, I do think it would be different if it was two people who are living in different cities, meaning they're doing a long distance relationship and then decide to get married. 

Um, so you go from being in a long distance relationship, possibly thousands of miles away from each other to then. Getting married and living under the same household, , that I think is different. I do feel like it's worthwhile to at least spend some time living in the same city before considering marriage. 

, I think  just spending more time with each other reveals a lot and you will learn so much more about someone. When you consistently see them,  regularly for a period of time, versus only seeing them once every four weeks or two months or whatever. 

Uh, personally. I mean, like, first of all, I have sworn off long distance relationships. I tried a few long distance relationships in my twenties and, um, I never want to do another long distance relationship again. God willing. This is my last relationship. Before marriage, but if it didn't work out and for some crazy reason, 

If I had a change of heart and decided that I would be open to a long distance relationship, then I think the rule I'd have for myself is that I'd want to at least spend time living in the same city for a period of time. So. To wrap up on this topic. I think those were my two main takeaways from, from my summer and like my personal experience of living with my boyfriend for that short period of time, , was one. We definitely need bigger spaces. 

And two, . quality time is different than just living together and being roommates. Um, and so now we have returned back to Austin. We're back to our normal living situations apart.  

 So, , about the summer we spent it out on the west coast. I love the west coast. We both lived out there individually for many years. And so on June 1st, we started our road trip from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles. We spent about six weeks in LA. 

And I lived in LA previously for like a hot minute and always thought that I would want to live there again one day. But honestly, after spending six weeks there this summer, I realized I'd, I don't think I'd want to live there again. It's just. It's way too congested with people Tropic. I just don't think it's my vibe anymore.  

, definitely fun place to visit. Love the weather, love the Palm trees, but I don't think I'd want to live there again. Um, so yeah, six weeks in LA and then we road trip from LA up to Seattle, made a couple stops along the way we stopped in Portland. We stopped in San Francisco to see friends and then spent the rest of the summer in Seattle. 

So that was. Mid July through the end of August. So about seven weeks. , , I lived in Seattle before for about five years and there is nothing like summer in Seattle, like truly summers in Seattle are majestic and it was just so nice to go out there, catch up with old friends and be able to do things like hike through mountain ranges and explore the outdoors because Lord knows we don't get that in Texas. 

, And so it was just, it was such a nice summer. And then we came back at the end of August and road trip. From Seattle back to Austin. made a few pit stops along the way we stopped in Boise, Idaho, which is really beautiful. And then also stopped in Denver. For about 36 hours. And, um, we had like the most Denver 36 hours we stayed with, um, my boyfriend's really good friend from college who lives out there. They had an extra bedroom and him and his girlfriend, they were so sweet and it was just really nice hanging out with them. We went on a long, strenuous Denver hike during the day, and then. 

Got to go to a concert at the red rocks Amphitheatre. Because purely out of coincidence, there was a concert happening that night that we were there and it was Nathaniel rake Ratcliffe, and the night sweats, which I only heard of them , because of their one song. 

 I'm more so wanting to go for the experience of attending a concert at red rocks, which if you've never been like a highly recommend, just going for the experience of it. Cause it was so phenomenal. Um, so yeah, we, you know, I think we covered like, I want to say it's somewhere between seven to 8,000 miles of driving the summer, you know, from Texas up to LA, then LA up to Seattle, then Seattle back down to Texas. 

And we did this sort of cross country road trip all in my Evy. Electric vehicle Evie, which I got asked a lot is like, how do you like road tripping with an EDB? And honestly, we loved it. There's superchargers all around the country. So we never really got ranging anxiety. The car will tell you when you need to stop and charge and things like that. So our stops to charge was. 

It was always like a nice built-in break to get lunch or structure, legs, play with the dog, et cetera. Um, so yeah, we got back to Austin at the end of August and then like the following weekend, I went to Dallas. For the fallen low fall in Malia love. Or FIM speed dating event, uh, which was a speed dating event specifically for Malali Christians. 

I will most likely record a, , separate episode to talk about. All of the, behind the scenes of it, but I hosted this event with another creator. , who's actually been on the podcast as a guest in the past. , Matt, George. That's actually how I met him,  personally was because he came on the podcast. And so we partnered together to put on this event, , for our community, it was held on September 9th in Dallas and. Honestly the months leading up to it, like these. This entire summer, um, was. You know, on top of the traveling, like I was really busy with,  everything about this event,  The months leading up to it was a rollercoaster of emotions. Everything from, this is so exciting. This is so fun to holy crap. This is such a large undertaking. This is so much work. What did I get myself into? I could have been enjoying. The summer of traveling and relaxing without an ounce of stress. Uh, I would be lying if I said I did not have those thoughts cross my mind throughout the summer. 

Um, I definitely did. You know, it was such a lift to put on this type of event. , we did not have a playbook to go off of. We were completely building everything from scratch. Like. Pretty much this the summer I would wake up. I would work on FIM. I would do my actual job. I would try to do fem in between. Then we'd have meetings for femme then. 

There'd be follow-up from those meetings, I'd go to sleep and then frantically wake up at like 2:00 AM and remember, you know, one thing or the other that I didn't do for fam, like when I say it, it took over my summer. It really did.  But, you know, seeing it all come together that weekend was so worth it. My heart felt soulful by the end of the weekend. By the end of the event weekend, like it was such a fantastic event. We had an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and gratitude from people who attended the event. Like it was truly one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done in life. You know, just building something from the ground up, like remembering the days when we were like brainstorming what to even call it or what. 

Our brand colors should be like all these  little things to seeing it become a full fledged thing of its own. And for it to receive the support that it did from the community and have all these people fly across the country to attend like. It was just amazing. Like, I can't even put into words how much of an amazing feeling that was and. 

we had an awesome team of volunteers who were there helping us day in and day out for like, you know, two months. Before the event, we could not have put on the event without them. And so, um, yeah, or organizing this event definitely took a huge part of my summer, which is also why I had to put the podcast on. 

On pause and we're going to be releasing some stats and metrics around the matches and other outcomes from the event. And hopefully again, recording a separate episode, talking about, um, the event and answering questions that people have and, you know, just more. Giving some more in-depth details on behind the scenes. So I don't want to get into it now, but overall, the event was a success. You know, people keep asking Matt and I, if we're going to do it again, and we probably are. Um, but it's, it's kind of like going up to two people who just planned a wedding wedding and asking them about planning another wedding. 

Like I  I'm so grateful, but , I'm so beat from it.  I just need a break So more to come on that front. 

Other than that, I I'm excited to be back in Austin. I'm excited to settle back into my routine. I'm excited to continue. Investing in relationships and community here, and also get back into podcasting. , so with that being said, thank you guys for listening. You. I always feel really silly and a little self-conscious recording a podcast episode by myself, but I always get a lot of feedback that people like the solo episodes and, They T the soul episodes tend to have more listener retention than the ones with guests sometimes.  I do have a few episodes coming up that I still need to release that were recorded with guests from earlier this year. 

So stay tuned if you're still listening. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the pod. , I hope you enjoy today's episode and I will catch you next time.   

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