SF - Part 1
It’s been a while since I posted last. To be boringly honest, I’ve been super consumed by a crochet project. But that’s not what I’m here for, let me tell you about the week I spent in SF for work that I had so much anxiety about!
I came back up here after writing this to give a heads up that this story is going to be long winded and have to be written in multiple parts. This post is just about the evening I arrived!
I didn’t let my anxiety get the best of me as I was packing and I got to SF only a little bit later than I had planned. This is pretty typical for me. If I plan to get somewhere at 4, I’m probably not gonna get there till 5 if I have a choice. I much prefer to give myself the time that I need and go with the flow if I can. Anyways, I got checked in to my hotel on Sunday right around dinner time. Yulia had posted on Slack ahead of time about a group getting together for dinner that night and I was definitely wanting to join. But I had just gotten to my room when they posted that they were gonna head out to Death by Tacos, but I had planned to get unpacked and settled in a bit. I came super close to bowing out of dinner for this reason, but I was really excited about meeting people so I made myself set that aside until later. Unpacking can happen at any hour, dinner with new friends was happening now.
So I hustled my butt down to meet up with them in lobby and go get tacos. There wound up being 9 of us, mostly HDAs. I’m in Accounting, so I don’t really know HDAs all that well. (When I say met, I mean virtually through Slack or Zoom.) I definitely wouldn’t say I was work friends with any of them. I knew two people, Yulia and Tanya, kinda socially through a Slack channel called Slice of Life, where we randomly post a photo of what we’re doing twice a day, Yulia and Tanya were exactly how I had imagined them, which was super comforting. I knew one other person, Luke, from another channel called Core Crushers where we do a two minute plank every day. Luke was way taller than I had expected him to be, which was a fun surprise. Everybody else was either unknown to me or I only knew of them. This kind of situation has typically brought me great anxiety in these post-lockdown days, so on the walk over, I pretty seamlessly wound up just behind Yulia and Tanya and in front of Luke, which was perfect, but kept to myself and just creepily listening to what I could from Yulia and Tanya while Luke walked behind me chatting on the phone. When we got to the restaurant, I sat myself in the middle of the long table, between two people I didn’t yet know, in hopes of inserting myself into conversations and getting to know people. That worked out well; I met some really rad people at dinner that night!
I met Kevin, who I had never spoken to before. Turns out he is from my neck of the woods in Sac. We found plenty to chat about while we sat side by side at Death by Taco. He has since joined Core Crushers and one day he suggested that we use a Ramones song as our two minute timer. Hell yeah!
Across from me was Coleman, who I had only recently had my first interaction with and it was very brief. I pulled him up on Slack because I was surprised I didn’t even recognize him when he was recently on my radar. Turned out his Slack photo looked absolutely nothing like he does in person. Why do people do that?? In a company that works remote, I think it’s important for us to not always put our best foot forward, but be real with each other. When we have that in-person passing through the office, by the water cooler, in the bathroom, whatever, we get to see each other in a regular fashion. I would love it if people put regular photos of themselves up on Slack instead of some years-old head shot. And in Coleman’s case, I thought his head-shot didn’t do him justice. Double don’t understand that. Anyways… Coleman was cool AF.
Tacos were amazing, and our server was clearly stoked to have a decent sized group there on a Sunday night. He brought over a round of tequila shots on the house, which was super appreciated. I highly doubt we would have done a round of shots together by choice, but it was a really fun way to acknowledge our first gathering of the Summit (the event was called the Nuna Product Summit, so I’ll reference as the Summit for short). I’m not sure how long we had been there, but everybody had finished their tacos and at least one round of drinks and the shots and then about half the group decided to head back to the hotel and call it a night, including my three acquaintances Yulia, Tanya and Luke. I was feeling good and had been able to participate in conversation with the people who were staying, so I chose to stick around and hang a little longer.
I’m glad I did because two more people that I knew showed up! David Clark, who I had interacted with quite a bit on a bunch of different channels due to similar interest rolled through briefly. He was an absolute gem, just as expected. Wreaked of cigarettes, but that just added to his Southern persona. It was rad. Also Marianna, who I had a coffee chat with once and posts on Slice of Life, so I felt really comfortable with her. She’s a badass techy type, into hacker shit and has a really fun style. A couple other people came and went. Eventually it was down to me, Coleman, Kevin and Marianna. We decide to take it back to the hotel and check out the roof top bar. We met up with my work friend Al; he’s just as fun in person as he is virtually! Another coworker that I hadn’t met yet joined us, and they were rad, but I can’t remember their name.
This is Al.
Al is silly fun and takes selfies on phones that are left out.
So we closed the place down at midnight and went our separate ways to prepare for the long week ahead. I got my unpacking done and got plenty of sleep, full of gratitude for the connections I was making and the energy exchange.
Thought the hotel was pretty swanky.
Then I woke up multiple times throughout the night thanks to a dumbass motion sensor next to the bed that triggers the closet light to turn on. Every time I rolled over: click, light. Fuck.