And why am I here?
I recently left my role as a technical program manager for a large cloud services company in Seattle whose parent company owns those large glass sphere buildings. That should be close enough for you.
By night, I’m mostly a cat servant in an apartment in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood.
On the weekends? I try to adventure. I had dropped out of it for a long time after concluding that some of the outdoor activities that had occupied me in my younger years just weren’t doing much for me anymore, with everything so resortified and overdeveloped to the point that anything resembling “adventure” or even just “unexpected” was hard to find.
This Website
In 2016 I started this site, originally on Tumblr, to chronicle my journey, starting with a motorcycle trip to New Zealand that I was simultaneously ecstatic about, and terrified of going on.
Since then it’s been a bit up and down. My last couple of years in Los Angeles were not a great time for me or my adventuring, though I did seriously take up photography again and that propelled me to get out and explore. My first year in Seattle was all about settling in to a new job, a new life and a new location. I got out a bit, but less than I had hoped for. Much of my vacation time was taken up with catching up with family who had been neglected for far too long. Given the travel and border shutdowns that have characterized 2020, I don’t for a minute regret those decisions.
Now, I’m out adventuring more. It was hard for a while — for obvious reasons — to take long trips, and many of the places I’d have wanted to go were shut off or inadvisable, then became overwhelmed with “revenge travel.” But I’m feeling better about where I am and how I’m spending my time.
Work and cats still consume much of my life. But I can safely say that even if it’s just a bike ride to a place I haven’t been before, weekends are now for adventure, with much less reluctance than when I started this blog.
Michael Gat aka “Reluctant Adventurer”
September 2023