"This used to be your life. Remember?"

I was in Washington, DC recently for a brief business trip and being back in the old hometown was strange, as if I was visiting a past life. From my old Metro stop and the place in Dupont Circle where I used to get my hair cut to Teaism and Adams Morgan, the old emotion connection was there like the distant crackle of a radio signal. Everything I walked past said, "This used to be your life. Remember? That was where you used to go to happy hour. That used to be the road you lived on."

Yeah I remember, but that was five years go if you can believe it. My DC knowledge has gotten rather rusty and it took me a second to navigate the farecard machine for the Metro. And I was acutely aware that my memory of DC street names has been supplanted by New York ones.

Even stranger was the memory that for a while DC represented the sum of my goals. I wanted to live in Dupont Circle or own a house in Takoma Park one day and I was reminded of this as I traveled past visual cues of these old goals. I guess I still could, but I've got my eye on a sweet brownstone in Brooklyn. Now I just need to make my millions.

Incidentally I had forgotten how beautiful the city gets in the Spring.