I’ve thought about this post a lot over the past few months. I thought about it when I submitted my farewell post back in December. I thought about it when I said goodbye to each and everyone one of my friends in DC whom I love dearly. I thought about it when I rushed to grab a bagel and lox and honey tea for the road from “So’s Your Mom” as a friend and I boarded a moving truck, pulled out of my small side street in Adams Morgan and onto the highway, pasted the monuments, the offices, the Virginia woods, the southern states.

I’ve thought about this post a lot.

Dear Readers,

I’m really sorry for the sporadic posts over the past few weeks. The holidays aside, the past month has been pretty crazy for me. I was recently offered a job in Tampa, Florida, in the line of work I have been trying, desperately, to get involved with for almost two years. I initially turned down the offer, convinced I was not ready to leave DC, my new home, for the sunny, swampy everglades of Florida. I’d take pandas and elephants at the DC zoo to alligators and flamingos any day, thank you very much.

When the job was offered again, a few weeks later, with a bumped up salary and other benefits, I had to stop and reconsider. Since I have no concept of Florida other than a trip to Disney World when I was very young, I convinced myself that I couldn’t make an informed decision until I had experienced Florida, if just for a weekend. On a whim, I bought a ticket to Tampa and headed down. Despite being massively hung over from my office holiday party and the escapades that followed the night before, I miraculously made it to my flight the next morning and nursed the worst hangover known to man while soaring over Virginia, the Carolinas, and other southern states. The thought of natural Floridian electrolyte-rich coconut water kept me motivated as I connected flights in Atlanta.

Most people who know me are fairly aware of my technological illiteracy. As my friends became fluent in Facebook culture, I struggled to understand the “trash” feature of my Gmail account. For me, computing formulas is the equivalent of solving climate change. My coworkers can easily agree that Excel and I haven’t been on speaking terms for several months now. In short: technology and I don’t get along and I’m fine with that.

Thankfully, I have come to understand the basics to certain programs. I can’t imagine utilizing any other search engine than Google. Similarly, I can’t fathom using any other online social media tool than Facebook. Home for Thanksgiving, my aunt, who tends to post upwards of forty posts (I am not exaggerating) on Twitter daily, and links them to Facebook, tried her best to persuade me to sign up. When it comes down to it, I just don’t care what Joe Lieberman has to say about this or that (online or otherwise) and I don’t care to know what everyone is doing at every moment of everyday. Send me an email or, like I’ve advocated in a previous post, call me on the phone. I waste enough time labeling my emails and accepting special requests on Facebook than to be Twittering about how I’m labeling my emails and accepting special requests.

Kareem is waxing Thanksgiving poetic. Behold: a single’s poem for the holidays.

Those of you who haven’t been living under a rock somewhere west of central oblivion are probably sick of hearing about health care reform. On the radio the other morning, I listened to a news piece on a band of traveling tea party conservatives, weaving their way across the country in an attempt to undermine the current administration’s efforts to patch up what is, honestly, a defunct, unfair, and twistedly expensive system that is an embarrassment to both the American people and the rest of the world. If I open another newspaper and have to read about Congressman This or Senator That rebuffing wackos at committee meetings or arguing with news anchors on the pros and cons of the current system, I’m going to be sick. Health care, ironically, makes me feel really, really unhealthy.

This has been a long time coming, text messages, but I need to be completely open and honest with you: I hate you.

When I first signed up for a cellphone back in high school, I purposefully purchased a plan without text messages. If I remember correctly, I couldn’t even receive them (or send them). If somebody sent me a message, that would be a dime (or so) of theirs they threw down the telecommunications drain. I remember in high school my friends would come up to me in the hallway and say, “I sent you, like, three texts during class this morning. Where WERE you?” At which point I would tell them, matter-of-factly, that I don’t (nay, can’t and won’t) receive text messages. Then I would laugh manaically and walk off down the hall. My logic at the time was that since I was paying for my own cellphone bill (which was a significant amount of money a month for a middle-class high schooler, something like $40 a month), why would I jack the price up to pay for snippity little digital notes when I could just pick up my cellphone or home phone and simply call my friends directly? Please note that this was at the dawn of the jacked up cellphone craze, before iphones, blackberries and other smartphones. I was skeptical that text messages were just another fad that would probably fade away in time. Little did I know they would, instead and in a matter of years, monopolize the informal personal telecommunications market.

I will try to keep this article short and sweet. It will be direct and it will be preachy. You have been forewarned.

Over the past few weeks, a common theme has woven itself into my conversations with my friends. Specifically, my friends who are in relationships. Most of my friends are in various stages of a relationship, whether they’re about to get together: on the brink of the “State of the Union (SOTU)” as my friend likes to call it, just got together, or have been together for quite some time. While I can assume that most of these people are fairly happy with the current states of their love lives, I have been approached a good many times with the same concern: the battle to maintain one’s individualism. This may be because I write a “singles” column or have a chronic case of the single-itis: who knows? Maybe, like my twin brother’s junior high girlfriends, I just have the perfect shoulder to metaphorically cry on. Maybe while my friends are indeed satisfied with their relationships, they see me as an outlet to entertain their currently retired single lifestyles. The question on the minds of several of my “taken” friends seems to be something along the lines of how does one preserve his or her individualism and at the same time reconcile it with one’s current relationship? Let’s talk about this and get it all out in the open.

I’ve mentioned this before, but as the temperatures drop and the sun sets in mid-afternoon, I tend to hole up in my apartment. And I mean really hole up. It doesn’t help that my English Basement lends itself to a cove-like habitat, with my turret basement bedroom acting as the perfect nesting ground. After a rather productive summer of running in Rock Creek Park, walking all over God’s green DC, and spending as much time outside as humanly possible (mosquito bites be damned), I’m finding myself more and more drawn to the dark subterranean corners of my urban cave. The vicious five day (ish) rainy, frigid weather this past week did not help my inclination to burrow deep into my couch, curl up in a ball with Hulu and a six pack of pumpkin ale, and wait it out until spring. I generally support temperate climates, as I find year-round sun particularly dull. But for me, winter and fall bring a certain element of separation from society that, now that I’ve recognized it, makes me slightly nervous. Is urban hibernation a common phenomenon and if so, is it really healthy to hole oneself up for an extended amount of time?

It is clear after this weekend’s National Equality March that a new and potentially powerful grassroots movement is growing in the US. We saw glimmers of this movement following the passing of Prop 8 in California and we see it every now and then, usually in the form of reactions to unfortunate hate crimes or controversial legislation. If you were in DC this past weekend for the march, you were among thousands who descended on the nation’s capital to rally and press the current administration and society for change. Walking through the crowds of brightly dressed advocates, I could ascertain specific issues people had come to support. There were couples, ranging from young to old, urging for marriage equality across the country. There were protesters calling for an end to the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Others came to express their concern over the lack of protection for sexual minorities in the workplace, others for changes in immigration policy. But, underneath the controversial social issues in which the majority of the movement is caught up, there is a more basic concern that must be addressed if we hope to advance as a community and as a movement. If we truly want to achieve equality, we must recognize that for some, gay marriage and serving in a military are almost unimportant when their very lives are at stake. For some LGBTs around the world, the basic concept of survival, of living to see the next day, is being threatened.

European cities are known for their romantic nature. Some say it’s the history steeped in culture, the food, or the diversity of languages. Many travel to Europe to seek out passion, whether that is an evening stroll along the Thames in London, a smooth espresso in a café or restaurant in downtown Paris, or a fine German beer in a pub with a date in Berlin. At its very core, Europe exudes a unique kind of love and beauty, and these are some of the draws that inspire many foreigners to seek out the sophisticated capitals of Europe for their honeymoons, vacations, and escapes from the monotony of life back home.

But as I write this, thousands of feet above this region of romance, this continent of intimate compassion, I find myself in a very different world. Thousands of feet above the star-crossed lovers having their first kiss in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and miles away from the sweet whispers of young love wafting from a Viennese wine bar, I am trying to drown out the couple behind me. With the roar of the plane’s engines reminding me of my impending journey across the Atlantic, I can’t seem to escape the consistent argument that has plagued two of my fellow passengers, an assumed married couple, since we departed European soil two hours ago.