Honestly, it feels like I've been traveling incessantly for like the last five months, and I guess in some ways I have been.

I've been a lot of time out in Arizona.

I've been back and forth between New York and D.C. a lot, back out to Arizona.

And most recently, an 11-day stay in the United Kingdom from London to Cambridge to Wales to Edinburgh back to London and I'm finally home,

which is awesome but I've noticed a couple of things. First of all, in the States, I found being in D.C.

very uncomfortable. I was actually just there on Tuesday for a World Pride event

where I spoke and honestly it was not remarkable exactly I guess to be expected but a lot

of tension a lot of fear the fact that World Pride was planned to be expected, but a lot of tension, a lot of fear. The fact that World Pride was

planned to be held in D.C. this year was a bit ironic, considering we are currently being led,

so to speak, by a deeply and dangerously homophobic regime. And just personally, I don't I don't

really feel comfortable down in DC for perhaps obvious reasons. Anyway, I love to

travel in general and I particularly like going out of the country. But the last time I was abroad, other than a vacation in

Iceland at the beginning of 2024, was a very short trip to Amsterdam where I went for a symposium.

And this trip to the UK was with the

longest visit I made outside the United States for a few years. So of course I was very

excited about it. I love I love Great Britain and I was very much looking forward to it but here's the thing it's it's

very different to want to be going where you're going versus being extremely

relieved to be leaving where you are and I never had that experience before I'd

never felt that I was glad to be going somewhere because I so desperately wanted to get

out of the United States.

And honestly, this wasn't even conscious.

It wasn't until I got over there that I felt this palpable sense of relief, this sense

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