"I'm having a moment right now..."

"Dude. I am having a f&#king MOMENT right now," I said.

"Are you?" said my friend, Zach.

We were sitting in the sauna at the YMCA, and I was, indeed, having a moment.

The last time I'd been in here was early March 2020.

At that time, I was sandwiched between a bunch of half-naked men, trying to read Dotcom Secrets while the heat of the sauna threatened to melt the glue holding the book's spine together and leave me with a pile of sweat-soaked pages.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the world was just weeks away from total lockdown and a year that was, for lack of a better way to put it:

Very shitty.

But here I was again, 14 months later, in May 2021...

And it felt like nothing had changed.

The room was exactly the same.

Toasted cedar walls...

Skin-melting heater...

Flat wooden benches...

And me, in the corner, huffing and puffing and trying to avoid spontaneously bursting into flames.

It was surreal. Doing something I used to do multiple times per week...

In a place where I hadn't been able to do that thing in over a year.

For a moment, it felt like the pandemic had never happened. Like maybe it was just a bad dream, where you open your eyes, take a deep breath, and say:

"Holy shit. I am SO glad that wasn't real."

Unfortunately, it was real.

But I think a lot of us will have moments like this over the summer.

Moments where the whole thing feels like it was just a figment of your imagination.

And I'd encourage you to lean into those moments. To zoom out and be grateful for how far we've come.

To have your own f&#king MOMENT.

I think we all deserve it.