Turning 24 felt weird.

I got a new job in Northern California, packed up the last two years from the South East and headed back to the coast that raised me. On the way, I saw friends, went to an Elvis Presley impersonation bar and got my car broken into. I lost my credentials from when I covered the inaugural College Football Title game in North Texas, the 100th year of the Pac-12 Tournament, which Oregon won, and the temporary ID card I had during the Sports Journalism Institute’s 24th boot camp in Missouri.

I caught up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile — and won’t regularly get to see — and said goodbye to some things along the way. I even lended my iPhone X to a stranger alongside a two lane dirt road and posed in front of Prada’s Marfa exhibit — an abandoned boutique store featuring a small collection of sure-to-be-doomed shoes and handbags. I avoided what looked to be a forming tornado in a zone that warned such things could happen.

Driving half the day for 5 straight days was as it sounds: long. A large part of it was filled with endless music played from a mix between Apple Music and my iTunes library; the other part included a lot of podcasts and time to think. Without cruise control, I’m not sure I would have made it.

I don’t tell you any of this because it’s especially interesting or because it’s any different from the universal set of up and downs us 20-something-year-olds all experience. Because it’s really not at all. I tell you this because it shows how little in control we are of certain situations; that we’re merely moving from one moment to the next with some expectations and some pre-planning, which in reality has little to no bearing on the ultimate outcome.

For someone whose career path started with unexpectedly getting cut from the high school varsity team, I’ve come to understand the power of having a door slammed in my face to only have another creep open just enough to keep moving forward.

In the span of just over a week, it finally hit me that I’m no longer a young kid. Not in the “you’re now completely financially and socially responsible for your actions” kind of way, but in the “holy shit, things are evolving around me in the way that I actually thought” kind of way.

The thought that has bounced around in my head the most recently has been the randomness of going through the motions every day and realizing that everything ends up having consequences. Not to dwell on my physical belongings that were stolen out of my car in Texas, but that very moment solidified just how much we all go through during this chaotic and exciting period of our young adult lives. Just how many experiences and relics we pick up along the way that were both worked for and gifted to us, sometimes through sheer luck -- all of which can be taken away in an instant. As I specifically said goodbye to these belongings -- specifically my credentials to some of the biggest sporting events and career stepping stones up until this point -- I was forced to acknowledge, appreciate and realize just how far I had come, not only as a person, but also as a burgeoning talent in the sports media ecosystem. I had covered the inaugural College Football Playoff title game at Jerry’s World. I had covered Oregon basketball’s resurgence and rise as an up and coming national powerhouse -- beating Duke and Coach K along the way. I was lucky enough to be one of 12 college sports writers nationally selected to represent an illustrious program that has produced some of the most accomplished sports reporters in the industry. A program that educated me on just how important diversity in the workplace was and enlightened me on the idea that, as a minority in sports media (especially as an Asian American male), I have a lifelong duty to help pay it forward; to try and be one of the countless pioneers to help those seeking it, just like those who helped me get to where I am today. I had worked for the NBA and Inside the NBA -- even covering the Lakers’ summer league title run in 2017 a few seats away from my dad’s favorite athlete, Magic Johnson -- as a dream job straight out of college.

Long story, short, I was due for some bad luck. But if you really boil it down, a few prized physical possessions lost was actually necessary for me to take some much needed time to be grateful for all the life experiences I had the opportunity go through.

Like they continue to say: you don’t know what you got until it’s gone.

After my first week of work in the Financial District of San Francisco, I met up with a close college friend who wanted to grab some iced coffee on Berkeley’s campus. It was a near perfect weather day, the stereotypical Bay Area “I could get used to this” type weather day. During the walk, we discussed and acknowledged the unique space both of us social media workers were currently in. It’s still weird to say that. Social Media Workers. The long hours. The work hard, play hard mentality. Do we like SpredFast? Are numbers everything? Do we like red or white wine better?

What’s fascinating about this time period in our lives, as millennials or 20-somethings, is the rate at which momentum moves and the rate at which moments come to pass. In one moment you’re grinding, slaving away at an entry level job or post-grad internship that doesn’t pay very much but offers a sense of security and confidence that is required to move along in this industry we call the “new media.” A little later, you’re reminded of how senior you’ve become since you first started but still have so much further to go.

Thoughts start creeping in that were foreign to me even just a calendar year ago.

“Was this all worth it?”

“Should I have just done my own thing?”

“Am I abiding to my true work-life balance?”

“Am I putting enough into my 401K?

But as I was sitting on the 6th floor of a pretty brand new office space, clicking away at endless tabs and ever-changing pieces of viral content, I realized just how lucky I was to have made it this far; to be one of the lucky ones to have the option to choose. All my life I’ve wanted to work in sports and make something of my love for sports that my dad gave me; that my parents embraced for me. First it was playing. Second it was writing. Third it was tweeting. And now, it was the opportunity to mix them all.

I’ll never forget sitting in one of my mentor’s personal offices very early on in my post-grad internship at Turner and being asked: what is your why, what is your purpose? Looking back, that was the moment everything changed for me and was put into perspective; the moment I realized that legacy and gratitude were the reasons why I woke up every day ready to work. As a first generation Korean American and only child, I wanted to carry on my dad and grandpa’s long-tenured tradition of storytelling and writing -- it’s the least I could do. All those days of laughing, crying and arguing on the couch with my dad watching Lakers and Ducks games, the least I could do was see our collective dream through. How could I not prove to the world that our “house was bugged” every time we made a call before the broadcasters? How could I not pay back my dad for all the countless hours he spent rebounding my frustrations at the local YMCA? How dare I forget the biggest gift my parents offered me: the love for sports?

Everytime I think of those memories, I am reminded that I am indeed, one of the lucky ones.

You don’t know how old you are until you’ve finished $20 pitcher in a bar out in the middle of suburbia. There’s low-level beer pong, loud karaoke and a wide range of personalities -- enough to write a short story about. But as me and my roommate sipped away and won a few BP games, I was slowly reminded of all the moments — good, bad and random — that have led up to this point. 24. Mid-level job in a big city. One year away from a quarter century. Getting to that age when a lot of friends and colleagues start to get married.

But again, I’d say to myself:

“It was all worth it. We’re one of the lucky ones.”

The night I turned 24, I told myself that my Mamba Year (shouts out my favorite athlete of all-time) was going to be my best. In my head, I was going to approach this next trip around the sun like Kobe after the late 2000s: with focus and hard work. I don’t know how much of that was influenced by cheap tequila and double whisky shots, but there was something exhilarating about taking another step towards an appealing unknown; that feeling where you want to know what’s next but aren’t fully sure if you’re ready for it. My Mamba Year was going to be for financial advancement, social growth and taking one step closer to being an actual adult. At least that’s what I’d like to think. It’s still an idea, a concept I believe in. And as I catch up with friends from another time in my life, the concept gets clearer and clearer; the dream of getting all this shit together and making something of it, got clearer and clearer.

Recently, I’ve been having this dream of going back to visit my parents at my home in Oregon sometime in the summer, when the weather is perfect, and having this ease of mind. With some home cooked food in my belly and fresh air readily available every direction we take, I wondered how nice it would be to be able to tell my parents that everything was good, that I’ve fulfilled my duty as a son and made them proud. The older I get, the more I experience the ups and downs of being a 20-something-year-old, the more I realize that this is what it’s all about: taking care of the ones you love and making memories that transcend time.

To me, that’s the hardest mental transition we all face. To me, that’s what it takes to go from being a selfish young adult to be a grown man or woman.

I don’t know what the roughly six remaining years of my 20s will look like. Maybe I’ll consider marriage while I’m still climbing the corporate ladder. Perhaps, I’ll reignite the drive of wanting to prove myself all over again in a workspace that will surely be prepared to grow my ultimate ambitions. Surely, I’ll experience another set of valleys and peaks. The type that Marvin Gaye speaks of.

But I’m excited for how long I still have to write the history of my youth and set up the infrastructure for the rest of my adulthood. I’m excited because it’s still very much unwritten. I’m excited because I still have so much further to go. Because there just might be one more cross coastal trip I wasn’t waiting for.