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I saw it alone.

Throughout last year I had been missing movies I wanted to see outside of the really big ones (such as The Dark Knight Rises) which I had to see in IMAX. Doing so meant a 40-minute trip to Providence and back to meet up with friends. Any other kind of movie wasn’t really worth trying to cabal people together for, and so I didn’t see the other movies.

Going to a movie alone is kind of a loser-ish thing to do, but I’ve decided I wouldn’t let it bother me — or let me miss out on things. And this situation is the perfect example of what my life has become in the last month or so.

Since my previous entry, PAX East 2013 has come and gone, and while it was an absolute blast (even better than last year), it occurred simultaneously with my roommate moving out. He had been here since I moved in 15 months ago. I was so focused on preparing and getting through PAX that I didn’t really expend much thought on how it would impact me, but I probably should have.

I’m doing well, but it’s… weird. I enjoy the quiet, and not having to worry about being “on” when I get home from work, or about him hearing my alarm in the mornings, or any of the other negligible mental burdens I made up for myself. But side by side with that is I don’t have anyone to talk with, to passively share thoughts about work or movies, to talk about our individual hopes for the future.

I still have people to discuss things such as these, but nothing beats the immediacy of someone there in your home. And I didn’t expect that.

This coming month, I will be attending Google I/O. It’s something I’ve attempted the previous two years (and have looked forward to before even that), but only now have been able to do (tickets were announced for 2012 literally a week or two after I started working last year.) While I tried to swing it that I could be my company’s representative or emissary or whatever the title would have to be, I’m paying for the entire thing myself. And honestly, while I know that’s going to make this month very tight, I’m still a bit proud that I’m able to do it. All on my own.

All on my own.
-Andrew

I remember that first day and how incredibly nervous I had been, heck, that nervousness carried on for weeks. It was a big deal to me then, it was a complete turning point in my life. But I’d like to think I’m more comfortable with just being myself now. I’m less concerned with impressing people, or not being myself just to be “careful.” I am who I am, and the people I work with right now thankfully seem to like that person.

I guess it helps that I’ve been at my current job the longest of the three I’ve ever been at. MocoSpace was four months, SignedOn was a week (lol), but I’ve (thankfully) been at Nanigans for six months now. Heck I can even throw my only other non-software job into it (three months) and it’s still the longest.

I finally feel at home in my work, and you really can’t put a price on that.

To be honest though, I’m getting a little tired of all the “wow, it’s been a year!” stuff. Or maybe I’m getting tired of making a point of it. I think I’m doing it so I don’t have to think about this year, because I haven’t. To be honest, for this year there’s only two options.

I keep working at the fantastic place I’m at right now, or I won’t be. And that brings up something even more difficult for me to think through: is staying where I am what I want? It definitely is right now, but I can’t say whether that’ll stay true. On the other hand, do I not want to be where I am? Do I want to be looking and unsure of the future, but potentially broadening my field of knowledge?

It’s a tough question and that’s why I don’t want to think about it. This year will either end with nothing changing, or with everything changing. It’s almost an impossible decision.

But I’m making more out of it than I need to, there’s no reason to think it will be some major decision. If anything it’ll be gradual.

A representative from my company spoke at an event a month ago, and walking to where it was I was astounded at the places we passed. These were isolated locations I had been to over the past year: the convention center from PAX, the restaurant I said goodbye to Steph at, the restaurant my company went to the week after I had been hired in August (when I didn’t know many people there), the building that I went to the MassChallenge 60 second presentations with co-ex-SignedOn-er Max, and others.

I realized I had actually been to a great deal of the city, and can navigate it pretty well if necessary. I had been to many locations since moving a year ago, but I had never really “put it all together.” Even my place of work overlooks Quincy Market, which I took my mom to last May.

These were all important events for me, and realizing how interconnected they all are is an important step forward. Like, last year at PAX Steph and I wasted a good hour trying to find a restaurant, and even when I tried taking us someplace eventful we still ended up needing to look at a map. And my mom and I had to walk home from Quincy Market since I couldn’t figure out the subway system.

But things are different now, and that really excites me. I wouldn’t say I have a run of the city, but I’m actually comfortable here. It was probably inevitable, but it’s still surprising and gratifying to see it happen.

Boston isn’t some massive, impenetrable, suffocating place anymore. It’s all connected.
-Andrew

It almost feels like too much happened this year to really sum it up. To start, it’s worth remembering my state of mind when 2012 began:

It’s about 4am. I’m writing this post because I was laying in my bed for over an hour trying to fall asleep. …

My first train of thought is that I’m incredibly scared how I’m losing my memories of my childhood. …

Another train of thought is that I don’t know what my future will be, especially since I’ve started doubting my worth. It would have been amazing if I had gotten that job in California last March, but I didn’t. And now I don’t know where to go from here. When you have a million options to choose from, you get anxiety over which one you should choose. …

I had a meet up with some great friends from high school last month, and I realized that it was a drop in the bucket compared to what I need. I need to see these people more often. And I can’t at the moment and it’s killing me.

I enter 2012 more unsure of myself and my future than ever before.
- “Insomnia,” December 21, 2011

I was pretty down in the dumps and more depressed than I had been in a very long time. It didn’t help that it felt like my family was falling apart a little, as well. We certainly weren’t in poverty but we were trending downwards to the low end of middle-class.

Thankfully, my hopelessness didn’t last very long. On January 3rd I was contacted by someone at a gaming company in Boston about a web development role at their company, based on my resume. On January 17th I went to interview in person with them, and it went well enough that I received an offer later that night.

It was official, I would be moving from Connecticut to Boston. From the only home I had ever really known in a small town to some city where I didn’t know anybody. And I only had two weeks to do it.

Considering everything, it went pretty well:

Today, I went to look for an apartment.

I found one. I’ll be moving to Boston in six days.

It’s late. And I still don’t know what to think. But I wanted to get this out there.

I’m still scared. But in a way I’m also relieved. I’m scared of the unknown, and about half the unknown is now, well, known. That’s nice. There’s still a lot of factors I don’t know, but I’m going to take things one day at a time. Humorously, a big comforting factor on the way back today was realizing I have my own bathroom. I don’t know why that calmed me, but it has.
- “Split,” January 29, 2012

The move went well, considering it was only three days before I was to start. It’s weird, but I don’t really have any emotion attached to the memories of that move. It’s like I was straining to not feel anything, in case it would hurt too much. I had always imagined it hurting. The first time I helped my older sister move, I could see the how emotional it made my sister and mother. It was a little emotional moving me for my mom when we said goodbye, but it was less severe than I had been expecting.

On February 6th, I started my first real job and began my career as a web developer. I will always be thankful to Jay Jungawala for finding me and reaching out to me when at that point I held little else but potential. Even after all my talk, on this blog and in other places, after all of my designs (sixteen in total between this blog and the other site I started around that time, not counting the dozens of other “throwaway” sites/experiments) I was still incredibly green. I’m still amazed they took such a chance on me and allowed me to learn so much.

That knowledge and experience would come in handy, since I was part of the first round of layoffs for the company later that year. June 4th was my last day. I’m ashamed to admit this but it really shook me up.

It hit me like a tidal force. I went from being completely numb at work, to completely losing it on the phone with my mom. Now I’m back to “normal,” except I feel like I’ve got an anchor around each leg.

How the hell am I supposed to pay my rent for the next seven months? I mean, that’s the big question I have. I can maybe scoot by on my phone and utility bills, those aren’t cheap, around $300 in total, but rent is over three times that.

How naive I was to think that I’d be able to afford a decent apartment in Boston.
- “Shut Down,” June 5, 2012

Once again, I was at a very low point.

That’s just about exactly four solid months of work experience, and as I would find out almost the very next day, that’s seemingly all it takes to make you like catnip to technical recruiters:

The day after writing that post, I got a couple phone calls from some recruiting agencies, and have continued receiving calls and emails since then. …

Learning that, and the constant contact with recruiters, has obviously brightened my outlook. It now feels like I can actually fulfill “The Summer of Andrew” in a way more faithful to its inspiration from Seinfeld; in the original episode, George Costanza had been put on a three-month paid leave. I’m pretty much free to do the same.
- “Rises,” June 20, 2012

Just knowing I was wanted was enough for me. Personally, I still felt a little burned out from the whole experience and spent a couple weeks back in Connecticut enjoying my free time and considering my options. I was happy.

I agreed to begin working at another, much smaller startup on a contractual, part-time, hourly basis. I started on July 30th, and five days later it was shut down. There were about six of us there which I thought was a bit off, but the company had been around for two years so I at least it would be safe for

However the emotions I felt could not have been more different than when I was first laid off. I was relieved. I had begun feeling that working an hourly job was not for me, since I didn’t pay much attention to what I did in each hour (which I had to report) and instead focused on the result and getting the task done. My onboarding process was also less than stellar; it took two days for me to even get a kind of makeshift coding environment working, and even then I still didn’t have my own computer. In fact, the only real bright spot about the whole thing was I might Max Thayer, who’s also an awesome hacker dude who I can bounce ideas off of and hack with, and vice-versa.

On the fourth day I was working there, I got another email from Jay, who had apparently been laid off as well. He wanted me to come work with him at a different company. On that fourth day, I felt uneasily split between my feelings of obligation after accepting my current role and my desire to work at someplace better and with someone I was friends with. Thankfully, I didn’t have to make that decision, as the next day I was told the company was closing.

Since my last post, I started working at a startup that promptly shut down five days later. I was then contacted by an ex-coworker from my original company — in fact, the very same one who emailed me in January, telling my to come to Boston to interview. That email changed my entire life. His new email to me was less transformative, but similar in content. Basically, I’m working with him (and about five others from that job) once again at a new startup.
- “Further,” August 31, 2012

I’m still at that company, but we moved on November 10th to a new building with a lot more room. We own about 3/4 of the 12th floor, and the view is pretty amazing. It takes some more time to get to, but it isn’t a major deal… yet.

I truly love my current position. I love the team I work with, I love the stuff I’m able to do, I love what I’m learning, and I love the energy and how excited it makes me.

I enter 2013 more certain of the decisions I’ve made than ever before. More certain of who I am than ever before. I know that if for whatever reason I stop working at my current company, I’ll probably be able to make it out OK. In fact, maybe even better than before. This year I have seen the highest highs and lowest lows of my entire life — no other single year comes close.

Armed with these memories and experience, I raise my fists to the new year and say: “Bring it on.”
-Andrew

Like my other personal sites, each new design is always a perfect snapshot of my favorite design trends. This design is as minimalist as I could make it without removing crucial functionality, such as comments, tags, and recent entries. In fact, there isn’t even a search bar! …yet. I’ll be adding it to the sidebar soon, although I have added OpenSearch so you can look things up from your browser URL bar if necessary.

Also: hey! This blog has a sidebar again! For the first time since… Version 6, in 2007? That was way back when this blog was still on Blogger. Last year I said how I wanted to make this site “feel” more like a blog again:

I originally wanted it to resemble a more traditional blog, with a header and sidebar. But that got kinda sidetracked when I got the idea for this theme yesterday.
- “Version 9,” June 13, 2011

I think that sidebars are typical of blogs — maybe not standard, but definitely a recognizable trope. However, like with many such tropes, I really examined what I would need a sidebar for, and how I could take the basic concept and apply some modern considerations to it. So, the sidebar is hidden by default, but expands with a nice animation when you hover over a clearly-marked stripe on the left. If your browser is full-screened or maximized, this is also a “hot” area, which makes it very easy to use. The reason I went with this approach is that usually, you only need to read an “about me” section one time; the recent entries links and other things may be used more often, but they’re not absolutely crucial in a blog like this one.

Like Version 8, this design is header-less, and like Version 9, it’s also one-post-per-page. The comments field will always be below the post regardless if you’re on a “page” or inside the “post” itself. This makes it easier to comment, you just need to hit up the main URL and the form is right there. This wouldn’t really work if this blog was updated very often, but after seven and a half years I’ve come to know my own habits. (There is a slight UX issue with this approach though, and that’s if someone is on a “page” and copies that URL thinking it’s the post’s permalink. When I post a new entry, then that page could change. However, considering my readership and this blog’s to-date lack of virality, I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to negate the gains.)

Version 10 is also optimized for (modern) mobile browsers, so give it a shot. The way I’m handling the sidebar isn’t the most efficient though, but I know about it and will try to clean it up.

As far as progression goes, it seems that each new version of this blog makes the content column thinner than the last. Version 7 took up almost the entire width of the screen, Version 8 added slightly thicker margins, Version 9 made it about 60% wide, and now with Version 10 the content is always 600 pixels — unless you’re on a mobile device. Why 600 pixels? It’s less about the actual width and more about how many characters there are per line. Best practices say this is around 60 to 80 characters. This design skirts around the upper bound of that, but it’s still far better than before.

I’ve payed particularly close attention to typography with this iteration. In the past I’ve always stressed how important legibility and readability is for whichever new design I was launching:

But rest assured everything from the link colors to font styles has been carefully thought through. (In particular, the bigger font is for better readability, particularly for the Wii browser, which this blog looks like utter crap in before. However, on further research… it still looks like crap in the Wii browser.)
- “Version 6 Launched,” December 1, 2007

In particular I have paid specific attention to readability and navigation, keeping things as simple and streamlined as possible while highlighting what you came here for: the content. The entry and navigation text is big and has a high contrast with the black background, which I kept because I still believe dark backgrounds alleviate sore eyes after some time is spent reading.
- “Version 7 Launched,” January 31, 2009

I think on higher-res monitors that my old design had your eyes going left and right for too long, which can be disorienting and tiring.
- “Version 8 Launched,” February 13, 2010

However, I never really incorporated typographic design into the process, which is if not the most important thing with legibility than at least a very important part. Switching back and forth from versions 7 to 9 readability got a little better, but over the past several months I just grew more disgusted with Version 9′s font styling. I used Verdana at a mid-to-large sizing, and it was straight black on a background that didn’t compliment that color at all. Verdana is a fantastic font at small sizes (and I wouldn’t make a forum design without it), but it is very unappealing at large sizes.

I’m not saying I’ve nailed a totally perfect mix of everything with this iteration, but I believe it to be a clear step up. Most notably, I have now actually set the line-height. Instead of the default of 1, it’s now 1.5. I’ve already noticed how much nicer it is to read paragraphs now that everything’s not scrunched together. The font is Adobe’s new open-source “Source Sans Pro,” and I’ve also gone back to light-text-on-dark-background that versions 3 through 7 had. I think I wanted to lighten things up with 8 and 9 for the sake of being “fresh,” but after spending some significant time coding this year it’s clear to me light-text-on-dark-background is the way to go for anything long-form.

Speaking of coding, this design borrows quite heavily from Sublime Text 2 and its default theme Monokai (which was originally for TextMate.) I’ve thus dubbed this design’s codename as “Mochakai,” and even bought mochakai.com. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I’m just really pleased with how this theme turned out and figured others may want to use it too. It needs some more fine-tuning before then, though.

For as long as this post is, though, and as much as I like to blather on about how great my newest designs are (I like it a lot), it’s really not that important. I don’t have a gaggle of readers, and those that I do have I don’t think care much about stuff like this. But on the other hand, I care about it — I always try to make sure that my new design is always a clear step up over the last one, at least in the areas I feel are important at the time. And it’s that drive that has gotten me to where I am today, doing what I do today (for a living.)

So, reader, you’re kind of just along for the ride. But keep in mind, all this stuff directly benefits you. Feedback is always nice though, otherwise I’m just going in blind. I think feedback is also particularly important for this design, since I intend to use it on other sites and may also allow others to use it.

Haven’t written a post like this in a long time, feels great.
-Andrew

It’s less than a day until the official release of Nintendo’s new home console, the Wii U.

The release of the Wii was a massive event for me. A lot of that was based on the hype I had for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (which accrued for over two and a half years), but I was also excited for the control possibilities the Wii Remote was introducing. Back in 2006, the idea of not being constrained to buttons caused everyone’s minds to race with possibilities.

I am not as hyped for the Wii U, and anecdotal evidence seems to line up with that — not many others are hyped either. There’s a lot of factors at play here, and I can’t say I definitely know all of them, but I do have some ideas why this is.

• Whereas motion controls were seen as new and exotic when the Wii debuted, touch screen controls and dual screens have both been done before, and by Nintendo no less.
• Wii U is launching alone. I think part of the hype with the Wii was in being caught up with comparisons to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Arguments about video game systems are like flames, and with multiple pieces of news being doled out for each console, the flames kept being fanned. Even with the 360, which launched “alone” a year before the other systems could still be compared to those systems, since the systems and some key features and games had been shown before the 360′s release.
• I am excited to play New Super Mario Bros. U, but there is some Mario fatigue setting in. I bought and beat New Super Mario Bros. 2 on Nintendo 3DS only three months ago, and although not in the “New” series, Super Mario 3D Land was only released a year ago too. All three of these are “mainline” Mario platformers. There was considerable excitement for the original New Super Mario Bros. and its first sequel New Super Mario Bros. Wii because they were the first of their kind in many years. NSMB was the first original Mario game for a handheld since Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins over 14 years earlier, and NSMB Wii was the first 2D Mario game for a home console since Yoshi’s Island 15 years earlier.
   
  Nintendo is taking the same approach to the “New” series as the Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. series, and that’s “one per console per generation.” So while this will eventually work itself out, and we’re unlikely to see another “New” game until the next Nintendo system (although who really knows), it’s particularly damaging to the Wii U because its “New” Mario game is coming out after its handheld brother’s. NSMB2 should have been held off until next year, it is tracking behind its predecessors in sales and doesn’t seem to have been as much of a boon to 3DS, especially in the West which I’m sure was the priority (3DS sales in Japan are very very good right now, after a rocky-ish start.) Bottom line, NSMBU would have been a very noteworthy launch title (first real Mario game at a console launch since Super Mario 64 16 years ago, and first “New” Mario since 2009′s NSMB Wii), but right now, it’s “just another Mario,” which is very bad for the flagship hype-worthy title. (NSMBU is to Twilight Princess as Nintendoland is to WiiSports.)
• Mario games do not exhibit the kind of hype a Zelda game does (speaking both personally and generally.)
• The tech press has shifted from excitedly covering products from general consumer electronics companies and started sipping the Silicon Valley Kool-aid a little much. There’s been a lot made over “the death of consoles,” because with the tech press, new tech always has to kill the old tech. Whether this comes to pass is impossible to discern, however I will say that if anything, the OUYA validates the core console approach: a boxed set of hardware that isn’t updated until several years after release (as opposed to smartphones, which are updated at least once a year), providing a standard baseline for developers. Operating systems may change and become homogeneous (hey, remember “one console future!” from a few years ago? Whatever happened with that?), hardware may become homogeneous, but the fixed-hardware model just makes too much sense for developers and consumers. For the console manufacturer it makes less sense, since they don’t get to pull off super-hyped launches every year, but that’s the trade off.
   
  The most peculiar thing about the “death of consoles” position, I think, is that this assumes iOS and Android and smartphones and tablets will keep growing exponentially forever. “Apple sold 100 million iPad 6′s in one day!” makes headlines precisely because it’s so phenomenally unsustainable. Several years ago, it was “social gaming” that was going to kill traditional gaming. Your gameplaying would be completely tied in some way to the social network you used, and that would somehow enhance the experience over a game lacking social elements. This didn’t turn out to be the case; Facebook and Zynga both have had some pretty bad falls from grace since their initial public offerings, Zynga especially.
   
  So right now, the hot buzz is “mobile games.” And several “grown up” games companies are putting games out for smartphones, so it’s the future right? Personally, I think, no. Smartphones may have a high install base (which will eventually slow down tremendously, nothing is forever) but to quote my good friend Chad Lofton completely out-of-context: “install base means nothing.” With dedicated gaming hardware, you have a guarantee that that device was bought to play games. It’s easier to figure out target audiences, and it’s likely much easier to extract revenue from them.

I’m not as excited for the Wii U’s release as I was for the Wii, or the GameCube. But that doesn’t mean the console is doomed to fail.

All that said, I am still excited for it. I think it’ll have a nice library when all is said and done, and that lines up with my gaming habits these days. I don’t know what will happen this generation, if it’ll truly be the last one (overall or for one of the three players), but looking back on the Wii, I think I’m overall more realistic of the outcomes. I entered the Wii generation with diamond-studded fanboy eyes full of hope and naivety, which gradually got worn down from years of first and third party incompetence in a couple areas. I would never say the Wii was a terrible console, nothing could live up to my hopes and dreams when I brought that box home almost exactly six years ago. But the bottom line is that I’m more of a realist now, and that isn’t a bad thing. There’s less hype, but less room for disappointment.

I expect this generation to be a good one, and that’s all. That’s enough.
-Andrew

I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I have, or lack thereof. Since getting my first job and moving to Boston in January, I’ve become far less introspective than I was prior to that. My traditionally-reflective nature is something I cherish, and part of what I feel sets me apart from most other individuals I meet. This blog has been a testament to that, especially during my high school years. Despite whatever the reality was, everyone seemed to be coasting by while I was trying to analyze every event. I was trying to preserve the moments.

It’s true that because I now have a day job I have less idle time, and most of my reflection was born out of that idle time. But that’s no excuse. I’ve realized that I have to make time. Since I can’t make it from scratch, that means converting some of the rest of my time.

Being reflective isn’t just about recording important memories or mulling them over. It’s about slowing down and taking a breather. Nine months have elapsed since I moved, I’ve joined three different companies, I’ve met many people I would consider excellent friends and peers. Yet it doesn’t feel like nine months. My fear is I’ll wake up one day, and I’m suddenly 30 years old, with nothing really learned or gained from my path there.

Above all, my past introspections have always electrified me towards the future. Seeing how far I’ve come, step by painstaking step, continually opens my mind to dreams I wouldn’t otherwise dare to have.

With all of this in mind, in November I’m going to make an active effort to change some of my habits and give myself more time to not only focus on contemplation of events as they happen but also other important areas I haven’t been able to give a satisfactory amount of attention to. I enjoy games 5% of the time I want to be enjoying them. Ditto for several of the books I’ve bought but have yet to crack open.

These changes include walking away from a few online forums in order to concentrate on my “home base,” Project Gforum. It means unsubscribing from a swath of RSS feeds and email lists. And it means boiling down my social network interaction to the bare minimum. My mind spends so much time in the digital world that it has become cluttered and hazy, without me being able to really “think” clearly and accomplish what I want to do when I use it. That has to change.

The key takeaway isn’t to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say, “these sites are OK to go to and these aren’t.” That isn’t the point. The list is fluid and will adjust as I need it to. The point is to recognize which avenues are distractions, and which are actually valuable.
- Andrew

It feels like, as a teenager, I was waiting for the signs of adulthood to finally arrive, and when they did they didn’t really let up. Entering college, turning 18, leaving college, getting a job, turning 21. Nothing really on-par with these life-pushing events really happens during the early-mid teenage years. Maybe that’s why everyone hypes up the “sweet 16,” prom, etc. But those are just empty calories and might just paint expectations for preparing for adulthood in the wrong way.

Just something I’ve been thinking of lately and will need to spend more time mulling over…

21 is sort of the definitive age. It’s really the last “anchor” that you know to expect as you grow towards it. Now that the final anchor is gone for me, I’m truly free to choose my path going forward. I could completely wreck my life with alcoholism now, if I chose to. Running with that thought, it seems like only negative paths have been opened as a result of this.

The challenge is to use it instead to enhance the positive paths I want to take. Sharing alcohol seems to be the norm at tech meetups (especially GitHub’s aptly-named “Drinkups,”) so even at the danger of caving to peer pressure, it might be beneficial to drink and blend-in to accomplish a goal. It depends on the crowd though, I’m absolutely sure most won’t care, but “most” isn’t good enough for me or for what I might want to accomplish. More than the benefits of “fitting in,” drinking can be a useful tool in greasing the wheel and getting someone more comfortable with me and vice-versa.

I’m over-analyzing this on purpose, but I just think it’s important to document what I think my thought process should be for events such as this birthday, which opens a variety of routes I could take. Unless something drastic happens, I’m staying on my current route and just enhancing it with the positive aspects.

Man, it’s late.
-Andrew

I’ve worked at three startups this year.

I’ve worked at three startups this year.

If you could go back in time and tell myself from January 1st that’s what would end up happening, and that I’d be living in Boston, basically on my own, do you know what I would do? I’d either call you crazy, or hide in my room. It still startles me when I realize all that I’ve done on my own this year. I’ve never thought of myself as being able to… well, live as an adult. I thought that sometime, in the far off future, I’d somehow grow into a mature adult. But never the immediate future.

When I was an early teen, that was true. But it was less and less true as I aged and eventually became a legal adult. That still didn’t change my thinking. I put up all these cushy barriers that let me ignore the fact that as an adult, I should be living on my own and doing my own work. I told myself I’d only have to worry after four years of college and maybe a full year “buffer” of applying to places. If you’re keeping count, I thought that I’d only have to “become” adult-like when I hit 23 years old at the earliest.

You know what else scares me? My programming skills, oddly enough. I’m not even a great hacker, but I realized when I was staring at some work code the other day that… I understood it. I didn’t know 100% of the codebase and JavaScript maybe has some calls I don’t know about, but knowing those kinds of things is “data” knowledge, not “processing knowledge.” (Think hard drive versus CPU.) I understood the program flow and how things worked, even if I didn’t understand a couple of the underlying methods. The Chrome Dev Tools’ console filled up with log statements, and I could understand it all.

It’s like when you first watched The Matrix and you asked, “How the hell does the Operator understand all that vertical green code?” And that was me with web development. But today, I’m the Operator. I’ve looked inside the black box and figured out its inner workings.

This is all to say, yes, I’m scared a little. Of the person I’m becoming, if I’ll be completely different from who I used to be. That is what I never want to happen, I’ve always viewed consistency as a mark of intellectual strength. If you like some kind of music as a kid you’d be made fun of by your adult peers for, what shows more courage? Standing up and saying you still like it, or caving and renouncing your childhood as “you didn’t know what you were doing?”

While I’m scared of all that, I’m also excited. Really excited. Excited enough to think of the future, when I’m running my own thing. And I know now that eventually, I’ll get there. I don’t have to learn everything today, because I can count on myself learning everything I need to and more on the path there.

Each day is one step further towards that day.
-Andrew

Basically, it’s been almost two months since I was laid off, and I finally feel like I’ve had time to pause and reflect on this year so far. I’ve tried to do so before, I’ve written previous entries this year after all. But only now has it sunk in a bit.

It still floors me I moved out this year. Like, I would have never bet on that happening when it did. I thought maybe at the end of this summer I’d have moved out. Maybe. Or even this December, after finishing my Associate’s.

And I’m surprised how well I’ve adapted. It scares me how well I’ve adapted.

I don’t exactly have the run of the city of course, and I’m thankful for my roommate — without whom I would have been completely alone in a city full of strangers.

This isn’t exactly a new theme in the world or on this blog, but Real Life™ is a lot more open-ended than school (college, high school, you name it.) You have micro decisions (what to buy at the grocery store so you don’t starve to death) and macro decisions (your next career move.) When you’re in school, living at home, those aren’t your concerns. But then, all of a sudden, it’s all you are.

Speaking of career moves, I’m trying to plan the next phase of my life, but part of me hates doing it because of how many plans I’ve made in the past, and how most of them were upstaged or never brought to completion.

Like, take last October:

The past week I’ve been focusing on getting my driving license, and should have it soon. With it in my possession, I now have two paths in the near feature.

The first, I get a job somewhere like Dunkin’ Donuts, earn minimum wage or slightly above. Save the money, pay off my small college debts so I can return in January. Go places, do things with my friends — would be a first for me, really, not having a license has hampered me these last couple years. Eventually move out, finish college and basically live the life of a normal 20-something.

The second, pursue a startup opportunity that my uncle is willing to invest in. Become an entrepreneur — which means not taking a pay check long into the future. Work late nights, worry over finances and deadlines and managing my team. Have my uncle breathing down my neck, or yelling at me that I’m not making a return quick enough. Probably even go bankrupt, like most startups do.

I never got my driver’s license. I never got a job at Dunkin’ Donuts. I never took my uncle up on his offer.

I thought by thinking of two paths that I would fall into one or the other. It never occurred to me that it would be neither. But really, that’s all you can do. Plan as best as you can; there will always be unforeseen circumstances, but you take them as they come.

I know that some day, I want to run my own business. I know I’d prefer it to be in tech, but honestly even the thought of owning a restaurant excites me. But yeah, a tech startup would be awesome.

I believe I now have a plan for how to bring this future closer. Instead of accomplishing it in my 30′s or 40′s, I intend to fight tooth and nail to at least start on it next year. If I were still in school, I wouldn’t really have the flexibility to plan things like this — but I’m not in school. I’m in the Real World™, and these decisions are mine to make, for better or worse.

I’m pretty open on this blog, so I’m sure I’ll talk about the finer details later on. But 2013 is going to be a big year for me. This year was already pretty eventful, so much so I’ve barely caught my breath.

There are definitely things that could happen which would prevent me from setting this all up. A sick or dying close relative, the tech market or the entire economy imploding, some kind of national disaster. As an adult now, those things worry me when making plans like this. But I still have to do something, even if it gets upset later on.

I can’t wait for the rest of this year, because I’m planning it to be one long rampup to my personal take-off in 2013. And I can’t wait to fly.
- Andrew