Lessons From The Last Decade

I recently crossed into another decade of life. Thirty was an age I didn't expect to reach - I couldn't conceive of it - now that I'm here I appreciate the journey more than I realized and embrace the acceptance that time continues.

I have been alive for 946,708,560 seconds… In about 1.5 years that number will be 1 billion seconds. That's an infinite number of nine's in uptime… pretty good if you ask me :)

I am going to be quite vulnerable here (a relatively new skill) and I hope you find something that resonates with you, my email is open, feel free to write to me.

The biggest lesson from the last 10 years is that unexpected changes in life are the entire point. Following a plan with guard rails turns out to be a dull existence which predicates disappointment as crisis when life does not go 'according to plan'. Early in my adulthood I grappled with rejection from my dream college. It made me a bitter and frustrated person - I would spend the next five years healing those self inflicted wounds.

It is exactly when life does not go our way which produces motivation and I was truly motivated. I found different opportunities at obscure places which turned into amazing opportunities. From a Hacker News comment I spent a year working at the MIT Media Lab at Tulip Industries in between years of college. It all started from a (quite bad) email I wrote at the age of 20 —

That job kickstarted my career and I learned an immense amount from the people at Tulip. A massive thank you to Fuzzy (ben), Mason, Mark, and Amir at Tulip for taking me under your wing so early. By the time I was done at Tulip I could tell anyone about the internal memory allocators in the v8 engine in 2016. A big leap from some random college student taking CS classes.

I can't say my 20s were my favorite stretch of life thus far, certainly much better than my youth. I spent most of my 20s paying down mental and emotional challenges from my youth; I learned immensely from it and have been fortunate to grow, experience kindnesses, luck, and privilege. Advice is cheap these days - I won't be sharing any, however authenticity is in short supply so here is my contribution.

Another part of age and is having the wisdom to fix what you can about yourself and accepting the rest. I've been far from a perfect person and have made plenty of mistakes. My biggest regrets are around not keeping people and friends closer. Giving a real apology is a good start and I've given my fair share.

There are a few themes of growth I've noticed that are worth saying out loud.

Seeking discomfort

I lived a good life, nothing to complain about. I noticed that I never used my body or went outside for a prolonged period - I had no connection to the natural world.

In 2023 I found myself very comfortable in life yet empty. Despite enduring a global pandemic and the stressors it caused, I found myself with a career-changing windfall from doing my best work as well as a adversity-free lifestyle. No external (and sadly internal) motivators were pushing my growth. I am putting a nice face on this, but beneath was a sense of languishing, depression, and anxiety about the future.

The discrepancy between my material / financial needs and my mental / emotional needs caused a lot of distress. I found myself trapped in a pincer movement between two rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I was not self-actualizing to put it clinically - at the time my thoughts were full of dread: 'who will I become', 'will I ever be happy', and 'why am I not proud of myself'.

I stumbled onto a documentary called Two Years on a Bike. Right place and right time. I watched this documentary with bated breath. The adventure, narrative, cinematography - all spoke to me after three prolonged years of socializing at a distance and seeing my friends and co-workers exclusively over Zoom.

Ultimately I chose discomfort and to embark on a trial bike ride of 1,100 miles down the Pacific Coast along Highway 1. My route was from Seattle to San Francisco.

The ride was stunning but truly a mental battle. I was miserable, out of shape, way out of my depth and genuinely did not have a good time.

The ride represented a means to prove to myself that I am capable of hard things. The ride was physically painful and uncomfortable. I spent most of the riding camping outdoors. The mental component was different - I started every day convinced I would be unable to make it to my destination for the day - a consignment of failure to start the day.

To say the trip was exhausting would be true, except mentally rather than physically.

I learned that my mental state is a choice, and putting myself into a better mental state makes pain, discomfort, and adversity possible and eventually - enjoyable.

It took a year to forget the misery of it all - in the end I had a great time, and enjoyed it more via my reflections than I ever did on the trip itself. Type 2 fun was introduced into my lexicon.

Living generously

I attended Recurse Center not long after my thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. For several years I had admired Recurse from afar because I regularly saw their alumni posting brilliantly technical writing. Former co-workers of mine like Chris Ball were Recurse alums as well as some of the engineers' minds I most admire, like Raph Levin.

Recurse did not disappoint and in many ways I am grateful that I waited until it returned in-person in 2023. I was in the second or third batch since it moved from the virtual world to a hybrid model.

Nick and Sonali at Recurse have done such a good job of facilitating the community. Years of work compressed down into the self-directives. I want to highlight one, learn generously, and modify it for my own needs.

Living generously involves sharing the living energy you possess with others, it may take many forms. From sharing good deeds with a friend or stranger. For making yourself vulnerable at the right moment for another person. Suffering and sharing your challenges so others may learn from them. Most of all, it means giving your fellow humans your authentic presence, unrefined, with care and empathy.

We live in an age of increasingly unreasonable norms and expectations. Neither you nor I will solve these issues in their entirety nor likely in their constituent parts: does tipping solve income inequality?

Nonetheless, living generously involves orienting yourself around Dunbar's number - the number of human relationships you can actively maintain with full attention - and doubling down on it as a natural limit. I can't care about everything on the planet all at once.

Instead, I try to focus on what is in front of me, especially the people, by showing up and staying in touch. When I fail I try to correct those mistakes, reflect and apologize, and repair the relationship.

I noticed that living generously is not the opposite of selfishness. The key idea is presence, your presence undivided is usually more valuable than you can imagine - and has an unspoken yet immeasurable effect on the people around you.

It may involve noticing verbal habits or body language which signal we are not present, and might involve behavior change. If we internalize 'there is nowhere else I would rather be than right here with you' our actions follow, and we can cultivate great relationships.

Traveling for humility

Living in Japan was the most transformative experience of my twenties, and one I had not anticipated when I boarded the plane.

I have always had a knack for languages. Yet I found myself bumbling, gesturing, like an infant. The complexity of my interior world - the opinions, the humor, the nuance - became inaccessible to me. I was left with nouns, a handful of verbs, and facial expressions.

This is the healthiest form of discomfort I know. It is not fun. Not at first. But it can become fun. Primordial connection with humans.

Stripped of language you are bare - laughter, frustration, hunger, warmth. It's unlikely for race, politics, religion to be prejudice when you are pointing at a menu item with an apologetic smile - while the person across the counter is pointing back and laughing with you, not at you (then again how would I know the difference).

I found more warmth and connection in my most linguistically helpless moments than in years of speaking English and living in the United States. I found it in a tea farm in some forgotten Japanese village, and on the side of the road in no-where California.

Traveling to be humbled is a recurring theme for me. It is not masochism. It is the fastest shortcut I've found to shaking off the noise, the identity performance, and the accumulated self-seriousness of life.

You cannot be precious about yourself when you are rationing water and your feet hurt and you still have 24 km to go on a hike in a country where you don't speak the language and don't know a soul.

Cultivating yourself, then others

The order matters: yourself then others. I spent the better part of my twenties attempting to show up for others without caring for my own well-being. It doesn't work. You cannot pour from a cup you haven't filled - not sustainably, not without consequence. The consequence for me was a kind of quiet rage against myself for the inability or unwillingness to care for myself in the manner I was willing to care for others.

The unglamorous work of my twenties was learning to fill my own cup. Therapy helped as well as journaling when I could find the motivation. Being exposed outdoors helped the most. Getting on a bike and being miserable for 23 days. Sleeping on dirt most nights without a tent. All of it slowly taught me the difference between discomfort (temporary) and suffering.

If there was only one message to myself 10 years ago, it is this:

The inner work is the outer work.

The time you invest to know yourself, being honest with yourself, sitting with uncomfortable truths - all compound. Not quickly. But they compound.

As I grow in age feeling, for the first time, like a person I would want to know.