Note: I originally intended for my retros to follow a “things I [did/thought about/learned/consumed]” format, but this week I found it a bit restrictive. It seems that each week I want to tell my story a little differently, and I don’t want to dishonor that desire by trying fit it into a pre-designed framework. So I’ll let it be more free-flowing.
should I move to SF?
Somehow I got it in my head that SF was a worse bootleg version of NYC, and that it wasn’t worth living there because it would be “dead at night” and “too tech bro-y”. But I’ve been spending more time in SF lately and … why do I love it?
The thing about South Bay is that it’s mostly populated by families, which means people are more reserved and kept to their households. Although I love protecting my peace, I could feel myself getting stagnant. I had a group of friends, but my environment was not stimulating. It felt like I had to self-generate the motivation to keep expanding.
SF, on the other hand, feels acutely more exciting. The city has the stereotype of being filled with wannabe startup founders, but the entrepreneurial air is partially what makes it more hopeful and invigorating. Even just walking around the streets and working in coffee shops made me notice how many young people there were who all seemed to be working on or growing something.
In fact, I’m currently writing this from Playspace, a communal creative co-working session that happens every week. I first learned about it through the creator of Quartz (the platform this blog is built on). This is my first time here and, immediately, I’m so in love with the space. It’s the type of energizing environment I find myself craving so often, and it just feels so good to have found a space filled with people who are all so rich with interests and creativity.
Additionally, the younger demographic and compaction of addresses make cultivating a community a million times easier. For example, I was invited to an at-home bar event, which was literally just a guy in his apartment making cocktails for a room filled with friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends… It was almost too easy starting up conversation, and each connection became a recursion of more people to be introduced to.
Anyways, I LOVE THIS. I already mentioned this last week, but the people and environment you surround yourself with is one of if not the most important thing to curate in your life. I still have a couple months left on my lease in South Bay but I’m starting to wonder whether moving to SF is the curation I’m craving for next.
questions for my future self
I feel like so much of my 20s have been defined by a series of questions I have for my future self that, though feel impossible to answer, I slowly start coloring in. Here are some that are top of mind recently:
What is work life balance?
I used to believe this was a false dichotomy constructed by those who couldn’t find fulfillment from work and needed “life” to counterbalance it, but I’m starting to find some merit. Not in the sense that “work” is becoming less fulfilling but rather that “life” is.
When I first started working full-time, I fell into what I think most would describe as a quarter-life crisis (maybe I’m still experiencing it now), where I start wondering: what else? I came home from work and it felt like I was wasting away my night so the next day of work could come faster.
Recently though, I’ve started investing more in my sense of fulfillment outside of work through writing and content creation. Now I find myself excited to go home because that means I can plan or execute my next creative endeavor. Now it suddenly feels like there is a separation between “work” and “life” - and I want more of “life”. But must that be so? Is this what I really want? I’m still trying to figure that out, and, importantly, in a way that isn’t dictated by commonplace advice like “don’t burn out” or “just pay the bills”.
What are the limits of diligence?
It’s both a blessing and a curse that I’m a pretty resilient person. In the sense that I will typically choose the more challenging route and I’m great at coping myself into sticking through difficult things even when, unbeknownst to me, I’m slowly chipping away. In this journey of mine to become more intuitive, I’ve introduced another variable into my equation of life where there used to be the more static just try harder. I know there’s value in diligence and commitment, but I’m beginning to recognize the limits to convincing myself everything is okay. I just still don’t know where those limits are, and unfortunately haven’t fully internalized the mindset that “letting go” might not always be “giving up” (I think … ugh).
What does it all mean?
I wrote an entire essay on what I think it means to live a meaningful life, but I think the question that still remains for me is the scale at which I engage. I know I want to experience and create for the purposes of myself and others, but to what end? Is it sufficient for just one person to have been impacted by my contributions, or it is more meaningful the more people I impact? And to what extent does the pursuit of impact take away from the purity of what I’m creating? All I wanted was to be more creative. And I’m more creative today than I’ve ever been. Yet I still find myself circling back to what’s the point?
other things I did or thought about this week
- Reconnected with some college friends - wow, my college friends were some of the most special and inspiring people. You don’t realize just how special the friends you curate after years at college are until you’re out in the real world and you have to start from scratch again. I mean this literally: they are the my blueprint standard of what I want all my future friends to be.
- Stopped bulking - bulking was probably one of the healthiest mindset shifts I could have done to pull myself out of the dangerous space I was in. I’ve reached a point where I feel like I’ve healed myself enough and I want to try reintroducing intentional nutrition in a safer way. I’m not going to lie, it hasn’t been 100% smooth, but it’s too early to really tell how it will go.
- Booked a trip to Chicago - I’m visiting a highschool friend at her college with our other friend in April! The three of us are getting reunited after so many years :,) If y’all have any Chicago recs PLEASE let me know.
- Constant realignment - there’s this notion that when you start down a path even one degree off course, you will completely miss your target by the end. I don’t always realize it, but it’s a present driving fear in my life that I may, at any time, be doing the wrong thing. Every step I’ve taken has been preempted by almost obsessive reorientation. It’s exhausting. But in a recent conversation with one of my cherished college friends, we talked about the idea of setting checkpoints as moments to evaluate your place, but then allowing that to be abstracted away the rest of your time. It’s like defining separate alignment and execution phases.
things I consumed:
Book: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
- Running takeaway:
- Learning more variety forces you out of just procedural learning of a niche and into abstract thinking that’s more applicable across domains. Specifically, it teaches you how to learn, which is basically a whole superpower on its own.
- My reflection:
- Creativity is really about being able to group multiple existing concepts together in an original way. If we only study one domain, we effectively limit ourselves to whatever is the most that’s been achieved already and to the procedures that have been habituated. Coming in with more diversity gives you the toolkit to cross-reference and connect new ideas together that actually increase surface area for a break-through discovery.
Blogs/Articles:
- On Becoming Competitive When Joining a New Company
- Learn How to Learn
- Specifically:
- I’ll probably write more about this, but all of this aligns with my recent mentality of “be prolific”
- The Intersection of Art and Technology
- This is a lot of what I’ve been trying to embody more recently - the idea of creativity for the sake of it - with technology being just one tool amongst many to materialize ideas. Unfortunately the event was waitlisted by the time I found it, but I look forward to attending the next time I can.