2020+2021
In last year’s reflection, I wrote how 2019 was a bit of a blur (as was 2018). If only I knew, if only we all knew, what this year would have in store. I wrote about ending 2019 in a very transitional space, between feeling out the new role at Google and figuring out what was next for me. I had hoped for more clarity and direction in 2020, and while I feel like I made some progress I’m definitely not quite there yet.
January 2020 started off much better than the year before as I didn’t have the flu. I spent the month doing a number of social catch-ups, several meetups with Rands Leadership Slack folks and ex-Blue Apron people, and continuing my birthday traditions of a fancy dinner the night of (Eleven Madison Park this year with Max) and the 9th Annual Clinelympic Games the following weekend. I leaned hard into my resolution of finding the best cinnamon roll in NYC as I compiled a list of ~80 bakeries (and made it through 21 by the end of the month). I also started dating again after having taken the end of 2019 off.
Professionally, I led another workshop for NYC’s Tech Talent Pipeline about helping college students get jobs in tech, as well as a product workshop for the Museum Technology Track members at New INC. I started my second year of mentor office hours there as well, and hosted an AMA on First Round’s network. With my team at Google, I started proposing changes based on what I had seen the first few months. I introduced some cultural and process changes, as well as continued to work with my product and design counterparts on the roadmap for the year and defining the metrics we wanted to track.
February saw travel, with the return of the now-annual ski trip to upstate NY (although due to very poor conditions I did no actual skiing) immediately followed by another yoga and surf trip to Nicaragua with LoveSurfYoga. My bestie Kyle tagged along, so we took a few days in advance to explore Ometepe and Managua before meeting up with everyone else in Miramar. It was an amazing trip, Nicaragua was a lot less touristy than Colombia or Costa Rica, the group was really nice, and I picked up surfing again! I had a bad experience the first time I surfed in 2015 and didn’t think it was for me, but this go around was a lot of fun and I was okay at it. The next time I’m at a warm sunny beach (🤞🏻2021) I definitely want to do it again.
I got back from travel to catch the opening of Countryside at the Guggenheim (which was super cool), as well as have some working sessions on a new climate related project with my friend Erin. I got a new tattoo, with the amazing design by Jack Poohvis. I had just given some loose inspiration (arm band, geometric, space), and didn’t see it until I showed up. I love it and it turned out great.
The pandemic started for me on March 9th, the first day that all Google employees in NYC were strongly encouraged to work from home. I was walking to work and considered myself low risk, so I kept coming in until they closed the office on March 11th. I remember talking to Patricia in February in Nicaragua about her cancelling her upcoming trip to Taiwan, and someone on my team at work had family near Wuhan, so prior to March I knew things were going to be bad but was still very surprised at the speed everything hit. The days after the 11th were very bizarre, as NYC hadn’t yet started lockdown but it was very clear we needed to. I went to get takeout a few times, and just felt very much in fear and confused that the general public was just acting like everything was normal when it was clear to me that things were not.
That changed when lockdown started on March 22nd and the rest of the city started quarantining. It took me a while to settle into a routine. The first few weeks I was very fearful of going outside (at the time it wasn’t clear how safe that was), and I started wearing a face covering in late March. I was only leaving my house to go running a few times a week, and to pick up breakfast at my local spot that didn’t have any online ordering. I started back up with Blue Apron and Mosaic Foods for the majority of my meals, and did delivery a couple times a week to support those restaurants that were still open.
I kept my morning workout, as I was mostly either running or doing bodyweight workouts that were fine to do at home, but I no longer had my walking commute. I experimented with just pacing in my apartment at the start, but once I felt more comfortable going outside tried walks around the neighborhood. This was really hard for me to keep up, as I discovered I need either a social reason or some other purpose when I walk and “just move around for 30 minutes” wasn’t enough. I ended up settling into a routine where I skipped my morning “commute” and in the evening would do a yoga session after I was done working.
Fortunately, it was a fairly easy adjustment for my job and my team to switch to working from home. Luckily no one I worked with or their immediately family got sick, and our team dynamics transitioned well enough to virtual after we had a few sessions to reset expectations about how we should work together. I did very much get Zoom fatigue (well, Meet fatigue given it was Google), as I was usually in meetings at least half the day. I would finish my yoga session and after making dinner just didn’t really have any energy to do much of anything else. I got back into gaming, jumping on the Animal Crossing bandwagon and also playing Forza Horizon 4 and Motorsport Manager. The climate project I was planning with Erin, which was intended to be an in-person event series, unsurprisingly ended up getting put on indefinite hold.
And as if those life changes weren’t enough — adjusting to the new normal of quarantine, Zoom life, and finding comfort in a well structured routine — I had also started a job search. Towards the end of February, Stripe reached out to me for a role. Stripe is one of my dream companies, and while I was excited to potentially interview I was still unsure about leaving Google so early (at the time only six months in).
Through interviewing with them in March, I realized that while there were many things I liked about Google I didn’t feel as if I was making any progress towards anything. I realize that was part of why I took the job, but after being in it a few months I saw that it was going to be very difficult to make the kind of progress I wanted (either for myself or the product) that I wouldn’t have known prior. An opportunity with a different company came up in April, and after neither of those panned out I started actively searching for new roles during May.
May went by fairly quickly. I took the 8th off to bike up to Harlem, saw my friend Cici in person on her sidewalk (the first time I’d seen a friend in person since the lockdown started), and rode back through an empty Times Square. I was increasingly stressed/entertained by the nightly impromptu block parties happening in front of my apartment as the weather warmed. I took a couple Zoom portraits with one of my Polaroid cameras, trying to channel some creativity, which turned out well! Over Memorial Day weekend I met up with friends for a picnic in Prospect Park (my second friend hang), and the last week of May participated in a virtual scavenger hunt through Great Gotham Challenge. The scavenger hunt was one of the coolest things I did this year, that had us emailing random craigslist postings, dropping in on a business meeting, syncing up youtube videos, and a bunch of other really creative puzzles.
June opened with the protests against police brutality. I went to my first one on the 6th, and tried to go to at least one every weekend that month. I had only been to one protest before, in 2014 after the murder of Eric Garner, and this time it was incredibly empowering to help give voice and support for a cause after weeks of being frustrated at the failure of our government to respond to the pandemic. The conversation around defunding the police were new to me, but given how broken and unaccountable the system is reform will not be enough.
I went to protests on the weekends through June and into July, but after the failure of the city council to cut the NYPD’s budget (despite every other department making significant cuts due to the whole pandemic situation) I lost some motivation to get out on the streets. I still supported through small donations to organizers, and continued to push for more equity and inclusion through my department at work and the companies I was interviewing at.
With the energy of the protests and the arrival of summer, life started to pick up significantly in June around the city. Weekends consisted of protests, a renewed cinnamon roll search biking to neighborhoods near and far, dating had picked back up, and the leads on my job search started to turn into interviews. I began coaching with Merit, and signed up to mentor with Code2040 now that their program was virtual. Code2040 was a model for TCAP and an organization I’ve had a lot of respect for and was really excited to be involved. Work at Google was fairly steady, as we were planning the roadmap for the second half of the year.
June turned to July, as I got my first COVID test (negative), did the second round of the scavenger hunt from GGC, and I moved into the final stages of interviews with a few companies. When I started the job search, I was looking for roles on the career track I had at Blue Apron, ideally something like a Director or VP of Engineering. I liked the more strategic work that comes at that level, and I wanted to continue developing my “manager of managers” skills. I was also connected with some very early startups looking for a technical co-founder, and as I got farther into the interview process for both kinds of roles I got really excited by the co-founder opportunities.
Part of it was a reaction to feedback I had gotten from companies where I didn’t get an offer, that I wasn’t technical enough. Taking a co-founder role where I’d be doing the majority of the coding would allow me to prove to them, and to myself, that I could do it. Actually coding was an area that I knew had atrophied due to my managerial focus the previous six years, but I was excited to take the design and architecture skills I had learned since and put to use myself (rather than providing feedback for someone else).
I realized too that I was burnt out on managing. Being in video calls all day and trying to keep a team happy and engaged during a pandemic, and at Blue Apron during all the ups and downs there, had really taken a toll. The chance to own my schedule and work with software, rather than people, seemed like it would be a breath of fresh air.
The final part that got my excited about co-founding was that in that role, I’d still be able to do the more strategic thinking that comes with a Director/VP role at a larger company, except now broader in scope. This was something I liked about owning the bar and one of the reasons I got an MBA.
One startup was quarantining in the Catskills, so they paid for my first visit out of the city since February to come work with them for a day. It was really nice to get out of the city and see some mountains and different scenery if only for a quick trip.
By early August I had made the decision to join ShelfLife as co-founder/CTO. Lillian, my co-founder, had done a lot of great work figuring out many of the problems craft food and beverage companies face when trying to buy their packaging supplies, and I was very excited to join her and build a platform to make that process easier. I set my last day at Google for September 1st and planned to join ShelfLife after a short time off on the 14th.
Later in August I started a pastry newsletter, Bun Stuff, after a friend suggested something other than my Instagram story to post all my cinnamon roll reviews. Outside of pastries, I started the process of buying an apartment. I had saved up enough for a down payment earlier in the year, and after talking with my financial advisor and given the housing market in Manhattan if I was going to buy at all in the next few years now was the time. My advisor connected me to an agent, and we started looking for places in the East Village.
September started with my last day at Google, which I celebrated with a meal in Madison Square Park from Atomix, and a week off where I didn’t do much other than bike around and eat pastries. I began viewing apartments and had my first official day with ShelfLife on the 14th. Lillian came to NYC and we co-worked my first couple days to onboard, and then I set to work planning out the architecture and requirements for our product. I finally started seeing a therapist, who I was referred to from a friend, after my goal the last few years of making that happen. Towards the end of the month I put in an offer that was accepted for an apartment a few blocks away, moving much quicker than I had anticipated.
October brought moving from planning to coding with ShelfLife, as well as poll worker training. I had signed up a couple months prior and got assigned a slot, and it was really interesting to learn how the elections in Manhattan are operated (as one would hope there are many, many, many checks and verifications for everything). I got involved with a discussion group around All We Can Save, a collection of writings on climate change, which was really great to meet new people (randomly, from around the US) and start building a community for myself on that. Towards the end of October, Lillian and I rented a house near Corinth, NY for the week to have a team-building retreat (and made some really delicious cinnamon rolls).
November brought the election. Earlier in the year I did some phone banking for the Warren campaign for the first time, and the weekend prior to the general election I did it again with People’s Action. I don’t think I changed any minds, and it was definitely hard overcoming my social anxiety of talking to random people on the phone about politics, but it definitely felt better to be doing something rather than just sitting around and waiting.
I also worked the polls for the first time. I was selected for standby, so I showed up at Javits Convention Center at 5am and was eventually sent to Washington Heights around 930am. The poll site I was sent to (with a few other standbys) didn’t need additional help but there wasn’t anywhere else that did, so we stayed and it ended up being a very quiet day. It was very gratifying helping people figure out their ballots and make sure their voice was heard, and I hope to do it again next year.
My mortgage approval came through shortly before Thanksgiving, and I could then move to the co-op board approval phase. I had planned on spending Thanksgiving alone, and ordered a fancy feast from Aquavit, the person I was dating at the time ended up changing her plans so we were able to enjoy it together. My sister and brother-in-law were in town the Friday afterwards, so we got lunch in the park and it was really nice to see them for the first time since Christmas in 2019.
December flew by. We were gearing up to launch our beta for ShelfLife at the beginning of 2021, and there was a ton of work left to do so I was very focused. There were a couple of virtual holiday parties, one of which I learned a magic trick at, and another virtual scavenger hunt with GGC. I had my co-op board interview and was approved, so started planning to close in January. I spent Christmas by myself, working part of the day and ending with a Zoom call with the family. It was the first time we had all talked together since early in the pandemic, and it was nice to spend that time together even if it was virtually. It was interesting comparing this year’s Christmas alone in NYC to the year prior — 2019 at least felt like there were things to do, whereas this year the combination of having a lot of work to do and no real obligations to go out meant I didn’t do much to actually celebrate. I’m fine with that, and better that those two things lined up this year as opposed to another, but it still felt somewhat unusual for the holidays to be a bit of a non-event.
A Year Without Texture
I look back on this year, and what stands out for me the most in my personal experience of it is the lack of any texture. Once I settled into a routine in early May, I pretty much stuck with that day in and day out for the rest of the year. My daily pattern, occasionally interrupted with an excursion to a different neighborhood, was kept mostly the same. Compared to any other year, where meetings, parties, travel, the general hum of life and living would have forced breaks or interruptions or adaptations, this year was lacking. Spending almost all my time in my apartment, getting deeply familiar with each and every square inch that I seemingly never noticed since moving in the year prior, makes time all run together.
Despite that, the structure and discipline worked really well for me. I think this year showed me what my defaults are, in that I’m perfectly content to not have social obligations that require me leaving my apartment and to do more or less the same thing day after day. I’ve enjoyed not having to think too hard about what I’m doing tomorrow, or later this week, or later this month, and oftentimes felt like this year forced me to lean into a way of living that I almost prefer. I do have some concern that whenever it is that the texture of life begins to resemble something close to pre-pandemic that I may struggle with changing my routine, but then again if this year has taught me anything it’s that I can adapt fairly easily.
I also recognize that I was very fortunate and did not have to be concerned about my finances, my job, my health, or my family whatsoever this year and only had to focus on my own well-being. I’m incredibly grateful for that and realize how different things would have been if that was not the case.
Even with the lack of texture, I could still think of 62 accomplishments for the year. My top accomplishments were getting more active and civically engaged (which I hope to continue with) and finding a new job. That number is very surprising to me, as it definitely didn’t feel like I did that much, but I think I also never stopped to actually check. This was not a year where I felt like I had many moments of reflection.
I came into 2020 hoping for more clarity and direction, and without that time to reflect and focusing more on getting through pandemic life I did not get where I wanted on this. I don’t feel like I have any better sense than last year of what I want my life to be about. I did get a better picture on how I want to be spending my time and my work for the near term at least, but I still feel a bit directionless on my life’s purpose.
I think that’s okay! It was a hard year to do any sort of long term thinking or planning, particularly when my energy and capacity was so diminished for much of it. Having some direction in the short term, which wasn’t as much the case last year, will be helpful.
Beyond trying to figure out my purpose this year, I hoped to build more community. While I did develop some new ones (my climate circle, ShelfLife) I lost others. There’s the acquaintances and friends who I no longer see as often because there just aren’t casual events anymore, existing communities like the YCC at the Guggenheim where we don’t meet as often, or potential communities like the climate project I had worked on early in the year that didn’t pan out.
I hoped to improve my photography practice, and while I did get pretty good at pastry photography (aided heavily by the cameras in the Pixel 4 and 5) I hardly used my instant cameras at all. It was one of the many things this year that I couldn’t find the energy to give to it.
It was a year of dashed hopes and changed expectations for us all, I’m not unique in this. But for me, the feeling of being directionless and in transition that I came into 2020 with hasn’t left. This isn’t good or bad. It’s not something I have any assurance 2021 will bring resolution to, but here’s to hoping that for me and for us all that we’re able to move out of “just getting by” mode this year.
Resolutions from 2020
Figure out what I want to do in life
Woof, really just picking some easy goals to start off here. As mentioned above, not something I made good progress on this year. This is still something I want to devote energy and space to this coming year, but not with a specific “end” in mind.
Start regularly seeing a therapist
I did it! I started seeing a therapist in September, and have been doing mostly weekly sessions since and so far it’s going well. The timing of September was making sure I had some support before going into a co-founder relationship, which fortunately hasn’t need much discussion but therapy has been very helpful working through love/dating/relationship things (as one could expect).
Don’t buy any material things (with some exceptions)
I mostly did it! The exceptions I laid out last year were toiletries/consumables, film, replacement parts and the Pixel 5. I was not taking near as many photos so I didn’t end up buying any film, I did buy the Pixel 5, and there were a handful of other things that came up during the year that I felt like broke the spirit of the resolution:
- A personal thermometer
- Masks (I ended up buying 9 throughout the year, and had three given to me)
- Socks (I was trying to even out the # of outfits I could wear before doing laundry and I was short on socks)
- A trowel and a ball of string in a failed attempt to make a bokashi compost box (I couldn’t find any hardwood ash that was remotely affordable so didn’t end up completing the project)
- Home odds and ends (some sticky hooks to replace ones that had fallen off, floor protects for my chair legs, hair ties for an attempt at DIY masks, and a security bit set to remove a fixture from a projector that I owned)
- A number of books (probably 8 or 9)
- A number of things for a work from home setup (noise cancelling headphones, a monitor, keyboard/mouse, a dock, and cabling)
I think it’s interesting to keep note of all the things I actually bought, and given the unpredictability of the year the WFH/health/home things I feel are a bit of a pass. I did try to WFH for a few months without a good setup, and I was definitely not as productive (and my body was not as appreciative).
I also kept a list of things I wanted to buy but didn’t, which is much longer and I won’t spare you here. Keeping this list actually helped me not feel so much FOMO of not buying it, and looking back now I can see if there’s things I actually needed or not. At this point, if I can go 6+ months without it, do I really need it?
I’ll probably keep the spirit of this going as a regular thing, and try to be much less impulsive and much more considerate when bringing new objects into my home. It’s been a good practice, and much easier to keep going now that I’ve started (and I probably won’t be alone).
Find the best cinnamon roll in NYC
I’m going to call this one complete. I officially reviewed 78 cinnamon rolls (or pastries that attempted to be cinnamon rolls, let’s be honest the difference between a bun and a roll isn’t clear), based on all the information I could glean from every corner of the web about places in NY that might serve cinnamon rolls. Food was definitely something that helped keep my spirits up throughout this year, and this quest in particular probably did more for my mental well-being than I give it credit for. It led me to all sorts of tasty pastries around the city, gave me an excuse to bike near and far all summer since restaurants were about the only thing open, and gave me a much deeper appreciation for all the different neighborhoods in NYC.
There are still a handful of locations that I haven’t reviewed for mostly pandemic related reasons (generally they haven’t reopened or a roll isn’t on their menu anymore), but I can confidently tell you my favorite is the cinnamon roll at Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery in the West Village. There are many close contenders, but you’ll need to subscribe to Bun Stuff to find out.
Fitness Stats
My fitness routine was one of the things that helped me get through the year, and it definitely shows in the numbers.
I ran 600.04 miles (up from 117.04 last year), with an average pace of ~7'56"/mi (down from ~8'30"/mi last year). This was the most I’ve ever run in a year (even more than when I trained for a marathon in 2009), and I ran 144 times. I continued my routine from last year and ran 3x/week almost the entire year, with the most miles in December at 68.89mi (up from last year’s peak in Dec of 45.03mi).
I worked out 389 times (up from 100 last year), with 145 strength training workouts and 244 yoga workouts (up from 78/22 last year) totaling 13,274 minutes (up from 2,989 in 2019). This was all on the Nike Training Club app, and doesn’t include classes or workouts/surfing on my Nicaragua trip. I had workouts logged all year, with the most workouts in May at 40 (up from 23 in November of last year).
I took 141 CitiBike trips this year (up from 137 last year). This came out to 299 miles (starting at 1439 total miles at the beginning of the year and ending at 1738, up from 150 last year). I rode CitiBike about as often as in 2019, but for nearly twice as many miles. I obviously wasn’t getting out as much, but CitiBike has been my preferred way to get around (and lots of trips into Brooklyn or uptown making up for my short trips in 2019).
Blog Posts/Newsletters
I wrote two posts last year on Medium, my 2019 year in review post and a comparison of free video conferencing solutions. For all my posts including prior years, I had 1238 views, 595 reads, and 6 fans (down from about 1550 views, 871 reads, and 10 fans in 2019). My year in review post got about a third of total views for all my stories.
With Bun Stuff, I wrote 20 posts this year. The newsletter has 59 subscribers and my average post has ~50% open rate and each post gets slightly more views than I have subscribers (some people open multiple times, I’m not going to complain). The most viewed post by far was (unsurprisingly) The Best Cinnamon Roll in NYC with 471 views.
Coding Stats
I was much more active on GitHub this year, and you can pretty clearly see when I started work on our app for the new job. I made 258 contributions this year (up from 129 last year). On Google’s internal version control system I had a handful of contributions (probably less than 10), due to my mostly managerial focus and not as much time to code myself. Getting back into GitHub and open source has also been fun, I’ve found (and fixed) several bugs with various libraries and it’s nice to feel like part of a broader engineering community even if I’m currently a team of one.
Books
I read 34 books this year, down from 49 last year. The lack of a commute reduced a lot of the time I would otherwise be listening to books, but I still felt like I read a fair amount. You can view the full list here, but some of my favorites in no particular order:
- All We Can Save, edited by Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson — a collection of writings by women about climate change, this book was inspiring and humbling and refreshing and a whole roller coaster. Climate change is the issue of our time, and it was great to hear the perspectives from so many different women. I think the biggest takeaway was how awesome it is that we are alive now, at arguably the most important time in humanity, where we can make such a difference.
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong — this wrecked me in the best possible way. A letter from a son, to his mother, who cannot read, about his coming of age as an immigrant and discovering his sexuality and love and history.
- Kindred, by Octavia Butler — a black woman passes out and wakes up in antebellum Maryland. Reading this as a white man, there were a lot of similarities between this and The Handmaid’s Tale in terms of the narrator mentioning all of the micro-decisions that need to be made to navigate a world where you don’t have power and face significant personal risk if you make the wrong one.
- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, by Ken Liu — a collection of short stories, kind of in the realm of sci-fi or alternate history, but a lot of beautiful pieces. I enjoyed The Paper Menagerie, The Man who Ended History, and The Literomancer.
- The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin — I read the first book last year but finished the other two in early 2020, and enjoyable fantasy about a mother whose daughter is taken from her and the lengths she goes to get her back.
- How Asia Works, by Joe Studwell — a review of Asian economic development post WWII, and how different strategies in different countries played out. Very fascinating read both from a cultural perspective but also from a “this is how societies develop and increase their standard of living” angle.
I had many many more times this year where I wasn’t actively working through a book, which isn’t something that happened last year. I still did mostly audiobooks, which I don’t absorb as much from, but I have started taking notes of salient points while reading which has helped. I hope to do more reading of physical books next year to help balance this out.
Continuing on my general goal of trying to read mostly non-white non-male authors, I did ok. 55% of the books I read were written by BIPOC authors, and 55% were written by authors who do not identify as male. Not as good as last year, and something I can work on next year.
Music Stats
I continued to listen to a lot more music, up 45% over last year, clocking in 9,345 songs in 2020 compared to 6,261 in 2019 courtesy Last.fm. It was a lot of Holy Ghost, Disclosure, LCD Soundsystem, and Poolside — all artists that I’ve had on repeat for the last several years. Most of my top songs were from the workout playlist I use, but it feels like I mostly just had Disclosure’s new album Energy on repeat(and this DJ set from them is 💯).
New Art
My resolution to not buy anything that wasn’t consumable applied to art purchases as well, so unfortunately I didn’t add anything to my collection. That being said, here’s some of the artists I’m hoping to collect in 2021.
Erik Minter (left) had some work up at Google before the pandemic started, and I love the bright colors and very pop-art abstraction. Contrast to Maja Dlugolecki (center), who doesn’t have any distinct shapes but uses much more muted tones. If Minter is a splash of cold water, Dlugolecki is a slip into a warm bath. Nick Robles (aka Technicolor Dino, right) makes really fun and unique ceramics with lovely patterns.
Resolutions for 2021
The larger themes I want to continue into this year, of finding purpose and developing my communities, aren’t things I think make for good resolutions (or where setting a resolution will affect my progress on them). So outside of that, a few smaller but more tangible resolutions.
- Less meat
My carbon footprint is something I’ve been paying much more attention to, and given that I didn’t travel this year the next big component is eating meat. I had already significantly reduced eating beef/lamb, and want to extend that to meat generally this year. Go plants!
- More physical books
I’ve always had difficulty as an adult making the time for reading physical books, and something I want to change in 2021 partially for comprehension, but also partially for enjoyment. I was gifted a subscription to Book of the Month, which I’m looking forward to using.
- More photography
I bought a couple books on improving photography last year and just never did anything with them, so this year I want to get back into this hobby and take more photos (not just on my phone, and not just of pastries).
Here’s to 2021 with more texture.
Follow me on Instagram for more great pictures next year.
