2021+2022
In last year’s review, one of the changes I had hoped that this year would bring was more texture. The day to day of life during COVID-19 in 2020, spending most of my time in my apartment and following the same routine, blurred the passage of time. While this year brought some small, but welcome changes to that monotony, that feeling of time compressing remains as I sat down to write this and struggled to remember what even happened this year.
January 2021 started with the launch of our initial beta ordering product for ShelfLife, which I had been working on since joining the previous September. It was exciting to finally have people start using it, and we worked on onboarding new users the rest of the month. I continued my birthday traditions of the Clinelympic Games with a pared down virtual edition followed by a happy hour on Gather Town, and eating a Michelin starred dinner with delivery from Jungsik. One of the nice things about doing it online was that I could have friends join who weren’t in NYC, so it was definitely one of the highlights of the year seeing people I love from all over in one space. I closed on my new apartment at the end of January with a plan to move by the end of following month.
February ended up being fairly busy, as we started fundraising for a seed round with ShelfLife. Work that month was split between that and making updates to our product based on the feedback we were getting from our early users. I was also trying to find someone to sublet my old apartment from, as my lease didn’t end until October, so between subletting, packing, and getting the new apartment ready it went by real quick. I finally moved in on February 25, and fortunately found subletters for my old apartment starting shortly after.
As I settled into my new apartment throughout March, the promise of getting vaccinated started to become more real as NYC quickly added more eligible age groups each week. My age group opened up on the 29th, and I was able to score an appointment in my neighborhood the 31st. There was such a sense of relief from the low grade anxiety around catching COVID the previous year (and particularly the bad wave after the holidays), and from knowing that in six weeks I’d be significantly safer. I celebrated afterwards with a donut, naturally.
April was a fairly quiet month. On the work front, we were in the process of doing due diligence with potential investors and continuing to add new features. Outside of work, I had started thinking about new communities (as I have for the last few years) and ended up joining the Democratic Socialists of America after reading more about their organizing work in NYC. Paying more attention to politics the last few years has definitely shifted how I view society and our indroles in it, and what kind of world we can create for each other, and I’m excited to get more active in that through the DSA. I also got my second dose on the 29th and started counting down the two weeks.
We closed our fundraising round in early May, co-led by Switch Ventures and Kindred Ventures. Lillian and I did a small celebration dinner at Kissaki and spent the rest of the week figuring out our strategy for the second half of the year. After that I took two weeks off, since I hadn’t taken a vacation since starting. I mostly hung around the city, taking advantage of my new vaccination status and going to museums, taking a hike, getting back into the gym, and seeing a movie in the theater for the first time since before the pandemic. I also got to see my sister and brother in law who were in town over Memorial day.
June brought the beauty of summer in the city, with an unexpected visit from an old college friend and a trip back to Colorado. It was the first time seeing my mom in over a year and a half, as well as my other CO friends in a long time. We sent an offer for our first employee to join ShelfLife, which was super exciting, and I also started advisory work with Stuf Storage. I’ve always enjoyed helping other people think through their technology challenges, and Kat and the team at Stuf have a really interesting vision I’m excited to help with.
Lillian moved to NYC in July, which mean that we could start working in person at Betaworks while we looked for our own office space (which both of us were excited to do). We also started focusing more on the marketplace aspect of ShelfLife, helping food and beverage CPG companies find their suppliers from the start (rather than helping them manage their existing suppliers, which is what we focused on the first part of the year). I also won a contest to get a sneak preview of Dominique Ansel’s new pastries, and did another really fun virtual scavenger hunt with Great Gotham Challenge like last year.
August brought the full joy of summer, as I caught up with friends, ran in Summer Streets, and enjoyed the optimism from a renewed enthusiasm at work. We found office space at a WeWork near Union Square just in time for our first employee to start, as well as interviewing for our second employee and attending our first industry conference in New Jersey. I finally started looking for an interior designer to help get my apartment set up just right, only…six months after moving in.
August brought the end of Bun Stuff, after 55 posts (every week for just over a year). The effort every week to find new places to visit and write up the newsletter crossed over the line from fun to work, and it wasn’t something I wanted to keep doing on such a strict schedule. I was happy with what it was, and left it open in case I want to post more, but since I had found the best cinnamon roll in NYC I figured the original raison d’etre was complete.
September started with a trip upstate to a Getaway for Labor Day weekend, which was really nice to get out of the city and see some nature. A friend got married the following weekend, but as delta started to pick up I pulled back on more social hangs. I also started my fourth year as an office hours mentor with NEW INC. We brought on our fourth full time employee and first part time employee for ShelfLife, and I was deep in working on getting the marketplace ready for a November launch.
The business from September kept up through October, as I led a workshop series for CUNY students on getting their first job in tech as well as travel to Mexico City and Las Vegas for different work conferences. Mexico City was for Founder Summit, where I met a bunch of other founders and had some really great conversations on the challenges of early startup life (as well as ate some very tasty food). Las Vegas was for an industry conference, and unfortunately didn’t have as much time to explore the fun parts of Vegas this time as I did when I visited in 2019.
November and December came and went mostly quietly. We launched the ingredients marketplace in early November, and proceeded to focus on getting more traffic to the website and planning the next set of features to work on. I had a small but delicious Thanksgiving at a friend’s house, and got my booster the following day. December I laid fairly low as COVID cases started to spike, and similarly spent Christmas at home (and a video call with the family to celebrate) and took the last week of the year off work.
2021 was a weird year.
I had a hard time remembering what all happened this year outside of major work milestones, and looking back there wasn’t that much that happened compared to previous years.
I think part of that was due to a shrinking of my social circle, between working at a much smaller company but also not keeping in touch with friends as much as I have in the past. It seems that the work required to maintain acquaintances and friendships has become too much for most of us, myself included. Less people around means less going on, and less inspiration for new things.
I talked about the lack of “texture” in 2020, and hoped that would change this year, but in many ways it hasn’t. Although I’m getting out of my apartment more since being vaccinated, the waves from new variants keep putting a damper on plans and some hope of returning to a more active social life. I think it’s also hard to appreciate and plan when there’s so much uncertainty and you’re having to constantly monitor a threat to your health every time you leave home.
If last year was adjusting to new pandemic life while still trying to hold on to what things were like before, this year was defining a new normal and for me that ended up cutting back on the number of things I was doing. This year felt like a continuing year of limbo, where I was stalled in the sense of building a stronger community or feeling a greater sense of purpose. It probably also doesn’t help that I didn’t take much, if any, time to reflect this past year.
That’s something I want to change in 2022. Creating more time and space to reflect and look back will help me see what I’ve accomplished, reset my intentions, and hopefully add some of that texture that the lack of made this year go by so fast.
Resolutions from 2021
Less meat
This was a really interesting resolution to follow. I knew that if I didn’t track it I wouldn’t have a good idea of how well I was doing, so naturally I set up a spreadsheet. The main reason for eating less meat was to reduce my carbon footprint, so I tracked the main protein of the meal and using this chart with some basic assumptions (eg what % of a meal was the protein) calculated the rough carbon footprint of a meal as well as what percent a given protein contributed to my overall dietary carbon footprint. Here are the resulting charts:
I knew that beef was really bad for carbon emissions, but it was surprising to see just how bad — it was well over half of my entire carbon footprint, despite only having it for 14% of my meals (and assuming it was 30% of the meal, with the rest vegetarian). One huge caveat here is that I didn’t track dairy or cheese, or if a meal contained multiple proteins. That would’ve gotten too granular and time consuming to track, so I likely wouldn’t have kept up tracking as well.
I think I was pretty successful with this resolution. Having to track it meant I was creating some real accountability with myself, knowing that if I ate meat in a meal I would’ve had to check the box in the spreadsheet. There were a number of times where I chose a vegetarian option instead of something with meat, or changed the protein I was going to get to something less impactful. I’m going to keep this up next year, and see if I can further cut down my beef/lamb intake.
If you’re interested in doing this as well, here’s a couple really helpful guidelines you can follow:
- Given an choice, don’t eat meat
- If you are going to eat meat, sub beef/lamb for fish/pork/poultry (in that order)
More physical books
I think I read a total of less than one physical book this year, which was finishing An Elegant Puzzle that I had started in 2020. This is still a classic case of me not carving out the time to do it, and so it doesn’t get done, and while I enjoy reading it’s not at the top of my list of activities I want to do when I’m home.
I also am still trying to catch up on New Yorker’s from the last year (who isn’t), so when I do bring along something to read somewhere it’s usually one of those instead of a book. I’m still going to try for this next year, but won’t be setting a specific resolution around it.
More photography
I did not accomplish this at all, and if anything took significantly less photos (either real or digital) this year. Looking through Google Photos, apparently I have 2497 photos from 2020 but only 1432 from 2021, and I only posted two photos to Instagram. Not great!
I still haven’t gotten in the habit of just taking photos when I’m out and about, or to remember a moment, or when I’m with people. I do enjoy photography and want to get better at it, but there’s still that small hurdle of changing my behavior to just take more photos. Hopefully a more specific resolution for next year will help me stick to this.
Fitness Stats
I ran 619.2 miles (up from 600.04 last year), with an average pace of ~7'41"/mi (down from ~7'56"/mi last year). This was the furthest I’ve ever run in a year (slightly beating last year’s record), and I ran 136 times (down from 144 times in 2020). I continued my routine from last year and ran 3x/week almost the entire year, with the most miles in August at 61.18mi (down from last year’s peak in Dec of 68.89mi). My pace started to slow towards the end of the year, my guess is due to a combination of knee problems and getting too much into routine. I don’t think I’m going to try and run that much next year and see if that helps my knee heal.
I worked out 304 times (down from 389 last year), with 146 strength training workouts and 158 yoga workouts (compared to 145/244 last year) totaling 10,708 minutes (down from 13,274 in 2020). This was again all on the Nike Training Club app. I had workouts logged all year, with the most workouts in March at 40 (tied with May last year). The decrease from last year was due to working from an office — when I stopped commuting, I added in extra yoga workouts to compensate for the activity but once I started commuting again in July/August I stopped those workouts.
I took 159 CitiBike trips this year (up from 141 last year). This came out to 241 miles (starting at 1738 total miles at the beginning of the year and ending at 1979, down from 299 last year). I rode CitiBike about as often as in 2020, but for generally shorter trips. I wasn’t taking nearly as many pastry trips around the city, and towards the end of the year more short trips around lower Manhattan.
Blog Posts/Newsletters
I wrote one post last year on Medium, my 2020 year in review post. For all my posts including prior years, I had 822 views, 342 reads, and 8 fans (down from about 1238 views, 595 reads, and 6 fans in 2020). My year in review post got almost half of the views for all my stories.
With Bun Stuff, I wrote 35 posts this year (up from 20 last year). The newsletter has 80 subscribers (up from 59) and my average post has ~43% open rate and each post gets slightly more views than I have subscribers (avg. 111 views). The most viewed post this year was Alison Roman is starting a turf war with me with 320 views, beating out A lil’ trip to the Greenmarket with 244 views.
Coding Stats
I was much more active on GitHub this year, though mostly continuing the pace I started when joining ShelfLife. I made 737 contributions this year (up from 258 last year). Beyond the work for ShelfLife directly, I also contributed code to stylelint, noticed, and active_admin_import; made README updates to valid_email2 and stimulus-webpack-helpers; and opened issues across a number of other libraries. As I mentioned last year, it’s been a lot of fun to be part of the broader open source community and I hope to contribute more in the coming year.
Books
I read 39 books this year, up from 34 last year. You can view the full list here, but some of my favorites in no particular order:
- Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer — this was recommended a bunch while reading All We Can Save last year, and ties in really well of bringing stories from Kimmerer’s indigenous upbringing into how we can better integrate with and care for nature.
- The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller — I really liked Miller’s retelling of Circe, and the story of Achilles and Patroclus is way more engaging than that. Engrossing and emotional and action packed and heartbreaking all wrapped up.
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs — this is a classic and canon on urban planning that I hadn’t heard about until this year, and I really enjoyed Jacobs’ views on what makes cities vibrant and her putting into words things I have noticed but had a hard time articulating.
- Unworthy Republic, by Claudio Saunt — if you don’t know much of the details of how the US systematically massacred indigenous people, this is a great place to start and part of our history as Americans that we should all be more familiar with.
- Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi — Gyasi has a great way of weaving stories across time together, and this one in particular about a family that emigrates from Ghana to the US and some of the cultural challenges first generation Americans have to navigate was very touching.
Continuing on my general goal of trying to read mostly non-white non-male authors, I did not do very well this year. 21% of the books I read were written by BIPOC authors, and 49% were written by authors who do not identify as male (compared to 55% for each last year). I read a fair amount of nonfiction this year, and something I can work on next year is checking to see if other authors who identify as BIPOC or don’t identify as male have written something on the subject.
Music Stats
I think I listened to a lot more music again this year as my listening minutes from Spotify increased 20% from 31,320 last year to 37,502 this year. The Spotify/Last.fm link was broken for a bit this year, so it’s reporting a drop of 24% to 7,192 songs in 2021 as compared to 9,345 in 2020 (see at Last.fm). My top artists looks pretty similar to last year though, with Disclosure, LCD Soundsystem, Justice, and Holy Ghost! making repeat appearances (Classixx bumped Poolside for the remaining slot in top 5). Most of my top songs were again from workout playlists, despite me trying to change up the playlists I listen to. Outside of working out, it was a lot of Disclosure’s Energy on repeat again.
New Art
I acquired six pieces this year, from two artists I found through Instagram (Maja Dlugolecki and Stephanie Scott) and a friend who recently started selling her work (Anka Haczkiewicz).
Resolutions for 2022
- Reflect every ~month
As mentioned above, hopefully this will help make the year feel less like a blur as well as help me check in on how things are going and adjust if needed.
- Take one photo every day
I need something more specific than just “more”. I started using Minutiae, which kind of helps with this, but want something more concrete.
- Become more fluent in Spanish
It’s been a while since I learned something new that wasn’t tech related, and I really wish my confidence speaking Spanish was better. I want to take a class this year and get to a point where I can easily hold a conversation.
- Submit emoji proposals for rolled pastry and city park
Did you know anyone can submit proposals to get emojis added? Two that I wish existed are a rolled pastry (eg a cinnamon roll — the only pastry emojis currently are 🍩 🥐 🥮), and city park since 🏞 (park) doesn’t really fit with the kind of park I tend to visit. I’d like to get these proposals finished and submitted for the next review later in the upcoming year.
Here’s to taking a breath in 2022.
Follow me on Instagram for more great pictures next year (like actually).
