2022+2023
In my reflections on 2021 I talked about how the year went by quickly with a lack of texture, partly due to concerns about the ongoing pandemic but also because I wasn’t taking the time to stop and reflect. This past year definitely brought back more texture, which partly came from having a lot going on but also keeping up my resolution to take that time to reflect each month.
January 2022 kicked off with some time off work leading into my birthday and the 11th edition of the Clinelympic Games. This year was virtual again, but hosted by Luna Park which is basically like a giant game show and it was a ton of fun (and less work for me). I had an incredibly tasty meal out at The Modern afterwards for my traditional fancy birthday dinner. The rest of the month was fairly busy at work between trying to hire new engineers, working with contractors for some design and engineering work, onboarding an intern, and setting the strategy for the year. I also settled on a design for my apartment and started ordering everything and getting some of the renovation work scheduled.
Work kept up through February as we continued hiring, went through a brand redesign (what you see at ShelfLife.us currently), and prepped for hosting our first trade show booth in March. Outside of work I was finishing the majority of the interior design project, including painting, new light fixtures, window coverings, and some cabinet swaps. After one particularly active weekend assembling furniture, laying out rugs, and hanging some art with my friend Gaby, I felt the most tired I’ve felt in a long time.
I flew out to Colorado the last weekend of the month to catch up with friends and see my mom before a ski trip with some former Blue Apron colleagues, all en-route to Los Angeles the second week of March to attend Expo West with ShelfLife. It was our first time having a booth, with the new branding, and we had the whole team, and it was a ton of fun. I really enjoyed seeing all the different food products and companies (some of my favorites were Belgian Boys french toast and Agua Bonita). Three full days was really tiring, but overall very successful. I stayed the weekend after in LA to see some friends before heading back to NYC. There were a few other events I went to the rest of the month that made it feel like NYC is back, baby and that people were buzzy and ready to party. March was, to say the least, very social.
April continued the social trend, with a number of art events and catch ups with friends. I also took a trip with two of my best college friends to the Grand Canyon and Zion (a near repeat of a trip with my sister in 2013). Despite having been to both places before, I had a lot of firsts: visiting the Hoover Dam (it’s big and the Colorado River is drying up), canyoneering (I’m good at stemming), and hiking the Narrows (bring your waders). With ShelfLife, we hired our first full time person of the year to lead customer success, I kept interviewing engineers, we launched a major new feature, moved into a new office, I started a CTO group, and gave a talk at Ruby Boulder about adding RBS types to Rails. Oh, and my sister and brother in law visited at the end of the month.
In early May we revisited our strategy for ShelfLife to focus on building out more functionality for the buyers on the platform as we worked on ramping up usage. I continued to be busy with hiring and launching new features the rest of the month. While work was busy, I finished setting up my apartment and hosted an apartment warming party to coincide with my NYC anniversary at the beginning of May. It was so great to have everyone over and finally have the “this is my home” feeling. I also went to my first concerts since COVID started, dancing my butt off to Cut Copy, Hot Chip, and Disclosure in the same week. My sister had a notable birthday, so both my mom and I flew out to Chicago to celebrate with her. We had fancy dinner at Esme, and I also tried all the delicious cinnamon rolls near Rogers Park.
June kicked off with the first in person YCC Party at the Guggenheim since the pandemic began, which is always a ton of fun. I spent the first week wrapping up things at work before taking a long vacation to Greece and London for another trip with Love Surf Yoga. I met up with my friend Keyan in Athens for a couple days before meeting up with everyone else on Amorgos at a very nice yoga resort, Aegialis. Amorgos is a bit off the beaten path, so fortunately there were not many tourists and I spent the week exploring the island, doing yoga, and hanging out at the spa. After the busy first half of the year, it was much needed. I met up with my sister and brother-in-law on the way back through Athens for a trip to Meteora, and then spent a weekend again with Keyan in London before finally coming back to NYC.
Work ended up being the main theme for July. We started fundraising again formally with a trip to San Francisco to meet with some new investors and have a board meeting with our existing investors. I spent some extra time checking out Oakland and trying delicious pastries there, and when I returned I submitted a proposal for a “city park” emoji before the deadline. We had a new engineer start at ShelfLife, which also free up time that had been spent interviewing, and went upstate with the whole team for an offsite to refocus our strategy for the next few months while we fundraised.
After several months of trips and busyness at work, August was significantly quieter. I didn’t have any trips, and the city generally was more relaxed as everyone else vacationed. I started taking a spanish class through Idlewild, and work was focused on shipping new features and fundraising. Our summer engineering intern also finished, and it was great that he was able to help out and work on some impactful projects.
September picked up socially as people came back from the summer. We had a building party in our garden, there were a number of networking events, and most notably my co-founder got married in Annapolis! The ceremony and reception were beautiful, held respectively at the main church in town and then an event space on Chesapeake Bay. I finally caught COVID when I got back (from before the wedding but luckily didn’t infect anyone at the wedding). I had a very mild case, but spent the last two weeks of the month isolating.
I got cleared just in time for a trip to Mexico to celebrate a friend’s birthday the first week of October. We spent a few days in Cozumel eating all the tacos, snorkeling, and exploring Mayan ruins before heading to Tulum for more delicious food and beach hangs. While on the trip I was prepping for a board meeting scheduled for when I got back, where we unfortunately made the decision to let our team go. We were not hitting our business metrics and as a result had difficulty fundraising, and didn’t see that changing in the near term. It was a really hard decision, especially because we had such a talented team. We were able to offer a severance package, and my co-founder and I spent the last couple of weeks transitioning their work and thinking about our next steps.
The first couple weeks of November were spent regrouping and seeing what options there might be for the business (between continuing with just us, pursuing an acquisition, or pivoting to something new). I wasn’t sure how I felt about continuing on for any of those directions. Reflecting on how the last two years with ShelfLife had gone and thinking about what kind of work I enjoyed most, I did miss more of leading medium to large teams at larger organizations. There was a lot about the work I was doing with ShelfLife that I liked, particularly getting back into the code and building software as well as the challenge of trying to make the business work, but ultimately it wasn’t what I wanted going forward and the timing felt right to think about something new. I began to look at roles with other companies, and made the decision to leave ShelfLife shortly before Thanksgiving.
I went to Colorado for the Thanksgiving holiday, and it was great to see friends and family particularly given everything that I was thinking about. I came back and started the transition out of ShelfLife in early December while getting more proactive on searching and interviewing for a new role. Outside of work, I had a number of social catchups and holiday parties including a visit from my friend Keyan and his girlfriend for a few days in the middle of the month. Just before the Christmas break, I accepted an offer to join the Museum of Modern Art to lead an engineering team starting in January, which was a dream job in so many ways. It was a nice highlight to end the year on, and I spent the last week of the year at home enjoying it.
A year of doing a lot of stuff.
There were two very different feelings of doing stuff this year. With ShelfLife, we knew that this would be somewhat of a make or break year given what we had launched last year and how much money we had left. The first half of the year for me was building more functionality to improve our product offering, and the latter part of the year was doing what we could to bring in more money (through both revenue and fundraising). We pushed to try and make things the business happen, and it was hard work.
Socially I had a lot more going on as well. I felt great about feeling safe enough to get out and do more, like go to concerts and art openings and travel and try new restaurants, and really took advantage of that. In some ways it was getting back to doing as much as I did in pre-pandemic, but at the same time so much has changed. There was less of getting together with old friends, as some have moved or started families, but I also ended up making several new friendships.
Part of all the new activities was most people moving past the pandemic, but I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t have come to the same conclusion if it wasn’t for my monthly reflection. Every month I was continually surprised at just how much happened, both in things I did but also in what changed for me (in relationships, or what intentions I set, etc.).
Still, it was surprising to write this post and look back at where I was in early 2022 and where I’m at now. At the beginning of the year, the marketplace at ShelfLife was just ramping up and my apartment still looked like I just moved in nearly a year later. Now I’m getting ready for a new job that isn’t on the startup roller coaster, my apartment feels very much me, and I’ve got a bunch of new friends. Time is still flying, but the texture is back.
Looking forward to 2023, I’m excited for what the year will bring but much of it is still ambiguous. There is a ton of opportunity in the role with MoMA and I’m very motivated at the potential for what we can do. I’m looking forward to deepening some of these new friendships, and making new friends. I’m sure I’ll have some exciting travels (Bali in March definitely, and likely others in the year). Those are the only known things coming up.
Given that, it’s less clear to me what kinds of things I want to resolve. One thing that came from all the new social activity was more clearly seeing how sometimes it can be hard for me to express myself in the moment. I’d like to work on getting better at that this year, and not holding back as much. Related/unrelated, dating was a little rocky this year and it would be great to meet that special someone this year.
Beyond those two things, there isn’t anything specific that I want to tackle this coming year. I’ve had pretty specific resolutions every year since my first post a decade ago, so maybe it’s ok that this year is a bit more about the vibes rather than 3–5 resolutions I want to accomplish. I’ll still keep up some of these new habits like reflecting every month, but I think after 10 years of actionable goals it’s time to trust my feelings a little more.
Resolutions from 2022
Reflect every ~month
I did it! Most months I did a reflection within a week of the month ending. I went through Shine’s 4 Questions for Reflection and added miscellaneous thoughts I had about the month. I don’t think this helped the year overall feel like less of a blur, but it was nice to pause for a moment and look back on what all happened.
Take one photo every day
I met the letter of this resolution, but maybe not the spirit. I ended up taking a Polaroid selfie every day the entire year, which I’m honestly surprised I didn’t miss a day and it made for a fun year in selfies video (see at the end of this post). However, this resolution was born from a desire to take more photos while I’m out and about, and this didn’t really accomplish that. I think I might be forcing this photography habit a bit the last several years, so I’m not going to keep this resolution going forward.
Become more fluent in Spanish
I think I met this one! I definitely felt more confident speaking Spanish while in Mexico in October, but I don’t think I know more Spanish than I used to. I took two actual Spanish classes and started doing Duolingo, which was helpful for getting me a bit back in the habit but I haven’t progressed to areas that I’m less familiar with quite yet (specifically past imperfect and future tenses). I will probably take a few more classes next year but I feel good about checking this off.
Submit emoji proposals for rolled pastry and city park
Check and check! Mostly. I submitted a proposal for the city park emoji (you can read it here), which unfortunately was not accepted so you won’t be seeing it on your keyboards next year. I didn’t submit a proposal for the rolled pastry/cinnamon roll emoji because I heard that someone else already did (three people in fact). We’ll find out if they were accepted in the next few months, so keep your fingers crossed 🤞🏻
Fitness Stats
I ran 30.2 miles (down from 619.2 last year), with an average pace of ~7'50"/mi (up from 7'41"/mi last year) across 7 runs (down from 136 last year). I stopped running after January due to a persistent knee problem, and started doing spin instead. My knee hasn’t gotten any better, but also hasn’t gotten worse, so 🤷🏻
I did 106 spin rides on the Peloton app totaling 3600 minutes. The bike I use at the gym doesn’t have a consistent computer, but I generally averaged above 20 mi/hr for those rides. I also did 5 yoga workouts on Peloton for a total of 145 minutes.
On the Nike Training Club app, I worked out 148 times (down from 304 last year), with 120 strength training workouts and 28 yoga workouts (compared to 146/158 last year) totaling 5,495 minutes (down from 10,708 in 2021). I worked out a lot less since I was commuting to our office — part of 2021 was working from home where I was doing yoga to make up for not commuting. The remainder of the difference from last year is due to more trips where I wasn’t using the apps, and also when I had COVID.
I took 159 CitiBike trips (dead even from last year!!!), coming out to 202 miles (down from 241 last year). Surprising that I rode the same number of rides, but not surprising they were generally shorter (lots more around lower Manhattan and less into Brooklyn for pastries).
Blog Posts/Newsletters
I wrote one post last year on Medium, my 2021 year in review post. For all my posts including prior years, I had 479 views, 199 reads, and 2 fans (down from 822 views, 342 reads, and 8 fans in 2021). My year in review post got almost half of the views for all my stories.
I wrote one post for Bun Stuff, which remains mostly archived (I wrote 35 in 2021 before stopping). That post, a year-end post, got 198 views, with a 56% open rate. I still have people subscribing, so there’s now 93 subscribers (up from 80 last year).
Coding Stats
I had my most active year ever on GitHub, expected given the work we were doing with ShelfLife. I made 1,080 contributions (up from 1,041 in 2021). The very large majority of those contributions were for ShelfLife, although I did open/comment on some issues on @ruby/gem_rbs_collection repo and @evilmartians/ruby-on-whales. We didn’t run into as many OSS issues with the work we did this year as we did last year.
I gave a talk in April for Ruby Boulder about adding RBS type definitions to production Rails applications, which was a lot of fun to put together. You can see the slides here.
Books
I read 46 books this year, up from 39 last year. I also read 17,511 pages beating my previous record of 15,990 set in 2019. You can view the full list here, but some of my favorites in no particular order:
- The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow — by far the best nonfiction I read, where the authors take a broad view of human history and try to figure out how modern society got stuck in this current form rather than other times in history where experimentation and change in societal structures was way more common. I also read 1491 and 1493 around the same time which are great complements.
- This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub — heartwarming story about a father and a daughter, with a fun take on time travel and exploring the futures the could have been.
- Trick Mirror, by Jia Tolentino — I love Tolentino’s writing, and this collection of essays was no exception. I particularly liked the ones about growing up on the internet and how internet culture has affected everything, as well as finding your sense of identity amongst broader definitions for what it means to be a woman.
- The Expanse Series, by James S. A. Corey — I’m only up to the third book, but it’s entertaining action-packed sci-fi. I started reading after watching the TV series and wanting to know how everything resolves.
- The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates — beautiful story that does an exceptional job of weaving in Coates’ insightful views on what race identity and expectations mean for both society and individuals.
With my goal of trying to read from more diverse authors, 29% of the authors I read this year are people of color, and 42% do not identify as male. This is roughly on par with last year, and something I can improve particularly as I read a lot of science fiction from a few classic white male authors (the Dune trilogy, the Foundation trilogy, some Aldous Huxley) which accounted for a substantial portion of the books I read this year.
Music Stats
I did not listen to near as much music this year as I did last year, which I think was partially due to working in an office all year. My listening minutes on Spotify dropped by over half down to 16,835 (compared to 37,502 last year). My Last.fm report says I listened to 5,068 songs (down from 7,192 last year). Disclosure stayed my top artist, but the rest were heavily influenced by my workout playlists (which constituted the majority of my music listening this year).
Resolutions for 2023
- Take an improv class
I took improv in high school and college, and I think it did a great job of helping me get out of my head and live in the moment more. NYC is a great place for it, and it’s also a fun way to meet folks. Wins all around.
Here’s to being in the moment and vibing in 2023.
Follow me on Instagram for more great pictures next year that aren’t just selfie videos.
