i'm working now!

01 Mar, 2024

update! I have a job at Fastly now! And that feels so insane for me to write that sentence!

what. a. year. The lamenting parts I've indeed written about and to have gone from that to working is surreal. As of the time of this writing, it's my third week and to be sitting at a desk using nvim and scouring C and Rust codebases is such a contrast to just a few months prior when I was living out of capsule hotels and walking half of Tokyo most of December. That dream state where I was just dragging interviews along and juggling timezones (and forgetting about said timezones last-minute and having to take an interview last-minute onboard the JR Yamanote line back to Shimbashi).

This is really just meant to be a short life checkpoint and an open reflection on the arduous process it took to get here. What felt like a winding road with no end in sight for the longest time. A proper remembrance and snapshot of this time so that I don't just continue on as if nothing has happened. Echoing what I said in my very first blog post, I want this blog to serve as a mirror to look back on.

I feel I've lived multiple lives over since last February. Considering completely alternate careers. Entering (and exiting, lol) a relationship. Learning how to make latte hearts as a barista in Brooklyn. Making new unexpected friendships, having other ones imperceptibly shift over time before I blink and realize they've entirely changed. Seeing friends get married. Traveling profusely. Movies, and lots of them. Doubt, and lots of it.

The list goes on and on, and the more one dwells on it the deeper the details become, the beautifully woven tapestry that life is. The days passed dizzyingly fast and in equal parts joyful and tearful, attempts to impose structure upon structureless days.

Random impressionistic paintings from the time past (composed of samplings of six seconds a day journaling habit I got from Nolen):

• feeling the cool breeze of an August day on my face in the Metrotech Commons. Nearly blows away the lid of the Naya I'm happily shoveling into my face on this wooden bench as sunlight warms the body as it peeks through the leaves. Optimistic about the start of my Recurse batch.

• disappointment after getting my hopes raised for the fifth time for a finance/quant role thinking "this will be the one". Despairing that nothing was going to work out and what am I doing with my life. Man am I that stubborn on switching to finance just based off of what I feel are my passions?, etc.?, et al.? – you name it.

• facing the Long Island Sound from Todd's Point in Old Greenwich on some incredibly comfortable wooden chairs facing the sea. Admiring the melody of waves crashing. Learning about niche Python internals from Josh in preparation for interview.

• sitting outside Ebisu station near a fountain and finishing off a can of Suntory Premium Malts pilsner. Wistfully staring off misty-eyed into the distance at the mall billboards on an oddly warm December night, streams of salarymen heading home drunkenly after a night out of too many lemon shochu highballs.

today

Life paints a different picture nowadays. Making a salary, feeling the steady hum of weekdays and making each one a perfect day in its own way. "the thing that karl marx could never understand is the bliss of putting on the perfect song while driving to a wage labor job" - my favorite Letterboxd review for Perfect Days by Wim Wenders. It's true though! It's been a joy to jog along with this rhythm and consistency, commuting to Union Square every day and putting in good work.

It's early, but the manager is wonderful, the people are sweet, the work is stimulating + cool, and I feel like a different man from a year prior. All great things, and though I know things will inevitably change with time, all I can say in this current moment is that I feel immensely grateful for this time of rest and reprieve following one of such tumult. Hallelujah, hallelujah!

Keep chugging along, reader. The journey isn't over yet.¹