What I’m Up To Now
Last Updated: 2024-12-15
After 5 years of running my own company and ultimately shutting down commercial operations, I took some much needed time between August-November to reconnect with my curiosity.
Recent time in therapy made me realize that I’ve been running on autopilot for a long time. I burnt out. I needed to make sure that I was optimizing for emotions, not obligations. If something made me happy or interested me, I ran with it. If it didn’t, I let it go. The important part was to be curious, explore, and find that spark again.
How I Reset
- Visited Japan and South Korea for the first time, spending almost 3 weeks exploring new cultures and great food.
- Competed in the Worlds Series of Board Gaming.
- I placed in the finals for Great Western Trail and the semi-finals for Brass: Birmingham.
- Attended the Rocket League World Championships, a longtime dream of mine since the game first released.
- Went to some great concerts.
- Started making small musical jingles and posted a few to TikTok.
- Completed two six-week classes of improv.
- Signed up for a bouldering gym and tried to go weekly. My scraped up hands prevented that a few times.
- Learned to grill. It’s not that much different than regular cooking.
What I Learned
- I care more about the mission of a company I’m working for than the exact work I’m doing. As an ex-founder, my capabilities are now pretty wide. Data, Product, or AI are the most interesting. IC vs Manager is irrelevant. I just want interesting work I can believe in.
- Being placed in situations where I just have to figure things out helps me trust myself more and reaffirms a desire to learn more. Being abroad is great for this feeling.
- Nothing makes me feel more grounded and connected than music and time with animals. I need to figure out how to get back to these roots.
- I’m not sure if I want to run my own thing for a while. Solopreneurship will be isolating. I think it’s healthy to explore other projects, build my skills, and slowly build up additional income stream while searching for roles, but I need to find local connections to sustain myself.
What I’m Doing Now
- Looking for my next role! I want to lead product or data at a company whose mission I can get behind. If you have a small company that needs to scale with automation and strong data practices, let’s talk!
- Running a weekly board game meetup at Pinthouse Brewing in South Austin.
- Running a monthly data meetup in Austin.
- Building out a job board by scraping ATS directly. While I want to build a better job board experience, I’m more interested in the insights that can come out of having access to this job data. More here soon!
- Continuing with level 3 improv classes.
What I’m Exploring
- How can I deepen my knowledge of AI and ML? I know when and how to use it, but I feel lacking when it comes to understanding the underlying tech.
- How do I create a schedule that optimizes for listening to my intuition? Exploring when I need to. Indulging curiosity when I have it. Taking breaks when I’m mentally done.
- How can I have more involvement with animals?
- What is it like to bike the roads in Austin?
- What does camping or backpacking look like?
- How can I find more ways to jam with other local musicians?
- How can I take my music ideas and make them more concrete through production tools?
- How can I better embrace a pathless path?
What I’m Thinking About
- What sucks about the job hunt? How can we humanize the experience?
- How do you find internal satisfaction when faced with instability?
- What activities or events are missing from Austin? What can I do about it?
- Are my data events even worth running? How do I make sure that I get good value out of the things I put my energy into?
- How could I offer my skills for consulting work?
- What can encourage me to write more frequently on personal and technical topics? I say I want to, but the past 3 months have shown that it’s not high on my list.
This page is an inspiration from Derek Sivers and follows the principles listed on nownownow.