Well... a lot of big things happened this year. But to understand the context, we also need to understand what went down last year, which was significant in its own way.

A short recap of 2021 #

In 2021, I...

• 👾 began to say my final goodbyes to the Minecraft scene. I am still minimally involved, but I'm not going out of my way to support it.
• 👾 ...and started what would be a 8-month stint at Branch, which at the time was working on a "virtual office" platform, before pivoting to UGC, and then finally to producing "web3 video games" in October (along with a strong recommendation to move to Seattle, a move I was not yet ready to make), whereupon I left them.
• 🎓 ...dropped out of college. It felt increasingly meaningless to me and I could no longer tolerate being bullied.
• 💳 ...after I left Branch in October, I immediately looking for another job. Through the absolute 🐐 Yunyu Lin (thank you so much!) through my days in the early days of the Minecraft server scene, I received an offer to work as a software engineer at Ramp and started work in November 2021.

That's where we'll leave it for 2021 - a big year, and while I can't enumerate everything that went down that year, getting a job at Ramp was absolutely the highlight of 2021. This is a job that is very difficult to leave and for good reason! Keep this in mind, for one event in 2022 ties to that.

The start of 2022 #

The start of 2022 was pretty uneventful. I had already substantially onboarded to Ramp in late 2021 (the first code that was entirely my work was pushed just before the company holiday break). Then I decided to visit the New York office in late March 2022 - I'd never been and I wanted to go, since up to this point I hadn't left the Southeastern United States.

It was great - perhaps I fell in love too quickly, because I wanted to come back for real. I already had thoughts about moving due to the last job, since I simply was tired of living in the Atlanta area and wanted a fresh start, a chance to stake out on my own. I found that opportunity in New York.

🗽 Welcome to New York #

After (too quickly) finding an apartment, I arrived back in New York on April 17, 2022. The next day, I moved into my very first apartment in NYC.

I took a week off from work to settle in and check out my neighborhood some. Ever since I moved to New York, I started to really grow into myself. The shock was immense, but I was able to adjust very well after a few weeks - granted, I had some experience from my first trip. Furthermore, my mental and physical health improved with the move: I was no longer dreading about staying home all the time, because there was so much I could do in New York, whether it's to try something I'd never done before, or enjoy working with coworkers, or just admire the beauty of the city... I wouldn't run out of options.

🌴 Ramp Builders 2022 #

In June, the entire product, engineering, and design teams had a chance to sync in-person at our first major internal conference, Ramp Builders, held in Miami that year.

The conference packed a lot into 3 days. It was certainly a major milestone. We spoke with some Miami-area customers, had discussions, thought about next steps, and began aligning on long-term projects we needed to ship.

📄 Finally, Redoing My Website? #

It took a while... but I redid my website. The previous design, while it worked, looked somewhat ugly, and I wanted to revamp things and brush off the frontend skills that I clearly have been rusting for some time... so I went back to the past, dusted off a template from the venerable HTML5 UP, converted the template to Nunjucks for use with Eleventy, and extensively customized it for my own needs, and topped it off with a photo of the beautiful (but tourist-choked, to my great chagrin) Brooklyn Bridge:

Click the above image to expand. I might start posting some photography here! Taken with my iPhone XR on October 15, 2022 at 5:48PM, a bit before sunset.

That's All For Now #

I am sure there is a lot more ahead - this has been a year of extremes, largely for the worse. But I can take some comfort knowing that I am finding myself and have become independent. The road ahead will be long and with many twists and turns, but at least I am walking down it now.