📚 A 2022 dispatch
administriviaWell... 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.