My big update for the year is that I dropped out of school. Long story short, I’ve joined Multicoin Capital to invest in early-stage crypto startups.
I also successfully took a semester off of school, spent my first summer in New York City, turned a few internet friends into IRL friends, reached 1 year of the podcast, (unsuccessfully) returned to school, and ran a marathon.
12 months ago, I distinctly remember telling myself I’ll consider my gap semester to be a success if 12 months from now, my life looks very different. I was excited at the idea that my life could turn into something I couldn’t even imagine.
With hindsight, I can say that type of romanticization is overrated. Stuff happens so quickly, you lose track of what you could or couldn’t imagine and it just becomes your daily life. Looking back on the year is the opposite of that Steve Jobs quote. It’s actually quite difficult to connect the dots looking back, but easy to do looking forward. In January, when life hasn’t completely resumed from the holiday season and the density of a full calendar year hasn’t dawned on you, it’s easy to come up with stories of what the year will be. In reality, very few years are punctuated by a single consistent story throughout.
What I learned
I read a tweet that criticized the mindset of “don’t take life too seriously, you don’t need to know what you want when you’re young.”
I used to really believe that—and I still do—but the past year taught me that if you want something really bad, if you’re truly serious about it, the universe tries really hard to make it happen. But it does so in quiet ways. It takes the work you’ve put in months or years ago, and brings it back, surfacing it to the right people at the right moments. A cold email, a tweet passing through the timeline, a blog post you shared without thinking. The best opportunities always seem to pop up nonchalantly, hiding as casual moonshots among everything else you have going on in life. This was true for every single thing that happened to me in 2023. A year of great stories with inconspicuous beginnings.
Something I’m still learning is to have faith. At least twice this year, I felt lost, back-against-the-wall, and uncertain of the future. Both times, I turned out okay. I’m learning to have faith not only in myself, but in the world—that it is abundant enough in opportunity, goodwill, and luck to get you to where you need to be.
2024
This year, I’m going to take more things more seriously. Writing, reading, my health, my relationships. Good stuff happens when you lean into things.
I’m getting serious about building a lifestyle that’s aligned with what I want. When you’re in school, it’s easy to convince yourself that your lifestyle is subject to constraints—you don’t get to decide where you live, what to spend time on, and what’s important. For the first time, I’m in a position where I can literally design my life any way I want, and I want to take that privilege seriously.
Other stuff:
More rituals. I want to craft rituals that make me excited to live.
More “order of magnitude” changes. No more gradually easing into things—just 10x it and see what happens.
More feedback loops. More introspection, reflection, writing, and experimenting. I rarely find time to just sit and think about how my week went. I’m giving myself time to consolidate stories and think about what I want.
Bucket list things
Run a sub-5 minute mile
Host gatherings
Learn to surf
Dunk a basketball
Meet more internet friends IRL
Spend meaningful time in SF
2023 favorites
Favorite books: The Course of Love, Alain de Botton; Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami; Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins
Favorite places: Pier 2 (NYC), Mogutable (NYC), Caffè La Serra (Venice)
Favorite essays: salad days, The Dark Forest of R&D and Capital Deployment in AI, Things to Do in New York City
Favorite objects: New Balance shoes (993 and 2002R), AG1 water bottle, Audio Technica ATR2100X microphone