2021 in review

See 2020 in review to see my goals/thoughts for last year.

2021 Goals: A Review

✅ Find clarity on what I want to work on in 2022. I know this is vague, but I want to take the time to find conviction in where my career is heading.

This was my main priority heading into 2021. In last year's goals, I refrained from elaborating on this as I was still employed at Facebook, but I'd like to explain this a bit further now.

I felt disillusioned working at Facebook. It was hard for me to believe that my work made a positive impact on society or that working at Facebook was the best use of my talent. The compensation, perks, and brilliant coworkers all sugarcoated the truth that no one at Facebook fully believed that they were achieving the vision of "making the world more open and connected". Overall, my time at Facebook reminds me of an essay I wrote while still in college.

I switched companies and joined Ramp in October, and it's been an amazing two months so far. The engineering talent is phenomenal, and being part of this all-star team reminds me of my time on Cornell AppDev. I remember people on AppDev always lamented "I wish we could just start an AppDev company after graduation instead of joining [Company]", but Ramp has come pretty close (and in some ways surpassed!) my vision of what that might look like.

Overall, I'm proud that I was able to navigate these murky waters and achieve this goal. Major thanks to TK Kong who sold me on Ramp, Kevin/Omar who listened to my never-ending thoughts on FB, and everyone else who supported me through this decision.

✅ Read 52 books this year.

For the second year in a row, I've read 52 books! I feel very fortunate to have enjoyed so many reads this year; here were some of my favorites:

• Foundation Trilogy
  • A masterclass in science fiction. The plot twists throughout are incredible; it's one of those series where I wish I could forget the plot so that I could experience it again.
• All the Light We Cannot See
  • I loved reading this – the writing is somehow both incredibly poignant yet unsentimental. I typically don't enjoy books with dual perspectives, but this book executed the concept perfectly.
• Homeland Elegies
  • I thought this was a perfect book for the current political climate and state of the country. Each chapter felt carefully constructed, melding truth and fiction to create incredibly thought-provoking situations.

As usual, I've noted all my recommendations for this year here.

❌ Write + publish at least once a month.

I unfortunately only published a total of six times last year. My excuse is that this was my stretch goal, but the truthful answer is that I simply didn't make enough time for this.

Some Noteworthy Events

• As mentioned above, my major life update is switching jobs and joining Ramp. It's only been two months since I've joined, so I'm sure I'll have much more to discuss next year!
• I worked on Crypto Wrapped! It's a miracle that this went from ideation to launch in a few weeks, as we severely underestimated how difficult getting everything production-ready would be. Regardless, it was incredibly exciting to ship something in ✨web3✨ and see it be well-received.
• This site is now hosted on Netlify and off Squarespace! I've honestly meant to do this for years but never had the discipline to go through with it. The most important part of this change (for me) is that I can now write posts in markdown! Squarespace's web editor was incredibly unoptimized and did not auto-save changes, leading to frustrating situations where my browser tab would freeze and I'd lose all my drafted changes.
• After over 190 hours of playing Smash Ultimate, I've finally reached Elite Smash! Yes, this is noteworthy enough to mention here 🤣

Some Thoughts on 2021

This year flew by. I'm not sure if my memory is deterioriating or if this is because of COVID-19, but in my mind 2020 + 2021 have combined into a single year. Some days I wake up convinced I'm still 22; other days I wake up thinking I'm already 24; usually sometime throughout the day I remember that I only turned 23 a month ago. I'm curious if other recent new-grads are feeling this way, or if it's just me.

The fact that this year has flown by has reinforced how important focus is. The unfortunate truth is that I only have 7 more years' worth of goals left to write before I turn 30. Even worse, I only get one chance to choose the correct goals. To be fair, this knowledge might be more of a blessing than a curse - as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living".

2022 Goals

1. Run a half-marathon.
   
   Running a half-marathon has always been on my life bucket list, and something I want to achieve sooner than later (I realized that I'll be approaching my athletic peak in a few years). I've already started training for this – I'm using Nike Run Club to track my progress, and I'll be sure to write a reflection on the training process. If everything as planned, I'll accomplish this halfway through 2021!

2. Write + publish at least once a month.
   
   How hard can this be? I'm already starting the year publishing this, so just 11 more posts to go 😉. Jokes aside, my motivations for this goal are the same as last year – I simply have so much I want to write about.

3. Read 25 books this year.
   
   Although I was able to achieve my goal of reading 52 books two years in a row, I feel a bit burnt out from reading. I started the year with momentum – comfortably ahead of the one book a week pace, but as the year went on reading felt more like a chore and not something I genuinely wanted to do.
   
   Nevertheless, I want to continue reading and crossing books off my bucket list. I've found that books have been far more impressionable on me than anything I've watched. I think setting a more reasonable goal will prevent any burnout, and will incentivize me to take on more challenging reads.

4. A few personal goals – if they go well, I'll discuss these next year!