Random Observation/Comment #568: Have compassion and perspective. If you’re kind and have a view that keeps humor in mind, I think things will be just fine.
In 2016, I turned 30:
- Traveled to: Bermuda, Naples Florida, St Petersburg Florida (for Niki/Tomas wedding), Toronto, Maine, Switzerland, South Africa, Oregon, Redwoods, Washington, Alaska (cruise), London, Maryland, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney.
- Triumphantly: Moved into a new apartment with my dream view, successfully completed TEDxBushwick, judged for idiotarod, joined R3 as an associate director, got promoted at R3 to a director, created micro-resolutions, rode the Rodelbahn, presented Corda as the NY dev relations, hiked through ape cave, saw Crater Lake national park, saw the redwoods, saw a few whales fluke, saw a bear in person 10 ft away, saw an Alaskan glacier, attended a fun destination wedding (niki & tomas), attended a travel/beer themed wedding (jen & grey), attended an awesome cipriani wedding (crystal & riley), attended an Indian ceremony wedding #aksans2016, camped overnight on a beautiful lake, rode a train around a few mountains, checked off Australia!, and presented at a workshop in a fintech festival
- Ate/Drank: Fish chowda, dark and stormy’s, rum swizzles, Bermudan lobsters, amazing lobstah rolls of Maine, fondue, meat volcano, bitch please biscuits and gravy, poke bowl from a real Hawaiian place, Alaskan salmon on the grill
- Read/Listened to: The Long Earth, The Long War, The Long Mars, Dark Matter, Welcome to Nightvale, and A whole bunch of podcasts. So many that I needed to write a list of 30 podcasts
- Saw: The Humans, Bruccceeeee, Modern Love Live, (Plus tons of awesome movies at Alamo Drafthouse that just opened across the street)
- Completed: Built a meteorjs application, wrote Jasper for CBDC in Ethereum dApp, Wanessa Happiness jar, 30 day drawing challenge (and continued drawing journal), caught a lot of pokemon in the craze (but then stopped because it killed my battery), 30 days of mealpass, Completed 100 Actions of The Day (#AoTD part 1 and part 2), and crushed an embarrassingly large number of Candy Crush levels (I’m almost at level 900).
2016 was a pretty shitty year for the rest of the world with the death of legends (notably: Prince, Bowie, Ali, George Michael, and John Glen – full list) and exposures of general public distrust through elections. I’ve thought a lot about education and careers this past year mainly because of my career switch into something I find fascinating with a group of extremely motivated and brilliant people.
However, most people are not so lucky. I listened to a Mike Rowe (from Dirty Jobs) podcast recently and he noted the 4 main steps to looking for a career:
- Look around and see where people are headed, and then go in the opposite direction
- Embrace all the things that scare you
- Become really good at that thing
- Figure out a way to love what you do
And he said that most millennials looking for jobs now have these steps backwards/upside down because they want to do what the love right away without the hardship. For me, I think the most important thing about opportunities and “luck” is that it only happens when you keep moving and searching. For those who are stuck at any of those above phases – keep looking and figure out how to make it happen.
In 2017, I’m looking forward to:
- Travels: Likely a lot more business travel to San Francisco, London, and Asia.
- Challenges: Parenting (whenever this happens, I’m already thinking about prepping for it), growing a community of strong leaders and continue herding cats during projects, Keeping up with technology (never stop learning), breaking bad habits and creating more productive ones
- Adolescent Career: Fostering collaboration without feeling the need to do absolutely everything
~See Lemons Look Forward to 2017
