Ronald McDonald just chased me thru the play place and I spilled my apple juice

Identity, ups and downs, caring a lot, new job and other updates

I’ve been thinking about identity recently. When you’re young and concious enough to think about identity, most often your identity is “student”. Your job is to learn. Same in high school and university, although around here usually you start adding a few more identities, but for the most part, you always retain that “student” identity, at least as a fallback. Join the workforce, your identity is your job title. Pick up a few identities along the way. Leave the workforce, you’re a retiree.

I admit, this is a narrow minded view of identity, but I’m 21 and I can only speak to my own experience. I thought until at least 22 my identity would just be “student”. According to my hard-working immigrant parents, my job was to study.

At 16, I started an e-commerce business that made enough to pay my college tuition. I was an entrepreneur.

At 18, I started university but also joined the workforce 25 hours a week at Shopify. I was a software engineering intern.

At 19, I left Shopify and school to join a friends newly formed startup. I was a dropout. I was a founding engineer.

At 20, I left said startup to do… something? I was a _________.

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The past 9 months of unemployment have been spent trying to a) fill in that blank and b) be more okay with that blank. There were highs and lows, but when you pay attention to the small moments, life feels like a tragedy, then zoom out and it feels like a comedy.

I was and am still really proud of my unemployment era. Here’s a list of wins:

1. I gave a sincere effort to making youtube videos, something I’ve wanted to do for years. Lots of people liked them, and I liked making them a lot.

2. I got to spend lots of time in San Francisco, my favourite city in the world, with many of my favourite people in the world. I often say that my life would be perfect if we just traded Toronto to America (in exchange for Alaska probably, it’s already right there).

3. I got to be a part of Buildspace’s first IRL campus cohort. I made so many new friends, many of whom I think I’ll be friends with for life. There’s something so bonding about just spending time with other people everyday who are also deeply working on making their dreams come true. That kind of love doesn’t fade with time, and actually increased my capacity to love.

And a couple of L’s I don’t usually talk about:

1. When I made my first video, after publishing it I hid in a corner for an hour with my hoodie over my head. I just didn’t want to be seen by anyone, and felt so many emotions now that this thing I made, that I was so myself in, was out to the world to be perceived and judged. I was just scared of what people would think, of me and of something I put my entire soul into, that when I saw anyone in my office watching my video, I’d go to another room.

2. A month after I left my job I booked a ticket to SF and lived there for a month before Buildspace. I just had a feeling that good things would happen there (and they did!). But in the middle of that trip for about 2 weeks, there was a period of time where I could barely get out of bed. I just lost all motivation, for anything, and my nutrition, gym, and sleep habits were all broken. I wouldn’t even leave the house most days and just used Instacart for food. I eventually pulled myself out and just dragged myself to my favourite coworking space, again with the idea that good things would happen for me, and they did. even though most says I was there at first, I’d just stare at my laptop doing nothing in particular for hours, even sometimes just starting at it frozen in thought about what I was doing with my life. Eventually I talked to a friend who gave me the idea to make a video about an AI girlfriend, and working on that first video is really what pulled me out.

3. There’s another L I can’t talk about publicly but everyone says that 3 is like the magic number for lists so, if we’re friends IRL, you can ask me about this one.

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Most importantly, over the past 9 months, I’ve been re-taught that it’s cool to care. It’s cool to double, triple, quintuple text your friends. They’re your friends! Texts are asynchronous! They’re busy sometimes and don’t see or remember to respond, or they type out a response and forget to send it! Treat them as fallible and forgive them, and if the love is really there it’s not going to fade or they’re not going to hate you if you send them messages multiple times without response!

Put the stuff you love to make and see out into the world! Tyler, the Creator said it so well:

Tyler: You clearly wanna make something, so why not just make it?

“Cause I'm scared.”

Of what?

“I don't know exactly.”

See, you just answered your own question.

*everyone laughs*

This applies to absolutely everything, not just creating “things” but even hosting events, telling people how you feel (even platonically), or asking for what you really want.

This year I hosted weekend co-working sessions with good vibes, cooked dinner for friends, complimented people (I almost never did this before), wrote letters for people I care about (physical and virtual), helped friends negotiate salaries, negotiated some salaries myself, wrote and made videos in short and long form, just an overall year of putting more stuff out there. Before I’d keep more to myself, worry more about what people would think but now its just:

Tyler: Just make, what you wanna make. Go make, what you trynna make.

“I’m gonna do it”

DO it. Worst come to worst what’s gonna happen? You make it, someone says they don’t like it, alright. Will you like it?

“Yeah.”

Then that’s all that matters.

It’s cool to make stuff. It’s cool to try and fail. It’s cool to be cringe. It’s cool to demo half finished work. It’s cool to do stuff just because it’s fun even if you don’t know where it’s going. Everyday I’m inspired by Kasra who took responsibility for his social life in NYC and is now a super connector. By Song who quit her tech job to do art. By Anson who’s constantly finding little cracks in the world and trying to fix them. By Riley who forcefully injects whimsy into the veins of the people he’s around and makes the world 10% more quirky just by existing. By Jacky who writes like he’s running out of time. By Nazra who cares about her friends more than anyone and observes the world like clay that she can mould. By so many others that, by listing them, would make this post exceed a read time of 10 mins.

As a kid it never felt cool to care about anything other than soccer and lunchtime. In high school it never felt cool to care about anything other than grades and League of Legends. Caring felt like weakness before but now it’s rewarded. Anytime I see someone’s eyes twinkle, it’s a moment where we’re bonded as fools who dream.

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At the start of the new year, I sent a friend this text:

I always set some aspirational goal thinking that when I hit it, I’d be happy. Then I’d achieve it and still wouldn’t be happy. After running that cycle a few times, I started to think “What if I just start by being happy and then maybe good things will come?” So I moved to San Francisco on a tourist visa in December, and soon after made it my mission to stay.

Some important dates:

Jan 1st: I started looking for work

Feb 5th: Accepted a job offer

Feb 7th: Booked a flight home to prep my visa application

Feb 20 (afternoon): Visa approved for 1 year. Seeing that stamp might’ve been the happiest moment of my life.

Feb 20 (night): Landed in SF.

Feb 21: First day at Runpod.

Good things just happened.

A lot of friends have asked why I stopped making videos. I just thought it was more important to be in San Francisco without making videos than to be in Toronto making videos. I even stopped halfway through making a video in the fall while I was in Toronto because I just didn’t feel good. And then I came to SF, thought I would make videos, tried continuing that video, and it just didn’t feel fun anymore.

I also felt that by making videos about tech but not actually continuing to work in tech, I was getting dumber and less relevant. Like my technical skills were fading, so me trying to teach and inspire people with tech felt insincere and not as high quality because I wasn’t up to date on everything. Youtube is a really hard thing to start full-time, especially if you’re making videos about a skill you’re not practicing anymore.

As for my job, I started out looking for full-stack engineering work which aligns with my previous work experience, but quickly realized I fit more into “an engineer who likes talking to people” and started exploring roles closer to that.

My job title now is “Sales Engineer” but I feel like my identity is anything but. I almost felt like a sellout adopting that title, like an annoying used car salesman peddling some trash cars with devious tactics to unsuspecting victims. But 3 days in, I’ve realized that:

1. When you’re selling something people actually need (GPUs), you’re actually helping them

2. No one is going to be annoyed by someone who helps them get their work done faster, less painfully and/or by paying less

3. My ideal customer is less like Mark Cuban (scary shark) and more like most of my friends who run AI startups. In fact, a big part of me taking the job was friends telling me I’d be good for it and saying that they like the product.

When you’re younger, older people will often downplay your existential worries, telling you that “you’ll figure all that out" when you’re older. I’m a little older now, and while my doubt and worries have remained, it’s much harder to be shook entirely by them, because I have a more defined sense of identity now that isn’t related to what I do for work or where I live. It’s baked into how I treat myself and others. It stems entirely from me, not anything or anyone external.

I think a lot about life and purpose, and what I was put on this earth to do. I used to stress about not fulfilling that purpose or helping the world with my immediate career choices. But I’ve since come across the idea that “the purpose of a system is what it does” and this was honestly a little relieving. My purpose is what I do, not some separate thing I’m aiming for. And just by doing what I do, I’m fulfilling my purpose.

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Here’s some stuff I’m excited about right now:

• I’m going to be in SF for the next year! (Unless I get fired.🤞) Finally get to fully love all the awesome friends I have here instead of trying not to get too attached because of my short-term visa. I’m about to have so many American firsts: SSN, fintech apps, bank account, credit card, maybe I’ll f around and buy a gun /s. Love America.

• I legit think I could be really good at this new role. It feels like something I’d learn a lot in and something I could actually help people with (my AI friends keep telling me everyone desperately needs GPUs). <Skip Ad> If anyone wants to help out and rent some GPUs or intro me to someone who uses many GPUs so I can learn about their problems, that would be huge.

• After living in the Panhandle for 2 months, I finally did a long walk through of Golden Gate Park and it’s fantastic. Just wanna host some stuff there so I have an excuse to spend more time in such an incredible park.

• Involved in a few shenanigans with friends. Can’t say too much yet, but some stuff in the works: city wide scavenger hunt, matchmaking event, startup themed dinner, having class co-working sessions outside, the works.

• I’m going to start learning guitar again. Jacky’s enthusiasm is infectious, he wore me down. Publicly committed.

• Fitness goals for this year: visible abs, 1 muscle up, climb a v6 at Movement SF.

lfg.