Last year was life changing. This year will continue the ongoing struggle of personal success.
Last year took a big step and big chance. This year will see the beginning of my results.
Last year was my biggest year in romance I’ve had since the late 90s. This year I hope I’m too distracted for drama.
Last year marked ten years since high school graduation. This year begins a more productive decade beyond high school.
Last year I completed major goals to make big changes. This year I continue to make bigger changes.
Last year I met a bunch of new friends and, sadly, lost a few of them. This year I won’t let my losses hold me back but gain much more through my experience and memories.
Last year I made a small commitment to physical fitness. This year I shall pick up where I left off.
Last year I mostly left web design behind to others. This year it will fund my other opportunities in life.
Last year was the biggest year of my life. This year will only be bigger and better.
Tag: work
a year of real jobs
One year ago, I spent this whole weekend in San Francisco visiting a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a year or two. We went touring all throughout the city, seeing a lot of great sites as well as enjoying some wine up in Sonoma County. I also went through some mess on my last day there.
My car got towed the moment I arrived in the city. So I spent the following Tuesday paying the city whatever cash I had and walking around town or riding on the bus to various locations just to claim my car. What a total waste of time and such a crappy way to end my beautiful stay in that city. Luckily, I’ve been back again to reclaim my love.
The day after my return from the bay area, I began my brand new job as a Website Content Manager, which was disguised as Front End Web Designer. I spent the next 9 months of my life working for the man before finding another job doing actual Front End Web Designer work. And I’ve been there 3 months and counting.
It’s weird that I’ve lived 27 years and I’m only one year into working full-time. Most of my peers back in Texas or around the country have had many full-time jobs since they graduated college at around 22-24. It just took me longer. And for good reason.
I moved out to LA just over 2 years ago to find work. Houston had nothing there for me and I was at the end of the line trying to find anything worth my time. LA, however, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The opportunities I thought I had quickly dissolved and I was back to square one quickly. This time, however, I had a part-time job at Magic Mountain and some freelance gigs which I took for granted.
I’ve battled laziness all of my life. I enjoy the moments where I’m doing absolutely nothing. It’s easy, it’s relaxing, and I don’t have to think about anything. But this has severly kept me from doing the things I really ought to be doing.
I love traveling.
I love music.
I love photography.
I love performing.
I love producing.
I love desiging.
I love technology.
I had a year and a half to get any step of my career going, something that involved any of the above. And through all that time I wasted, nothing happened because I made excuses and went back “home” for weeks on end. I don’t regret all the traveling I’ve done. I just regret the actions I never took when I was here. And it’s my own fault.
If this past year of working two full-time jobs has taught me anything about myself, it’s that I deserve to spend my time doing the things which I love. All of the above, and much more. I am an ambitious person, one with dreams and desires. And I hope that I can accomplish living a life full of passion. Not for anyone but myself. Day in and day out should be spent smiling and enjoying life in everything you do. And if people accuse me of lacking focus, it’s because I want more from my life than most people.
I’m not going to settle because I plan to live. In the meantime, I’ll continue what I am doing and figure out my next moves.
Ch Ch Ch Changes
Yesterday morning was a big morning for me as I made a huge decision to leave my current job. I gave my two weeks notice and have decided to accept a similar position for a company that is closer to my house. This decision did not come lightly, but I believe that for my future it was necessary for me to make this decision. It allows me the necessary lifestyle that I have been missing since I began this job last July. I am sad to leave behind some great people working for a great company, but I look forward to my next adventure and am excited at the opportunity and possibilities that shall await as I continue in my journey!
So what changes are going to be made exactly? I currently live in two places, one on the weekend and one on the weekday. In two weeks, I shall give up my weekday place. I shall finally, once again, be able to live in one place full-time and not having to commute between two places with half of my stuff. This, in itself, is a HUGE bonus personally in many ways. Living in two places constantly is not easy and I don’t expect anyone to try and take on the kind of life I’ve lived these past months. But, I knew what I was facing when I started this job and had every intention of seeking a place closer to work. However, trying to find decent real estate/apartment/place to live near or in Santa Monica is next to impossible, especially with my current financial situation (which isn’t necessarily bad).
Another thing I shall leave behind is the daily bus trip to and from work. I will begin driving to work, and it will take just around 20 minutes, plus or minus 10. This is awesome!! Commuting to Santa Monica back and forth is exhausting from where I live, but wasn’t impossible. Taking the bus was pretty easy because I knew the schedule and was there on time everyday. But, waiting for the bus when it was late or not even coming gets annoying, and that’s happened to me on more than one occasion. Having my car immediately available shall be a nice change of pace.
I think the best part about this whole change will be having more time available to me. When I arrive back to my house on the weekends, I’m pooped. I usually work on Saturday and Sunday, although I should be working on some freelance projects, I typically take the time to rest myself. I just never feel up to actually doing anything productive, so Saturday evening to Sunday evening are typically my time. Every now and then I’ll get to something when I feel up to it, but I won’t press myself either. Knowing that I have a long week ahead of me, with a big commute to another place, it definitely took a toll on me. But with this commute virtually now cut in half and my salary resuming back to normal, I shall have the opportunity to spend time doing things which I have wanted when I otherwise have not had time or resources.
This change is bittersweet, as I expected it would be. There are a lot of great people working here and I wish them the best, but I look forward to the new opportunities that I face and can’t wait for the next adventure!
less work please
No more web design projects.
I can’t handle anymore at the moment. I am inundated with so much to do right now and I want a break. I’ve had to purposely neglect my own website while I finish these other projects. It sucks too because I can always use the extra money and pages to put into my portfolio. But, I realize I’m in over my head and I’m a little burnt out. Maybe this’ll change sometime next year but this is it for me for now. I have a feeling that this current round of sites will probably take another couple of months to completely finish but the workload right now is huge. And it’s almost Christmas. Blah.
Besides my freelance projects, I have my full-time and part-time design jobs that also keep me extremely busy. And I’ve had to neglect the part-time a lot because of the freelance. And there’s so much I could do on a weekly basis to help them out. Soon.
I think the foremost reason I’m ready to stop is because I’m not allowing myself any time to pursue other things. I want to do so much else while I live here in LA and now that I’m funding myself and paying off my debt, I need to spend my freetime pursuing those other passions. I do not want to be a one career guy but I am content doing the things I’m doing now. Maybe a little too content as I’ve overloaded myself, but life is good. I just know that if I don’t sacrifice some of this for other stuff, I’ll regret it. And I hate regrets.
The critical part of me continues to tell myself that I need to take some courses to learn programming languages (PHP, Javascript) or software (Flash) that I don’t know. It’s not that I am not able to learn this on my freetime, it’s just I don’t have enough freetime to even begin to sit down and hash it out. Not only that but the structure of a classroom where I can learn bits sequentially would highly benefit me. There are many applications of the classroom setting that I cannot stand, where it makes the material boring and mundane. But I think that learning moderately hard computing languages will take more effort and time that I can’t just sit down and dedicate (I guess the level of difficulty can be debated). Anyway, I’m not sure if this is going to be an option either.
Changes shall be made. I need them. Bad.
Yahoo! acquires my coworkers
I’ve been working this new job for three months already. It has passed by so quickly too and I expect another three months to pass as quickly. In this short span of time, my job has gone through an immense amount of transition.
This morning, Yahoo! has announced it is purchasing upcoming.org, a project which my boss Andy Baio started a couple of years ago. When I interviewed for this job in May, I quickly realized how much of an asset Andy could be for a job in the web design world with his amazing high profile connections, but I didn’t realize how much he was potentially worth until it was too late. Now my time learning from him is cut short as he departs this job and moves to Sunnyvale working for Yahoo!. A very talented and brilliant former coworker of mine, Gorden Luk, who eventually assisted Andy on upcoming, left his job a month ago and is also on his way up.
So as you can see, my job has been through some unusual and sudden transitions as I’ve been getting to know coworkers and now having to prepare for two new coworkers and a new boss. But watching these stories as they unfold has been fascinating. Andy spent most of his freetime on upcoming for the past couple of years, and even just as a side project, his potential was realized by Yahoo! and he’s taking full advantage of this opportunity presented to him to work on some more great projects that Yahoo! has coming down the road.
There are days I wish I had been more serious in school, learning everything under the sun about programming or music or this or that. I’ve always had very ecletic tastes and, to a varying degree, talents. Thus, I would never have been able to pull something as upcoming.org off by myself or really at all! Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to realize my potential and make it big. Until that day, I continue searching for the answers.
this life in which I . . .
Personal update for my life:
Two months at work this Wednesday. I can’t believe it’s been so long already. It has definitely flown by. At the same time, however, it feels like it’s taken forever. Flown by = wow, it’s already September. Taking forever = it’s just now becoming really busy for me at work.
Cookie cakes taste so delicious. I had never made one before so on Friday I decided to try it out. And I’ll tell you what, it was completely worth all the time I put into it. SO good! Have you ever made one? I used the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the bag, and instead of making cookies, I just threw it all in a pan. After about 15 minutes of baking . . . OH MY GOD was that good! Hot/warm cookie all lumped together. It was like I took out a hot batch of delicious cookies from the oven, bunched them in a ball and just took a huge bite. Hog heaven for sugar addicts like myself!
Creating websites can be such a long process. I’ve been planning on doing some major changes with this website but continue to be too critical of my new design(s). In fact, I know now that I really hate them. The content is great, the design(s) is (are) crap. I keep looking at other people’s websites and think, “God, I can totally do that,” which in reality means, “I know what they did, I can appreciate it, and if I sat myself in front of my computer to try and mimic the same exact thing, I would get nowhere fast”. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have the abilities to design new, innovative, interesting, attractive sites. It’s a combination of lack of motivation, creativity, trying to start a project, and figuring out what work and what doesn’t. I’m talented enough to do this as a living (if I so choose), but I’m not YET creative enough to come up with original pieces for people on a consistent. It takes a true artist to do something completely new and original. I’m more of an artist like Moby. I take what exists, twist it around, add a few things to it, spice it up or tone it down, then call it my own.
Working six days a week definitely can take a toll on me. It’s not that I’m tired either. In fact, I’m very productive with the jobs I work because I’m constantly doing something. The problem is motivating myself to do everything else in between. Do you ever find yourself coming home after work with a go getter attitude, like you’re going to clean your house or kitchen or room? I sometimes pump myself up and tell myself I’m going to do a damn good job on this or that. Then I get home, feel really tired or lazy, and just wanna take it easy. So I do. Working 8 hours a day, or rather spending 8-9 hours in one place doing tasks for a company to help it make money takes away from my own life and getting other tasks accomplished. I’ve never been a go-getter just making things happen. I’m an ambitious dream-chaser. I have an infinite amount of ambition, so many things I would love to do in my life, but know that I need to create ways to make things happen. It’s the biggest challenge of my life.
Christmas and Thanksgiving might be different for me this year. I’m finally in a real job that only gives me x amount of time off a year. This is bad for trying to visit family. I think there’s a good chance I’m going to stay behind for Thanksgiving. And I do not know what I shall do with Christmas either. The thought of not going back for either is a little depressing, but the realization of knowing that it’s my life and I can do what I want is uncomfortably satisfying.
People have always said the freedom to earn your own paycheck is a reward in itself, that it’s very satisfying. I don’t necessarily find that to be true. Rather, I find it to be monotonous and boring. My job is great. My co-workers are great. I have nothing negative to say about either. I’m just not crazy about waking up early, spending all my time in one place, and not being able to do much else outside (for the reasons I stated earlier). But you know, enough self-loathing. I’m sure I could sit here and bitch all day and night about this and that. But, life’s too short for that. Enjoy the time I have and use my time wisely. That’s the only answer to my problems. I’m taking advantage of every opportunity given to me with this job to make my dreams come true. Even if I don’t live in the perfect world, I’m living the life I want to live. And nothing else matters.