2020 Year-End Review

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• Notes
  • Here's my 2019 review:
    • Hey all, last year I did a state of the Vargas and I want to do one again. Like last year, this is a personal exercise so feel free to let this rot in your inbox. The one relevant thing I will say, is that given the oh so high traffic on this site (20 journals in the last 3 months, all from bombers), I'm pretty motivated to pass this project off to someone else or shut it down altogether. It's become clear that with no changes in the last two years, that my motivations are taking me elsewhere that does not include this site, which I think is what led to the dwindled usage. Anywho, time for reflection!
    • Career:
    • Holy shit, last year I wrote ""There is a platform engineering team that I may try joining midway through 2019 which most reflects this type of work"", where ""this"" was defined as ""how to improve all of the internal systems within a company"". This actually happened!! I am currently shifting off one of our two main product teams and into an internal tools role where my main responsibilities will include but are not limited to getting us to continuous delivery and improving the developer's experience for all engineers in the company. The reason this type of work excites me so much is bc I could directly see the impact of what I do, moreso than understanding police officers and what they do. I would say that my plan for how long I want to work here is still pretty consistent to where I was last year, i.e. two more years here or so. As for what I want to do next, it's very open. I definitely want to leave New York by 2022, at which point I currently have one of three options. One, just move on to a small tech company in a similar role elsewhere. Two, join my cousin-in-law in helping him develop a platform in the healthcare space. Or three, pursue my dream company in the education space, while tricking some friends to join me along the way. Think it might help to do 2 before 3 to get some experience building something from scratch. That's where my head's currently at, inb4 it all fails and I just sell my soul out to Amazon.
    • Romance:
    • Well it's been almost 6 months since Sara and I broke up, 4 since we've stopped living together and went our separate ways (still in New York). Last year, I mentioned differences in what we valued, and this seemed to be an understatement as those differences became more and more glaring the more we lived together. The breakup was about as mutual and went about as well as one could ever hope for; we still talk and I still view her as a friend. I think there's a sort of comfortableness in knowing that we aren't meant for each other that makes it easier to stay friends post breakup. Single life has been kind of fast moving as the rate of change has definitely increased. There's a sort of freedom in only now caring about my own interests and emotions that I have now been reinvesting in trying to figure out different ways to change up my routine and habits to reach various goals. Some of these changes have included an increase in traveling on weekends, cooking for myself, caring alittle more about how I look, and finally to my biggest surprise I quit drinking. I tried dating apps for two months before coming to the conclusion that they suck and I hated how I was like when I was on them. I don't want another relationship until I at least leave New York, so looking forward to applying to be on the Bachelorette in 2022 :D.
    • Social:
    • Hm I had a whole section on ""Social"" last year, but I don't think there's much different on this front. I mentioned presence, the quality of active listening and being really attentive to people in conversation, as a quality I want to improve and I still feel that way. One of my biggest personal pitfalls in my relationship with Sara was a lack of empathy in my part, and this too is a quality that I think still needs to be improved. I think I have been doing better at managing my time so that I could meet up with people; just in the last four months I've been to Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Boston, Southern New Jersey, and Washington DC all to just visit friends or families for a weekend. There are four very defined vectors of relationships I have in this post grad world which are high school, college, family, and work friends, and I don't feel very compelled to make more. Maybe this will change when I finally move out of New York, but for now I feel pretty satisfied with the state of my personal relationships.
    • Hobbies:
    • I've basically given up on Warshop. It was a fun experience, and learned alot in my failure of running a mini team. Watching Ariel release his alpha has been really awesome, but also reassuring that the amount of work he and his team put into it was not an amount that I was willing to put into this game, but rather in my career and other avenues I mentioned above. As I said I also want to drop cetacea from my plate, and I think Kenny is already working on a rebuild basically to make it serverless which would be fuego. My main two hobbies that have replaced these two have been related to option two and three in career above; Moonlight, a platform in the healthcare space my cousin wants to build, and Brainwave, my hopefully one day solution to Education. In terms of Video games, my waning interest in the Nintendo Switch continues to wane even harder, though I'm glad it's always there just in case. I also quit Hearthstone which has been a big personal move for me in terms of freeing up time for other interests. Reading my entry from last year, it looks like I finished my first full year of working out in the mornings and I still can't recommend it enough. I just feel like I'm in a way better mental state to get shit done and experience life on days I do over days I don't. I did one stand up comedy skit that I absolutely bombed but it was so much fun. It was a few months ago, so I think in 2020 I want to go to a lot more open mics and try a few more times again and see if it's something that I, like most things, could get better with more repetition. I've been watching a bunch of stand up on Netflix, and it's really so impressive to me how some of the famous names perform and how it's very much an art. As someone who currently doesn't have any artistic outlets, I'm hoping this becomes one as I very much enjoy making observations about the world and seeing people laugh. Lol I wrote I was going to get a guitar in February. Still don't have one, still won't get one probably anytime soon.
    • Outlook:
    • I've gotten pretty into following politics, which in turn I think is making me a more annoying person. I still think the government sucks as an institution which is the main reason behind my libertarianism. The ""individual"" aspect of being Libertarian is starting to resonate less and less with me the more I talk to friends and reflect on said conversations personally. Basically, we should be super cognizant of the effects our actions have on ourselves and others, but 11 times out of 10 the government is terrible at facilitating this. Something like that lol. I'm kind of disgusted with how much I follow Andrew Yang. It's somewhat uncomfortable spending so much time/money on someone else getting a job, but at the same time politics is just a live sport/reality TV show, and I tend to be a huge fan of my favorite teams. Last year I wrote what I want my next 5 years to look like in this section and there was so much more confusion this time last year. I am very pleased with how much more defined my goals are going forward:
    • 2020-2021 - Work at Mark43
    • 2022 - Finish up at Mark43, move out of NY, apply to be on the Bachelorette, figure out next job
    • 2023-2027 - Moonlight, dating, hopefully starting family
    • 2027-2047 - Brainwave
    • 2048-2056 - President
    • 2056-infinite - TBD
    • That's a rough outline. It's obviously ridiculous and subject to change, but also what else isn't in life?
    • So excited for 2020 and beyond! Happy new year's everyone :)
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  • The last two years I've written an annual review as a journal that my friends had access to in earlier iterations of Longwave. I really enjoy looking back on my ones from previous years as a form of time travel. I get to compare "the state of Vargas" then to the one now, gaining a greater appreciation of any progress made. Sharing with friends also forced me to be more concrete with my thoughts, which my future self could now benefit from.
  • This will be the first year where I publish my review publicly. I will be reusing the same format I did last year, where I give a "the state of Vargas" for several categories.
  • Career
  • Holy Shit.
  • This time last year, I was over the moon excited about switching teams at Mark43 to have an internal tools role. The motivation for this excitement had to do with seeing my work have an impact directly within the company instead of with a user base I was unfamiliar with.
  • Once I moved to the role, it was hard to connect what I was doing to a real world impact. In my decision to leave Mark43, I noted my frustration in not seeing progress in what I was working on despite my coworkers telling me otherwise. This was partially due to not seeing product improvement or end user (police officers) satisfaction as a direct result of my actions. It was something I had a sense of while working on the product team that I completely lost when moving to internal tools. I also viewed the new users I was serving (engineers in my company) as needing less help as our actual end users.
  • In a desperate attempt to increase my end user interaction, I've been working on my own for the last four months. I've loved it. I love interacting directly with users. I love that they come to me with issues or bugs that I later try to resolve for them. Most importantly, I love feeling the slow and steady growth each month, as opposed to being stuck at a fixed salary as I was when employed.
  • There are several challenges that I'm still grappling with. Most of them are related to time and stress management, since I've never been in full control of my schedule until now. I am fully aware of the growth curve most startups experience and believe I am currently smacked in the middle of the trough of sorrow:
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  • But this also means I know I will grow out of it. I'm confident in my ability to create tools that are valuable for others. I know that if I just keep at it, I will reach the metrics that I'm holding myself accountable to. I just have to keep my spirits up and keep going forward.
  • Romance
  • This was the first year I spent single since I think 2012. It was a conscious decision and one I want to make again for at least another two years.
  • I mentioned in my annual review last year that I've experienced a lot of changes in my life since my last break up. 2020 was no different. In the last year, I quit traditional employment, started travelling to a new city each month, and started writing online.
  • When dating, a significant portion of what I'm thinking about is spent on someone else. So while each of these life changes were probably possible while I was dating, the extra time I got back spent on myself accelerated when they were implemented.
  • This is somewhat concerning to future Vargas. I often express to my friends how excited I am to one day have kids. Will my actions line up with what I'm saying? Part of one day committing myself to someone and starting a family will be to consistently allocating time in my day to them. If I'm unwilling to do that now, will I be able to grow out of this mindset in a few years?
  • For now, I feel comfortable putting off dating in 2021 and 2022. There is still much I need to learn about myself. I still need time to build what I want to build. Hopefully by 2023, I will be in a stable enough position again to start thinking beyond myself.
  • Social
  • At the end of 2019, I wrote that I felt pretty satisfied with the state of my personal relationships with friends. This satisfaction has degraded over the last year.
  • Back in 2019, I was far more spontaneous. Despite having full control over my time now, I am less spontaneous as I try to maintain some level of accountability over myself in rebuilding my income from scratch. This is not just at odds with the schedules of my friends - it has lead to me prioritizing my laptop over things I could be doing to improve the environment around me. These things that range from keeping the space clean to proactively contributing new ideas and events to participate in.
  • Just as in the previous section, this is a conscious tradeoff being made. One takeaway I've gotten from therapy early on is that when making conscious tradeoffs not to beat myself up about them - I knew what was coming when I made the decision so stand by it. I still can't help but wonder how much of an asshole this makes me. It often feels like I'm taking my friends for granted on the bet they'll still be there while I try to shore up the less certain part of my life right now which is my career.
  • One advice I've gotten from my friend Nikhil is to start over communicating my expectations. To start explicitly saying "hey, I will be unavailable during x time, available during y times". This has helped me so far in the last two months manage balance, but is still doesn't solve my lack of initiative problem. The latter I'm hoping to address more in the second half of 2021, once I have a stable recurring income.
  • Hobbies
  • I was hoping to start getting into doing stand-up comedy in 2020. In March I had finally purchased classes and was all set to start dedicating a few hours a week to start practicing. And then... COVID hit. Classes were cancelled, and I moved out to Long Island to live with my mom for three months.
  • Now that I'm without a sustainable income, I don't foresee myself picking that or any other hobby really for the foreseeable future. I have a pretty obsessive mentality such that if I pick something up, I want to go all in. I don't have the bandwidth to go all in as I try to focus my energy towards the Career and Social buckets from above.
  • I quit following the NFL and playing video games independently this year, both of which I don't miss. I will still have the game on in the background with my brothers or get some rounds of Jackbox in with friends, but neither are activities that I enjoy on my own anymore.
  • I would love to explore making music at some point in the future. I've written in the past about thinking about getting a guitar, but that doesn't look like it's happening. I discovered Algorave recently and think it could be something I get into in the future. It exhibits three things I love: mashups, basic music, and coding.
  • Outlook
  • Here were my goals for 2020 with their associated outcomes:
    • Get Users On Moonlight - ❌ Started to instead work on RoamJS
    • Finish Kindle Wishlist - ✅ Finished my reading list, then stopped reading the second half of the year.
    • Share a First Draft of Unleash University - ✅ An idea I had for an online education + college campus blend, but I do not have the capital to pursue right now. I did share the draft though.
    • Save Twice as Much as 2019 - ❌ I was on pace to do so until I quit my job.
    • Get Laughs At An Open Mic - ❌ Signed up for standup classes that got cancelled because of COVID-19. It's still something I'm vaguely interested in, but not enough right now.
    • Stop Paying For Cetacea - ✅ Has been offloaded to its successor, Longwave.
    • Reach 10% Body Fat - ❌ Got to around 15% before skyrocketing back to 20%. Dieting is much harder than anticipated.
  • My outlook has changed radically in the last year. This is partly reflected in only hitting some of my 2020 goals, and the ones I did hit having some associated caveat. But I come into 2021 more focused than last year.
  • This is how I now view my indefinite future:
  • • In 1 year, make a sustainable career through open source Roam development.
    • In 5 years, help others make a sustainable career through any type of open source development.
    • In 25 years, help others make a sustainable career through any type of open public problem solving.
  • That last broad goal is born out of a frustration that there exists problems that affect the general public that people don't feel financially secure enough to go solve. Problems like people not having safe drinking water or that homelessness still exists. So how do we incentivize the most talented people coming out of college to tackle these types of problems instead of getting scooped up by big tech and hedge funds?
  • These come across to me like "Tragedy of the Commons" type problems. The tragedy of the commons problem that I could most easily become familiar with is open source software. Which leads to my 5 year goal of wanting to build the platform that empowers software engineers to work on open source full time instead of as a side hobby to their corporate jobs. I take inspiration from other creator enabling platforms like Teachable or Gumroad. How could I replicate their success but targeted for open source engineers?
  • I have a few ideas. I'm testing a subset of them with my one year goal. I want to prove that a business model could work for myself before using it to enable others. So I need to make a sustainable career through open source myself, which I'm attempting to do through RoamJS. With that, here are my goals for 2021:
  • • Reach $10K MRR - This will replace my full time employment salary
    • Release 3 Web Apps under Vargas Arts LLC - Starting with RoamJS
    • Grow Userbase to 10K - I currently estimate this number to be a few hundred.
    • Reach and Maintain 15% Body Fat - Lowering the target from last year to hopefully maintain for longer
    • Visit 15 New Cities - This pace is faster than 1/month, which will hopefully encourage some week or weekend trips
    • Publish 60 Articles - Have moved from 2/week last year to 5/month this year
    • Take more initiative with Friends & Family - I don't like how I'm treating them right now. Setting as a year goal will force me to reflect on it every month and hopefully lead to intentional changes
  • Excited for a kickass 2021. Happy New Year everyone!