Two Thousand Nineteen posted

A few weeks into 2020 and I’m still not sure how I feel about 2019. The entire year felt like remodeling and travel... which turned out to be a lot less chill and a lot less healthy than I had hoped for.

House

I started small by tiling a window ledge in my office.

Then, I remodeled the entire basement (with a little help on the plumbing, flooring, tile, and drywall). I replaced (and finished) every door, piece of trim, plumbing fixture, light fixture, switch, cabinet, and repainted every square inch. We also upgraded a lot of furniture in the process. The whole thing took much longer than I'd planned, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and am really happy that it's done.

I also remodeled the garage... Removed some bulky cabinets, added insulation, a sink, an EV outlet, more lighting and fans and painted the whole thing. We also had the floor epoxied to finish it off. I love it.

Travel

I spent 76 days away from home. That is a lot.

Work

Work was a bit crazy this year. I helped build our first Venmo engineering team in Chicago and was the lead engineer of our team’s first big product. This made for a lot of interviews, meetings and travel, but I'm super proud of everything we accomplished.

Also, for the first time in ~9 years, I'm working completely with people that I haven't worked with before. The new perspectives have been awesome.

Oh, and I got fully vested from when Modest was acquired. 💰

On the side, I also took on a bit of mentoring for a young full stack developer @ Spikeball. That has been a fun experience. I’m remembering that I like mentoring.

Shows

It was a hilarious year for shows. We saw classic rock, metal, throwbacks from our high school days, and some new stuff.

I saw: The Dropkick Murphy's, The Pixies, Weezer, Twiztid, DMX, Kodak Black, Cardi B, Big Freedia, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Ministry, Primus, Slayer, KISS, Anti-Flag, The Get Up Kids, Pennywise, Flaming Lips, Blink-182, and Lizzo.

We also walked out of a Nelly concert before he even went on, saw Nick Offerman's stand-up with some good buddies, saw a Rocky Horror Picture Show performance, and went to a burlesque show that was accompanied by a live, local rock band.

Weddings

We got to see my younger cousin, Joshua get married and hang out with a lot of our East coast family. Got to see our good friend Jamie marry Conor, and also watch our buddy Andrea marry Kent... a cool wedding that I annoyingly had Laryngitis for.

Other parties

We hosted a lot.

Random stuff

I went back to an iPhone. It’s been fun and annoying. The hardware is so damn nice, but the software and Apple ecosystem often annoy me.

My college also wrote this weirdo feature about me where they originally messed up and published that I started Venmo, lol. Awwwkwarrrrd.

I bought a Jeep, which I knew would be fun, but it’s turned out to be wayyy more fun than I expected.

And I invested in an apartment complex, which is my first attempt at property investment. It’s kinda nerve wracking, but also very interesting. I hope it goes well and that I can do more in the future.

Health

It's hard to take care of yourself when you're working, remodeling, traveling and partying so much. I continued to hang with my therapist monthly which was awesome, but my schedule really cramped my yoga and intramural schedules. I also barely biked, gained weight, and felt pretty rough for most of the year.

That said, overall, I'm not particularly proud of the way I felt and cared for myself in 2019, but we sure did a lot and it's fun to reflect on that.

2020 goals

  • learn how to relax
  • tinker on some smaller car/tech/house projects
  • ride that bike
  • lose that new fat
Tags: Retrospective

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