Forked from fielded notes For chronological view see 2024 Timeline Reflection
“Thus are our memories compressed, integrated into sparkling jewels to be embedded in the limited space of our minds. A scene is turned into a mnemonic, a conversation reduced to a single phrase, a day distilled to a fleeting feeling of joy. Time’s arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photography. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original”
reflection on 2024 in the city in june heat waves my motivation goodbye. “It is june. I am tired of being brave.”
during friendsgiving we go around the table and say what we’re grateful for. “all of my friends,” most say with a sheepish grin.
i proclaim that i am grateful for mittens in the morning. unabashed and a bit melodramatic for a group of mutuals i’ve only purviewed in the peripheral vision at the office. i complain about the weather daily, but really, it’s always been a privilege to witness my fingers crack in the morning, my thick plume frizzy post-excursion.
“It’s december. And no one asked me if i was ready.”
this past year i’ve embraced being a little dramatic. in other words, i’ve given myself permission to be myself. i feel the highs and lows.
i’ve chased communities and creativity and floated in and out of flow states. i realized i like events in 3rd POV compared to 1st — throwing and documenting events thrill me more than actually being there.
sarah kay once said something along the lines of - everytime i am writing i wish i was out living. every time i am living i wish i was in writing. my initial takeaway was that living a full life was at odds with writing an interior life. i now understand - i need to live a life worth writing about, and write in a way that makes life worth living.
in 2025 i want to live a life so full it bursts at the seams, sticky-persimmon sweetness oozing past skin. a life so ordinary yet beautiful it begets not biography but memoir. i struggle to describe my substack but perhaps this is it: an aspirational memoir.
i’ve avoided explicitly writing a new york-themed piece, as to say that it’s the greatest city in the world feels trite. but reflecting on this year’s theme it’d be remiss to dismiss the impact moving here has been for my relation to art, to others, to self. it was at a poetry class in williamsburg that i first discovered the word navel-gazer and i felt the joys of finding a name for something i could never pinpoint. it was at a coffee shop-turned-speakeasy that i shared my writing for the first time, at the open mic i’ve almost promised to go to. it was at a pho shop in st marks when i it was at weekly spring visits to soho that i meekly shared my street photos to a room of familiar strangers. to say i could even have a group of people to gather for photo walks or writing clubs is something i desired but only got now.
and i met so many writers here! except we are a blend of other things - creatives, shitposters, a lota corporate sellouts looking for meaning elsewhere.
you either hate or love new york. you either leave or stay. you either choose chaos or cosmos.
artifacts have guided my understanding in 2024.
Back in my day they calledthis self actualization
2024: A Physics Lesson (From Someone Who Hates Physics)
sarah kay once said something along the lines of - everytime i am writing i wish i was out living. every time i am living i wish i was in writing. my initial takeaway was that living a full life was at odds with writing an interior life. i now understand - i need to live a life worth writing about, and write in a way that makes life worth living.
so is it a surprise that the year i’ve lived the most is also the year i’ve written the most?
Centers of Mass & Gravity Pre-move to NYC, I thought a lot about how to make friends when I was moving at an unconventional time - mid winter, when most of my peers have yet to enter and my older friends have already established friend groups of their own. My life felt like spurts cycles of friend making that sparked and faded once we all left the phase we were in - my short time in college, internships, study abroad. Summer camp on repeat.
February I entered the city without gravity. A month before work started.
- in the summer i drew network graphs to demonstrate how i visualized my relationships.
- fun statistics: # of texts sent, # of venues frequented
Visual & Optical Resonance
Purple Prose
A prevailing question: why do I create? In other words… why write? Why take pictures?
Is it for an audience? Is it for myself?
- resonance as a transfer of energy
- it’s the energy of words aligning w meaning
- photography - energy of light and composition aligning with emotion
- when creators achieve resonance, their work vibrates at a frequency that others can feel - an amplification of their vision that ripples outward
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photos taken, # blog posts
Creative Inertia
- writing clubs
- conversations with friends who are song-writers, videographers, visual artists
- data points: # of photo walks, writing clubs, events held Escape Velocity I jotted down many side projects and events in 2024. And many never came to life. What’s holding back some of my dreams? Is it time, energy, perfectionism, or fear?
- I write with enough momentum for my anxieties/insecurities/feelings to reach escape velocity and escape the prison of my own making.
- A big change from 2023 is how many people I talked to about my ideas in 2024.
- There’s still a lot of ideas for side projects that have yet to reach escape velocity: they’re stuck in my head, in my notes app, in promises given to friends.
Seeking Friction
There’s an allure to hyper-optimizing your life. I take notes on Obsidian since its UI facilitates I bought a Nespresso Running every day.
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of
Intentionality is Everything
2024 was a lot of “drinking from the firehose,” to quote the phrase I repeated endlessly to my manager during onboarding. I embraced my multiple interests and hobbies and my friends from all over.
New Year’s resolutions imply a fixed goal, a rigid plan to success.
Resolution stems from the Latin word resolvere, which means “to loosen or let go.” Sometimes I desire outcomes so whole-heartedly it hurts. I see a dream life and hold it so tightly it cuts to my fingers and I bleed.
My first year in the city was infused w a latent restlessness, an ennui, plagued by a paralysis that from here, where do I go? I want to resolve in the literal sense: loosen tension, clarify my energy, and live with intention rather than obligation.
A Final Note on Memory
“Thus are our memories compressed, integrated into sparkling jewels to be embedded in the limited space of our minds. A scene is turned into a mnemonic, a conversation reduced to a single phrase, a day distilled to a fleeting feeling of joy. Time’s arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photography. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original”
working thru schema and values that i want to live by.
- perfect days —
- Meet me in atlantic city
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What is the state of your community this year? Where did you invest or divest
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How do you feel about your hobbies? What motivates you? Hobbies took a central stage when I landed in the city. At my first party I dragged Vincent along and we breathlessly introduced ourselves to strangers with our full bio - major, school, job, company. We soon realized that people shed these labels at events (for the most part). People hand-wave the industry - tech, business, art - and instead talk about their hobbies and interest. It was the first time of my life the conversation didn’t feel hell-bent on whatever prestige label we were chasing. Writing became core to my identity in 2024. I thought about the importance of community driving creativity and vice versa. Creativity requires sparks which come from friends and acquaintances also working
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What is your relationship to work? Where did you strive or falter? My relationship with work has only started. In many ways I am grateful for the privilege it affords me - to work in the role I’ve coveted, remotely. I learned the benefits and consequences of remote work. I faltered in setting a routine. When work is flexible it’s easy for it to fall into the background. I feel physically disconnected from the main purpose of life, and thus it fees less like a purpose and more like a chore.
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What were the sources of intimacy this year? How did those change? Did you love someone or learn to love yourself more this year? I believed the capacity to love only increased this year. I put myself out there openly on the Internet. I told people about my feelings seriously at parties and random events. I discovered the word “navel-gazing” — omphaloskeptical — and I learned what happens when fellow over-thinkers come together.
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What was different from 2023? Decentralized community ( no school/study abroad/internship experience)
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Where did you draw inspiration and sentimentality from? What were the memories and feelings that represented this year?
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Why and how do you expect 2025 to be different?
Looking to the future - it’s always about trying to focus on goals after a year of exploration.
- What did you learn this year?
- Doors are made for knocking.
- You can message your favorite Substacker and organize events for her. You can ask for stickers.
- No one’s an adult, just grown-up children.
- We’re all living life for the first time. This year I made older friends for the first time, and it really Prompts from staring into the abyss:
- Doors are made for knocking.
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If you had to leave your job today, what would you do instead?
- I would work at a Series B-D startup in a product/growth/sales/forward deployed engineering role. I would talk to customers directly, hear their needs, and work with some UX thinking of some sorts.
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What’s the best argument in favor of doing that right now?
- I’m young, no dependents, and I can take risks.
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If you have a partner, what’s the best argument in favor of breaking up with them?
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Are there ways you behave that you wish you didn’t? What unacknowledged desires could be driving those?
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What have you said “yes” to that you wouldn’t say “hell yes” to? (prompted by Alex Watt)
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Is there something you “should” do that you’re not currently doing? Why? (prompted by Silas Strawn)
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What bad things are you afraid of happening? Imagine in detail what it would be like if they happened. (prompted by Kamilé Lukosiute)
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What do you need that you’re not currently getting? (—David MacIver)
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What are you avoiding because it conflicts with some part of your identity / self-image? (—Nicholas Schiefer; more at link)
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“What is the biggest thing in your life that you just kinda casually fell into and would you have made a conscious decision to do it if you’d known in advance everything you know now?” (—@GeniesLoki; hundreds more at link)
2024 Ins
- Kickbacks
2024 Outs *