29 years old

Today I turn 29 years old. Only one year left until the supposedly dreaded three oh...

And I couldn't be more excited.

As I close in on this big life milestone, I wanted to write a piece about where I'm at in life right now and my journey in the past few years. Buckle up, it's gonna be a big one.

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A few months ago I finally received an offer of employment as a software engineer. I spent two long, hard years grinding to learn programming and sharpen my skills to the point necessary to get a decent job. For most of this period I was sequestered in my room, poring over code and documentation, barely seeing people or socializing. I was basically broke and focused fully on establishing myself in this new career path I had chosen.

There were many, many moments during this period that were demoralizing, dreary, monotonous, and outright depressing. My resume while I was applying to jobs was pretty poor, so I got screened out 95% of the time. The other 5% I couldn't make it past the first technical phone screen. I actually had one brief moment of self-harm ideation, after preparing very hard for an interview at Triplebyte and just barely failing despite thinking I had passed. (I took a long walk in Central Park immediately after having this thought - which produced one of the most radical transformations in mood I've ever experienced in my life. Vitamin D and fresh air are important, folks.) Even though I've gotten pretty decent at powering through rejection and keeping my head down during a long grind, that job search was maybe the toughest ordeal I've ever gone through in my life.

However, now - I'm by far the happiest I've ever been in my life. I love my new job, I love the area I'm living in, and I've never been more content with who I am.

What I've learned during these past few years is that, to fullest reasonable extent, you need to pursue what gives you long-term fulfillment, what you can do day in and day out without getting fed up with the small details or the boring tasks, what feels like magic in the little moments and not just in the big breakthroughs and final products. I wrote off programming for a long time due to extremely silly reasons, but now I genuinely enjoy every day at work, and I am proud of the work I produce for my company.

One of the most satisfying changes I've undergone recently is: I have finally, truly left behind the prospect of "making it" with my stream. For a very long time, I had nagging thoughts in the back of my head along the lines of "but I had 700-1000 viewers during my peak moments", "if I just really commit to it and do it consistently I'll succeed" - you get the picture. Although I probably could find limited success if I worked at it consistently, the concept of streaming for a living is extremely misguided for me, for all these reasons:

1) I don't enjoy being "entertaining" beyond my normal personality for extended periods of time.
2) I love speedrunning for the personal achievement and competition, but I would hate to do it out of a feeling of obligation.
3) I'm almost exclusively drawn toward old games and games with a retro aesthetic, and it is much more difficult to find long-term success if you limit your stream to these games.
4) I'm a hipster contrarian at heart. The concept of pleasing an audience when it doesn't align with my natural preferences is anathema to me.

Despite being acutely aware of all of these things, for a long time I regularly flirted with the idea of becoming a full-time streamer (not so much during my long break from speedrunning, but before and after). There was, of course, a practical reason for that - without a marketable skill set in a traditional industry, it was the most plausible way I could make any kind of consistent income doing something I enjoyed in some fashion. But really, the main reason I couldn't let the idea go was: I wanted the status that comes with being a successful streamer.

Streamers and content creators are the new entertainment class of the big ol' nerdosphere that's crystallized over the past 5-10 years. There's a reason why so many people toil endlessly trying to grow their audience and become big - because being an entertainer will always be one of the most desirable occupations out there, regardless of the exact shape or form of it. I let this aspect influence my decision-making a little too much for a little too long. It was only when I had realized that programming is what I truly enjoy doing in the day to day sense that I was able to leave behind these longings for good.

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Maybe it's just my perception, but there seems to be a lot of hubbub about getting "old" and leaving your 20s. Your 20s are supposed to be the time of your life - your 20s are when you have the most drive and energy - there are Twitch celebrities and entrepreneurs and musicians that are hyper-successful in their 20s, and there you are doing jack shit with your life. I've experienced these feelings, fleetingly, many times throughout the past decade. I doubt I will stop experiencing those feelings completely any time soon, even if (especially if!) I were to become hyper-successful myself. But I've learned to be grateful for what I have and how lucky I've been in terms of family, friends, and opportunities.

In terms of my overall level of happiness, my 20s were an almost perfectly linear progression from perpetually depressed to happy, motivated, and energized. There were blips here and there, but it really all changed when I got fed up with living a gray, unfulfilling life and committed to making some kind of change. That first change was going to the gym seriously. I went consistently for 4 months, following an existing regimen, meticulously tracking each gym session, counting all my calories, and basically expending all of my daily willpower reserves on fitness.

I actually saw measurable change. For once, I was somewhat happy with my physical appearance, and I was proud of what I had accomplished. Yes, at the start, going to the gym was foreign and felt like a big struggle, but I made a commitment to myself and saw it through to completion. Somewhere during that 4 month period it stopped feeling like I had to put in a huge effort just to get myself to the gym and complete my workout. Since then, I've found it easy to commit to a new fitness routine and eat by a strict diet whenever I want to.

It was a similar process with programming. After trialing it out for a week or two and determining that I enjoyed the craft, I committed to doing a solid amount of programming work each day, through Codecademy, then Codewars, then pre-course material for my bootcamp, then the bootcamp itself, then working on my own long-term project, then searching for jobs. Throughout it all, I always felt more fulfilled doing boring, grindy programming work day in and day out than either living an aimless life full of playing games and watching streams, or pursuing something more "fun" like streaming, for the wrong reasons. While not a particularly glamorous profession, pursuing programming has led to me being more fulfilled and consistently happier than any of the various pursuits I tried in the preceding decade that I thought would lead to happiness through material satiation.

On a different note, I've had a much higher incidence, in the past year, of thinking about how certain events happened many years in the past, and about how a lot of time has passed while I've been alive. Certainly, approaching 30 has had an impact on me. It's not a trivial thing. But it's something I'm excited to embrace, as it means a new decade for me to live, work, and achieve all the things I want to achieve.

I have a good friend that sometimes mentions a concept called "neuroplasticity", which relates to how quickly and efficiently your neurons enable you to learn new things or improve at a skill. Supposedly, one's neuroplasticity starts to decline around the age of 35. To neuroplasticity, I say: get out of my face. I'll never stop improving at the things I care about improving at or learning things I want to learn. This year, I plan to start writing music, recommence learning Japanese, release at least one significant speedrunning-related programming project, retake the Mega Man 2 any% record, and thoroughly enjoy the wide variety of things my new city has to offer. That is simply how I live life now.

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I've mentioned this elsewhere in this piece, but I consider myself incredibly fortunate. I have parents that were able and willing to house me while I figured out my shit in the past few years, I haven't faced many systemic barriers, and I stumbled upon key concepts that had a huge transformative effect on me. For those who read my meditation pastebin a few years ago - I still consider it, undoubtedly, the most beneficial thing I've ever done in my life. I believe more than ever that it physically rewired my brain to view things in a more positive light across the board.

If you want to improve your life - it does not matter if you are not in as convenient or fortunate a situation. If you have any free time and extra willpower whatsoever - commit to one big goal that you would love to accomplish, and that you have a strong hunch would bring about lasting benefits if you saw it through. Not only will you experience those benefits, you will experience the feeling of creating a positive habit - which are the foundation of a happy life. Habits literally make up who we are, and without conscious effort to the contrary, we tend toward forming bad ones. Use the formation of a good habit as the stepping stone to form more good habits, and slowly become a better, kinder, happier person.

Cheers, to the final year of my 20s, and to a bright future.