Thirty on the thirtieth! Today is like any other, but I suppose it’s as good a day as any to reflect on the past ten years of my life and look forward to the next ten.
In the past ten years I…
- graduated from college early and with high honors.
- ended an eight year career caddying.
- started a career in software engineering.
- laid my father to rest.
- moved to Brooklyn.
- started a company, raised $250k, and shut it down.
- got promoted from iOS developer, to General Manager, and then CEO of Instapaper.
- made lots of new friends.
- started an annual vacation to South/Central America and visited Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador.
- stopped smoking after being a smoker for 12 years.
- buried my best friend Bertram.
- sold Instapaper to Pinterest.
- moved from Brooklyn to Oakland.
- made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in media.
- started hiking, backpacking, and mountain climbing.
- shipped board sections at Pinterest, shut down a couple of other unsuccessful projects.
- moved into software engineering management.
- wrote the most read post on the Pinterest Engineering blog.
- visited Japan, climbed Mt. Fuji.
- spun Instapaper out of Pinterest.
- climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states.
- summitted over 19k feet on Cotopaxi in Ecuador.
One constant in my life has been that things have generally trended to be more awesome as I’ve gotten older, and I’m hoping the trend continues through my thirties.
In the next ten years I hope to…
- get married.
- start a family.
- purchase a house.
- manage a large organization of people building amazing products.
- climb a few mountains in the Cascade Range.
- write more on this blog.
- become fluent in Spanish.
- keep Instapaper running.
- take a few months off between jobs to relax/explore/learn.