Betterwithpesto

ACL is starting up again this year.

I've always used the music festival as a time to see where I am in life. It usually occurs at the end of the first week of October, about 1 month into school. Every year I always with a different crowd of people. It's never the same experience, but it's always a positive one and a lot of fun. I remember the first year I went, I saw Dave Matthews Band, which I've been a fan of since I was in elementary school (don't judge me @kappuru), the weather turned stormy and the entirety of Zilker Park turned into a giant mud pit. I returned to my dorm, and while I was trying to clean off my muddy shoes in the laundry room, I was overcame with the feeling that I had just seen something, and that I had finally "made it to college."

Fast forward 4 years,

in 2012, I said to myself "I'll be out of Austin by ACL 2013."

Lo and behold, I spent my now 5th year of undergrad, still failing and dropping classes because I didn't care, or I didn't want to think about what I wanted to do after college. Eventually after a bumpy ride, by August 2013, I managed to finish all my classes and finally graduate. At that time I remembered my goal. ACL was approaching. You can always tell because there's a certain crowd of people who buys tickets during the presale to try and gouge people at the last second to earn a profit on facebook or craigslist. Now that the festival is 2 weekends, that's pretty much impossible due to the amount of space that is available, and people that particular year were struggling to even sell the passes at face value. I can tell those types of people didn't learn their lessons this year.

But who knows, why am I being judgmental again? Most of them might have just bought tickets wishing they could go, but got caught up with work and other obligations.

Okay okay, back to it. I ended up going to the festival in 2013. And for that information you can go to the last page of my blog to find out what I was feeling back then.

Here I am in Austin again, the festival is here, 2014 edition. It's kind of weird that all of the things going on with me are coming together at this particular time of the year. Am I going to the festival? Probably not. Most likely going to Ditch the Fest Fest, which has... sadly more bands that I'm excited to see than ACL.

I've accepted an offer here in California.

It's at a company called Rocket Fuel, my title is "Rocket Scientist." In reality it's a software engineer or developer role, and I'm not very fond of the official title. I'm pretty excited since the team I'm going to be on uses rails / node / backbone js, and they're cool with me being relatively new.

Career wise, it's a great next step. Largely, if I'm going to continue doing programming, I see myself doing front end and UI for products. I'm pretty confident that rails and these javascript frameworks will be relevant for at least the next 3~ years.

The office is located in Redwood City, CA. I'm trying to find a place in SF, which is a pretty short commute away via car or public transport.

So... how am I feeling. What are the emotions?

I'm genuinely very excited.

I've spent the majority of the past year living very nomadically. Pretty much living out of my car, relying on the kindness of friends.

I had a lot of ideas, some pretty unique and magical ones, but found myself very unable to materialize them for some reason or another.

Was it financials? resources? mindset? ability? I think it was a mix of all of those.

I've been very fortunate to have the chance to come out here and try to get away from Texas. While I love Austin, and some parts of Houston, I largely feel like it's time to try something entirely different. And yeah I know this isn't really special, tons of you have left home a long time ago.

For the most part, I think most of the readers of this blog are in their 20's, recent grads from college. It's a very confusing time for all of us. What are our dreams? What do we want to do? How do we navigate this life?

I'm really glad that I started this blog. I haven't really gone back to reread most of my previous posts, for fear that I might want to punch myself, but more or less the current take away is... I've spent the last year dabbling. Switching from being a programmer, to doing a startup, to doing photography, and back again. And while you could argue that it was all just a big jumble and mess, I think I grew tremendously, and would not be where I'm at today without the chance to go through all of that.

I think it's important to dabble. To test the waters. Especially in a time where there are just so many options, where every move we make is overshadowed by all the "what ifs?" of the other paths.

On the other side of the coin, having my own place, and being able to actually provide for myself and potentially for others is going to be totally new for me. I see the goodness and value that this will entail. If you've identified with any messages from this blog over the past year... chances are, you feel some form of unrest, and might want to try to get out here too, for whatever length of time.

So yeah, feel free to hit me up.

I'm going back to Texas to grab my stuff for real. I'm actively searching for someone who would want to make the drive from Houston/Austin to SF between the first or second week of October, I'd make it a 3-4 day sight seeing trip, and I'd pay for hotels since they've provided me a relocation package.

I'm excited for all of the new food, adventures, and people I'll meet.