“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing the lawn, climb that goddamn mountain.”
- Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums
Let me just start off by saying a lot has changed since my last blog post. At the time of my last post I was only about a year into my professional coding career, my father had recently passed, and I was still trying to navigate my life in New York City. A lot of things have changed, all for the better.
Shortly after my last blog post, I began to really begin taking on a lot more responsibility at my job, I was doing backend development for multiple applications, and although I had help from my amazing tech lead and team members, I had to learn how to deal with problems on my own. It was an amazing learning experience, within a few months after that I was promoted to a Full Stack Developer. And although I learned a lot about programming in the past 2 years, I would like to keep this blog post more focused on changes in other areas of my life.
Around February 2017 something weird happened, my cable went out. I still had internet, but cable TV just stopped working. So obviously I called Time Warner and made an appointment, however it would take them about 3 days to get to me. So I spent three days without cable TV, and I began to see how much I was using TV to pacify my racing mind. I would get home eat dinner then spend time watching TV and browsing the web until I felt tired and fell asleep. For those three days without Cable at first I was a little peeved, but by day 3 I felt so much better about myself, I wasn’t mindlessly snacking in front of a big blue screen, I wasn’t dulling my mind with nonsense and fanatical news reports, I was reading more, and I overall felt better. So I got my cable fixed then I canceled it. That was the first step in what would probably be my most transformative year yet.
In March I began to start regulating my diet more, eating less and eating healthier, in April I went on a trip with some friends to st Thomas, we did a lot of walking on a very hilly island, and I began to see how out of shape I was. It was very disconcerting to feel so physically unfit. So I made a decision to take action and begin losing weight. When I returned home from st Thomas I was 6’ 0” and 245 pounds. I knew steps needed to be taken, I thought about joining a gym, but I was a little too self conscious for that. So I started running, a lot. I would run almost every day I got home from work. 2 miles, 3 miles, 4 miles, day after day. I began radically changing my diet, I would now begin to eat only around 1800 calories a day, whereas before the trip I was probably averaging about 3500 a day. I lost 20 pounds in the first month, and then the weight loss continued. Today while writing this I am currently 157 pounds and in the normal healthy weight range. I lost almost 90 pounds in a year.
So without Cable TV, and with exercise being a nice de stressing activity for me, I needed something else to fill up my time. I had always liked reading but always felt I never had the time. But with my new mindset I knew there was time for anything as long as you made it. So I started reading, the first book was a pocket guide on existentialism, a year later I have just finished reading Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness the 900 page bible for modern existentialism. I began to read all the time, everywhere I went I would always have a book with me. I read on the subway, I read while waiting in line, I read during my lunch break. And I read everything I could get my hands on, philosophy, classical fiction, science, self-help, ancient religious texts, etc. By the time 2017 was over I had read 41 books that year. And I’m hoping to top that record this year.
So now with exercise, reading, and work taking up most of my days I decided I needed some people to share my ideas and thoughts with. So I started attending groups and meetups with like minded people and I began to make some very close friends that I am super grateful for to this day. They have helped me through so much, I am honored to call them my friends. As I started losing weight I began to feel better about myself so I began dating. And there were definitely a few mismatches, but with time I found a wonderful girl, and for the first time in my life I am in a committed relationship.
The last square of my life I had to get together was my professional career. My former company had been going through some hard times and eventually I was the only engineer left on the team and I knew I needed to get out. Despite my successes over the past year in September I fell ill in a way that made it very hard to get out of bed and get to work, let alone interview for another job. But as time passed my illness was getting better and better, eventually I took a job at a wonderful company called infinity interactive. Now I am a remote programmer working on some pretty cool applications. In fact I just got back from Paris where I was working and visiting my girlfriend.
I am now a year and a half older than the person who wrote the last blog post, I am also almost 90 pounds lighter, with hair about 4 inches longer, and a personality that is way more secure and chilled out. Even a year and a half ago I couldn’t have imagined my life playing out this well, and all because I decided to change the parts of myself that i didn’t like. Instead of feeling bitter about being overweight I took action, instead of sitting in my loneliness, i became more outgoing, instead of complaining about my job I got a new one. I guess what this post is about is that if you are uncomfortable with who you are change it to the best of your ability, and when you see a challenge, when you see an opportunity take it, in the end all I am saying is Climb that goddamn mountain.