This is 44
When I turned 30, I quit my day job. Depending on who you talk to, best or worst decision of my life. I still can’t tell for sure. I’m only 44. Since yesterday. The point is, I spent the next year thinking of what to do next. Every other week, I’d be at Starbucks with my brother sharing my new idea: a blog about ideas; a music platform (we actually did that one); a media (obviously); an incubator (who knows)… After a while, my brother started getting tired with all of this and told me he’d had enough of that hamster wheel situation and was gonna get back to focusing on his day job. To each their own.
The other thing I did that year was watch a ridiculous number of TV shows. That was before streaming so there were a lot of torrents involved: I can say it now, I believe the statue of limitations has run out. If not, going to jail for illegally downloading Person of Interest in 2012 feels worthwhile. Also, I was living in a studio apartment in the center of town at the time, where there was no table to speak of, so I did all of my movie watching from bed. Eventually developing early onset sciatica as a result. I like being the first at everything.
In January 2013, after a good year of that healthy regimen, I decided it was time to get a move on and start an actual project. That very first one also felt like the most natural: a blog. I have been writing on and off all my life, this is perhaps the most obvious skill I have. To the point that I don’t consider it to be one, because it kinda comes without saying. Also, with AI, everyone can now sound like Hemingway. Literally: the way AI works is based on inferences, not “pure” creation. But that’s another topic altogether, which I became an expert in in the years that followed. It’s not like I did nothing.
And so, in January 2013, I started a Tumblr. My first post was a very astute, 3-paragraph-long piece on how old people going shopping at peak hour dressed in a suit was annoying. Right away, you could see the Pulitzer prize coming. So I kept going. More accurately, I kept posting every day: that way, I figured I would eventually get better at it. And I did, which some might say was not that hard: after a few months of posting, sometimes several times a day (my record is 5, one of which might have been OK), I started getting more confident in my writing. I wouldn’t say good, the jury’s still out on that, but at least I could write without second guessing every single word or sentence. In other words, I became negligent.
The projects that followed included a music startup (now defunct), a consulting firm (still there), a bunch of collaborations, teaching, music, photography… And there we are: the year is 2025 and I am still blogging. To be more accurate, with (way) less intensity than before; which is kinda what I’m trying to fix right now: I may not be the next Hemingway (I don’t drink — anymore — anyway) but at least I can do this. And perhaps other things will come out of that once again.
This is how I (think I) stay young.