Thursday: I photographed my desk space above, all 27″ + 17″ of Mac-tastic display. The colors are so clear, I’m sometimes overwhelmed by it and want to step backwards. When I go home and look at my dingy little 15″ monitor I got for free via Teddy from the Wharton Marketing department when they were cleaning out old monitors… smh.
I had my head shot taken for work, and went to a random BD meeting before going back and settling into doing some Android mock-ups. I’m really glad I went through the interview process with Venmo because it forced me through the practice of learning design conventions the first time around, but it was still rough learning for an operating system whose designs I rarely use and hardly immerse myself into.
On my way up to the roof for my photo, I passed by Wunwun, the startup working in the penthouse. When you think of a startup environment, I think that was what I imagined – clean white walls, well lit sunny room, Chemex coffee makers, scores of skinny Asian hipsters coding with glasses and designing something on Macs, and a veritable hallway of Fjallraven and Herschel backpacks hanging on tarnished brass hooks. It was at once an idyllic photo meant to be the cover photo of a Squarespace template, and a parody of a kindergarten classroom. (That’s a little bit of jealousy speaking. I want cool backpacks, Chemex coffee machines, sunny penthouse offices and a little more design sensibility in the office, but I’ll take what I can get.)
The view out East was nice. I climb up roofs, take photos shooting down, and yet do not achieve Humza Deas. Teach me how to photo. (I think it’s the harsh afternoon lighting, and lack of pro lightroom effects.)
Friday: The end of a long first week! No wonder everyone feels so exhausted from these M-F, 9-6 jobs. Stable hours, but they don’t have the luxury of leaving work early on Thursday, loafing around at home Friday, and skipping out for early happy hours when project work is light.
I went to Lauren G’s SVA Design for Social Innovation semester show, which was themed around creating physical objects to solve social problems. I haven’t seen Lauren since we graduated high school, so it was a very abrupt reunion, but her project was awesome and the whole concept for the class is very exciting. I read about SVA’s summer immersive when I was in college, so it’s very cool to find out someone you know from some part of your life is winding down this path too. Very fun!
On a slightly sadder note: I went home after work to an empty apartment, and didn’t know what to do with myself. I was killing time before meeting up with Dean later in the evening and felt too drained to make plans, but my computer was at his place and my apartment was empty. And I literally had no idea what to do. I took a shower. I ate a sandwich. I watched a re-run of Modern Family. I ate another sandwich. In this odd expanse of time, Friday early evening, the supposed prime-time of the week, I was at home sitting by myself feeling lonely and kind of lame. I missed having people around me automatically when I lived with a million people in Stuytown, where the geographic proximity made it easy to grab someone and do something. And since I’m not often an instigator of “things to do”, I’d just rely on someone else to set a plan and happily follow along. Somewhere in the last year, mostly in the last half year, that started to unravel. We moved, friends left down, I traveled a lot for work, started splitting a lot of my time with Dean and catching up with regulars less and less, the weather got cold, people got older, social groups got smaller, people fell into this routine of the handful of people they saw frequently, even if one-on-ones and infrequent coffee/brunch catch-ups still happened. I’ve been writing about this theme (sometimes in private entries, sorry to any readers who may have been curious), but it’s been nagging on my mind and bumming out for a while. I deeply regret not being around as much to make these hangouts happen, or putting so much heaviness on something that should be light-hearted and organic, but I think that’s why it causes me so much consternation. Making friends is so easy and organic, but keeping up the pace of friendships when the context changes is challenging and takes a lot of effort. More to appreciate out of the friends that do, and more room for me to improve in the friendships I have let fall through the cracks. Of course, it takes two to tango and everyone’s lives are changing so quickly, but this is the largest change I’ve noticed in the 2.5 years I’ve been in New York and one of the saddest ones. For a lot of people, I think this transition happened right out of college, while I had a blessed 1-1.5 years of living with good friends, seeing lots of groups of people who all knew each other and feeling like every day was a gigantic sleepover, so it’s harder to leave that extreme and face… the Rest of Life.
Filed under: Big Kid Tagged: Apple products, friendships, growing up, high school friends, hip BK start-up couture, loneliness, start-ups, SVA
