It was about a year ago that I started this Substack, and three months ago that I decided to take a gap semester. Similar to my senior year of high school, as the prospect of graduating approached, I became aware that I had both followed my gut towards what I wanted to do, and failed to do so at the same time. The news tech internship which I thought was going to be my greatest contribution to the world ended up being underwhelming and a lot of bureaucracy. The vc fellowship I dreamed of ended up not being as incredibly life changing as I thought. The economy was bad, I felt disillusioned with product design, and I just wanted time to stop. What easier way than to take a gap?
What had changed in the last three months? Factually, I was able to do design work that made me love design again and had a good time in NYC and SF. Although more successful time spent then I thought, there were still a lot of things I said I would do with this time off that I continued to not do - I didn’t make anything with creative tech, I didn’t write a thesis (even though I talked to a professor about it), the amount of objectively creatively new self-expressionist things I made was an incredibly low amount.
But nevertheless I’m happy that I kept on writing these Substacks. Something about writing these fundamentally changed me. I started a running Notes about things I wanted to write about, things I had more than an inkling of a thought on. My friend in high school said he’d never talk about his crushes out loud because it made the feelings even more real. But I want to make these feelings more real, to unravel these opinions, to assert the future I want. I want to have a compass to follow, that no matter what happens, at the very least I know it will never have been a waste because I was doing what I love. I hope to map it out with ya’ll in the coming months and years, and hope everyone follows their dreams too!
notes I wrote down that I want to explore in the new year
paradoxically wanting to be known and not wanting to be, the rise of influencer culture and internet presence
an even faster world with ai?
what is truly the right future with sustainability?
capitalizing off of identity to gain influence
is there a modular approach to social media?
who controls the media
I would like to grow up more slowly
change through collective action/consumer behavior
art consumption through the years
binaries
accepting transience
information categorization and retrieval
the state of media and the fight for attention
making functionally useless things
making the world a better place
As a last note, the year as a whole for me has been a lot of growing and understanding why I act the way I do, which should be obvious because who knows me better than myself, but even so it’s hard to actualize sometimes. I still don’t know what I’ll be doing six months from now, but send me anything interesting you find!!
i am genuinely so moved by this. ily so much.