malacled

I feel so behind send help

it has to be “only for Westminster” smh

I need to have some sort of final project for uni give me ideas that are doable but not extraordinary bc I won’t have full rights to the project once I turn it in

I kinda skimmed through the NDA for the startup, if I get fired tomorrow y’all know why…..but look: I’m having a staring contest with the robot we're gonna use, place your bets on who will win now

a photograph holds stillness, but life never does. I doubt they imagined how quickly fifteen years would vanish.

Aug 13 2010!!!!

I sent this photo to your parents. It is us 15 years ago!!

fleeting farewells

the big in-between some things I can’t stop sketching in the margins. a calendar full of prototypes and wrong turns. futures I could author, or abandon. I am young enough to take risks but old enough to know they count. that’s the ache: possibility has weight. existentialism says existence precedes essence. translation: no title will hand me a self. I choose first, then become the person who can live with that choice. the latter is harder than the former. some mornings I open leetcode (most, if we’re being honest), trusting the roadmap that’s supposed to push me through; other mornings I dig sinkholes for every other possibility. in between, I negotiate with fear. I’ve done the different-road thing before. when I chose uni, I walked past the mahogany and picked the wreck that felt truer to the people I resonate with. part of it was stubborn love for my own culture-I didn’t want to get “americanized” by osmosis or sand down the edges that make me me. part of it was my dad. on paper he’s “business,” credentialed, the kind of résumé that glows under chandelier light. but what moved him forward wasn’t some myth of pure invention-it was being smart, reading the room, knowing where and how to make it when it mattered. that’s the inheritance I kept: not the halls, but the habit of making good bets. and if I’m honest, the fomo - scrolling alumni pages, counting badges I didn’t collect mostly shows up when someone sizes me by a label I don’t wear. most days I'm fine. it’s the gaze that stings, not the path. this reads like conviction, but I’m not that sure. I’m noticing drift more than destiny. the compass keeps tilting toward “build,” even while the map looks safer from here-yet that road isn’t guaranteed: hiring freezes, referral roulette, interview lotteries. even the map has gatekeepers. there is a specific terror to making. it’s not poetic. it’s messy git history, an investor no-reply, a feature collapsing under real users. a pivot you have to make on your use case 3 months in. and yet creation is the only place air runs back into the room. demo-day jitters, first-customer dopamine, the way a sentence lands exactly where it should on a landing page. I'm not fearless. I’m just more alive when it’s terrifying than when it’s stable, like most of us. if I go to big tech (if I even make it in), I inherit a map. if I go build, I inherit a compass. one promises fewer wrong turns; the other promises I'll know why I'm walking. so here’s my truce with the in-between: fear can ride shotgun, but it doesn’t pick the destination. I’ll take the meetings, and the chaos that comes with dealing with things I don't know. I accept that safety has a cost and so does meaning-and I'll pay in installments either way, while I can still afford it. I think I know which way I'm leaning. the question is whether the fall risk is worth it. and whether I'm willing to find out.

imposter syndrome much? (I’ll be in Tash come October - it sucks that every time I get settled in again, I leave)

from september last year, how was I able to take myself so seriously? it’s less of a “oh look at me so whimsy” entry and more general, but still. that being said, I think I still feel the same way about fall. every single autumn something happens and my words only ever ring more true.

Francesco Ciulla is doing a Rust bootcamp and I am @ seriously considering it but like I need to stop with the side quests alr can someone just tell me what to cut out and not do so I don’t overcommit to unnecessary things pls n thx

people mock my pain

I get quite a few requests for stuff like this these days (including vlogs, short form content appearances, etc) but until I have some sort of product or service fully out I don’t see the point I just need to speed that process up because if I don’t have it out or at least beta it in the next few months I’ll have to start growing a personal brand instead

call me slow but today I found out you can monetize twitter convinced this is why all of sf and their mom is on it - god forbid you share your thoughts without it being passive income in some way

first linkedin post since hs when I launched my nonprofit - maybe I should become a linkedin warrior since apparently that’s how one gets hired these days (wikihow to control myself and not apply for yc)

Matt Higgins? the man the myth the legend? random linkedin requests from investors? send help idk how to feel

someone asked me what my tiktok feed is and I said romance - I think it’s pretty accurate

I am not a big fan of this week's writing, hence I probably won't mass post it the way I usually do, but I'm trying to get into a groove of posting things consistently, even if it's not perfect. It irks me how surface level and short this substack article is, but I think if I don't put something out I'll lose the habit and just not have anything out for months. https://open.substack.com/pub/malacled/p/give-me-back-my-airplane-mode?r=64dr47&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

the lack of social branding + identity is a choice guys let me figure out who I am first then I can market it I promise