2022 into 2023

December 14th, 2022/Share on Twitter

I write this blog post for myself every year. Here's last years. Every year, I look back and reflect the meaningful events, hardships, and challenges I took to grow as a person

This year was fairly chaotic. Some of the highest points and lowest points in my life. More so than previous years. I learned a lot about myself in the process

Here's a synoposis

Relationships

The biggest thing that's changed in my life has been relationships. Not in the romantic sense only but also friendships and business partners. Most of my life has been pretty independent up until that point, it's always been an "I" and never a "we".

I learned more about myself and my past this year than I had ever done before. How I work with others, etc etc. It was a rollercoaster for sure looking back

I debut'd my first Aerial Acrobat Performance!

My theme for this year was Acrobatics. And here's the result of it! I debut'd my first acrobatic performance on aerial silks

I remember the day I signed on to do this show. One of my friends volunteered me in and said "hey you'll like this it'll be fun". The first days coming back into silks were brutal. I couldn't even do the most basic of moves

And we only had 2 months to rehearse this to perfection. Some days I felt like I slipped backwards, but I grinded through anyways.

Going up in the air is this magical fleeting experience. You feel like your no longer bound by any rules anymore, and you can express yourself as much as your body is able too. That's what drew me to do aerial acrobatics - it's expressionalism in the form of logistical creativity

Some of those moves we rehearsed through were painful on my foot and knee. Since you hang all your weight on there. Everyone who performs tells me you have to "tough it out" and you have to be up in the air. Cuts, bruises, etc - you basically look like a domestic victim if you seriously train hard enough

On the day of the performance, there must have been about 200 people in attendance. All watching, eyes on stage. I don't know how I managed it, but my best time doing the routine was actually the day it mattered.

After I finished the performance, I felt a wave of relief. I didn't have to practice anymore! There wasn't the stress of "oh god I have to perform tonight" but at the same time, I feel bittersweet now that it's over

I miss the practice days already. I might come back and perform at a bigger theatre next year. Maybe. Anyways, here's the performance I did

Organizing my first Hackathon

Since I started Tampa Devs, it's grown immensely this year. How big? Big enough that I'm scheduled to be speaking on stage at a local conference that Steve Wozniak is also keynoting at.

That aside, we were planning our biggest event of the year. A hackathon!

Ever since I started my programming journey, I wanted to pay it forward. I got really lucky thanks in part to the community who helped start my career.

But more so in the hackathon that actually helped me get my first job. I reached out to my favorite hackathon organizer 6 months prior to the event, and convinced him to move the event from Orlando to Tampa that year. And it worked!

I wrote down the before and after thought processes for the hackathon

Check out the promo video we made for TADHacks!

Also, check out the promo video we made for Tampa Devs too!

I wrote 30 blog posts about what I learned starting Tampa Devs

Asides from the hackathon, we've been pushing a crazy amount of infrastructure changes to Tampa Devs. It's essentially become a startup at this point, but we've registered as a nonprofit. Pending 501c3 status too!

I wrote about lessons learned about marketing, leadership, and operations. Some have trended on the frontpage of hackernews too.

Here's some of those blog posts

More blog posts coming in the pipeline. I haven't had a lot of time lately to write these

New Life Experiences

Too many to tell. Here's some of the things I did this year:

Travels!
- Met Tom Scott in New York!
- Went to my first company retreat in Texas!
- Hiked the Yosemite in California
Fitness Hobbies
- Acroyoga
- Aerial Acrobatics
- Did my first gymnastics pullover
- Performed at my first show for aerial silks!
New experiences
- Camped for the first time
- Owned a second cat for a bit
- Paraded at my first Pride Parade!
- Attended my first rodeo
- Explored my first data center
- Built a Mandalorian Lego Headset
- Started a new job

Looking back through my photo albums this year, my life is crazy fun and awesome. I'm pretty happy where I am with in life, but I have way more bigger and better plans for the future

Here's a picture of me and Tom Scott for when he recorded this video - "Flying here is surpisingly legal"

In closing

These were my thoughts for the year, and things that I did. My theme for this year was "Acrobatics". Next year I think my theme for the year will be "Learning".

I want to focus on 3 seperate subthemes here:

Learning Spanish
Career/conferences
Real Estate