lately my energy levels shoot up dramatically when i go to tech events, the adrenaline courses through me at the events, and it lingers after, in the commute back home and for a while after until i got o bed. it’s something about their stories, their challenges, their ideas that turned into real-life products that fuels my own goals and visions. it makes me realize dreaming is the norm here, it's actually expected. if you're in sf, you're here for a reason. that with perseverance and some amount of luck, anything is possible. and since the people that go to these events are of similar breed, that energy permeates the room, the ideas, the questions about the next big thing, what's to come in the next few years, even months. it’s all so exciting. there's a lot of raw material to build upon.

it's clear talking to these specific kinds of people is where I get my excitement from, and what energizes me. these events makes the cost of school worth it. if i'm spending my time well, if i'm working on what excites me, if i took risks, if I put myself in uncomfortable situations, overcoming the fear and embarrassment, the introversion and natural tendency to not participate, when all I want to do is just leave and not have awkward small talks. but even just one interesting conversation makes it all worth it.

school drains me so much. i'm not curious at all in class. i see everything as a checkbox to tick off. completing assignments, studying for quizzes. it's all just a means to an end. the grunt work I have to complete as efficiently as possible so that I get to do what I actually want. I suppose that's what life will be like once I start working, if I end up in a job I don't like, it'll be the same story. I have to be careful about the company and job I go for once i graduate. i might not even have a choice. but i believe there's always something to take out of everything. i'm often blinded by better opportunities, better styles and approaches towards things, i need to introduce more serendipity in my life, and follow my fears. that's where I'll be most alive.

Vercel CEO - Guillermo Rauch fireside chat

• never finished high school, father inspired him to work on web, moved to SF at 18, started and sold a company, worked on open source, started 5 projects (Socket.IO, Hyper, Next.js, ...) in the same year, wrote a book, spoke at conferences, CEO of Vercel today.
• The ability to communicate and write and think well is the moat as AI gets more intelligent
• fund raising, series A is storytelling, B is the proof of the engine. Later stages is a combination of the two
• buenos aeres is like the paris of south america
• Mobile web is the next big thing, peer to peer and decentralized
• Start with graphics first, design the look, the feel, then work your way backwards to the technology
• PMF? It feels like you stumbled upon it rather than you worked towards it
• There are no hard rules in startups
• PMF test: how sad would people be if you shut your product down
• Salesforce built an ecosystem that everybody must participate in
• Autocomplete everywhere, in drawing, in slack when you’re messaging, in texting
• the worst person to learn from at a company is the people who are there after the rocket ship has launched, they weren’t a part of the failures and the setbacks and the wins that gave rise to the day it reached for the moon
• time the market for your product, when web was booming, he jumped on the idea of socket

• i like the idea of categorizing blogging online as feelingspostings vs nerdpostings
  • feelingspostings: public journalling, writing as a way to process and communicate lessons you've learned about life, danger of ascribing a lot of significance to your emotions and the craving to post about your life to validate it was real.
  • nerdpostings: requires actual research, forces you to spend time thinking about questions you're fascinated by, danger of making factual errors

On the beauty of ideas from Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful:

The greatest “eurekas” in science combine both sensual aesthetics and conceptual insight. The physicist Victor Weisskopf (also a pianist) noted, “What is beautiful in science is the same thing that is beautiful in Beethoven. There’s a fog of events and suddenly you see a connection. It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply to you, that connects things that were always in you that were never put together before.” In short, the best science offers the same kind of experience as the best books or films do.

foundations of good mental health

• social connection
• nutrition (food and hydration)
• exercise
• good sleep
• routine (good habits)

whats one thing i can do today to improve one of the above?