2012 was an amazing year. Having just moved to Silicon Valley all the way from India, I got to meet a ton of new people and make some really good friends. Many of those were people I looked up to or was inspired from, many I had never heard about but was blown away by their talents. There was a lot of learning new things. New culture, new cuisines, new country. Being so close to the the hub of technology also made me see things in a better perspective. Both good and bad. How our work shapes and impacts lives. How the valley can be insanely corrosive at it's worst and amazingly innovative at it's best. It was a year of learning.
My primary goal for 2013 is to "get better" at a lot of things. Primarily, these include programming and photography. Pangaea, a tumblr photoblog, is an attempt to push myself in that direction. Check it out when you have time. On the programming front, the goal is to be able to make stuff, ship more stuff so that it ends up in the hands of real people. Not test users, but actual people who use it. I really hate myself for coming up with ideas and then not being able to build them. I would like to change that this year.
Another one is traveling a lot more than I have in the past. Being in the valley so close to our work often forces us to see far less than we think we really do. Traveling helps me calibrate my perspective. I also like to think of it as an excuse that helps me get better at design. In the theme of better experiences and lifestyle, I would probably want to move to SF during the later part of this year. I love Palo Alto but I think I have just grown bored of the place and almost exhausted my options of things to do here.
So here is to a better life next year. Onward!
