My good friend Tanay came to me with an interesting proposition, a series of questions he asked himself and sat down to answer.

Below are my answers to my self interrogation.

wheel of life

What are you in each of these categories (out of 10)? How could you improve?

• Health

  • mind (7/10) - I could read more and be more intentional with curating a quiet environment for my thoughts, in addition I could always work on my patience and calmness.
  • body (3/10) - This needs a lot of work. My immune system hasn’t been great all my life and haven’t been taking enough care of my body.
  • soul (8/10) - I have been feeling generally fulfilled with my life and work, there are always rough spots and I could get better and dealing with those.

• Relationships

  • friends (6/10) - I have some great, close friends but should spend more effort to spend time with them as well as meet new people.
  • romance (9/10) - My relationship is awesome but I could always improve as a partner (communicating, being thoughtful, patience).
  • family (5/10) - Partly due to distance, partly due to my lack of intentionality, I haven’t been a great son / brother. I should reach out and call more.

• Work

  • growth (10/10) - My growth professionally has been objectively tremendous in these last two years entering college. I could improve my being more intentional in the time I spend learning, focused and in bursts rather than drawn out and lackadaisical as I have often been.
  • money (9/10) - I am / will be in a good position financially (strong income, no debt), but don’t rate this a perfect 10 as I could’ve started investing earlier and there are always people making more. Improvement will come from smart and prudent long term financial planning and career advancement.
  • mission (10/10) - I believe that building something that lets people build more is an incredibly important mission.

finding a path

Where am I now? I’m on my bed writing this blog post on Obsidian. Perhaps more in the spirit of the question, broadly, I’m about to graduate college and begin my life as an adult.

Where do I want to be? Short term? Shoving my head into my craft with work that invigorates me. Long term? Happy, healthy, and surrounded with people who I love and love me.

How do I get there? Short term: Improve my skills a little bit every day however much I can. Long term: Haven’t quite figured this one out yet, but I believe persistent effort in improving my life state is a good first step.

story of fulfillment

Think (write) about a time in your life when you did something well & it brought you fulfillment.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free

– Michelangelo

To compare me to Michelangelo is to compare a headless chicken to a T. Rex, but despite the thousands of years separating us his words still resonate. Like the marble, I can see the finished product in my scrambled thoughts, but for me to free then angel I have to sit down and put the pen to paper (or digital characters into text document).

There is something irrevocable when your ethereal thoughts become a tangible reality. The reader may learn a little bit about the writer, but the writer will learn tenfold that about themself. Although maybe not well, when I write I feel deeply fulfilled.

dream work

If you could do anything right now, what would it be? What if money wasn’t an issue? What if what people thought wasn’t an issue? What would you try/learn/experiment/etc. if you know you can’t fail? or even if you knew you would fail?

If I could do anything right now I’d be writing software. Even if money wasn’t an issue, regardless of what people think, even if I knew I wouldn’t fail, and even if I knew I’d fail.

I always harp on this story, but I was inspired to go into software engineering because I read Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators. I was and still am amazed at the amount a single individual can affect people’s lives through software.

Recently I watched an interview of Mitchell Hashimoto (of Hashicorp and Ghostty fame) where he discusses his love of work and code; describing his open source work as a form of technical philanthropy. Given financial freedom I’d like to imagine I would so something similar.

eulogy

When I die, what eulogy do I want?

I want my eulogy to be filled with warm and personal accounts by the people I was closest to while alive. Goofy one off stories, spontaneous adventures, and the little bits and pieces that make me the person I am.

This is actually a question that’s lived in my mind for quite a while, even having written about it extensively in an essay for high school. In high school I wrote about how I wanted to be remembered as “great”, but both me and my views have changed over time.

I believe that someone lives not just as a person in their own mind, but as a million versions of themselves in others. To me, if I can still be remembered vividly and warmly by the people who I was closest to, I would be more alive than dead.

ideal tuesday

What’s an ideal Tuesday 5 years from now?

Morning: Rise early and make a hearty breakfast before waking up my girlfriend, feed the pets, and head off to work.

Work: Say hi to my work buddies before getting a nice whole day of deep uninterrupted work in the flow state. Finish up a tricky problem I’d been stuck on for weeks and recline my chair with my arms behind my head.

Evening: Come home tired, but fulfilled. Make dinner for me and my partner and watch a few episodes of our show on the couch with our pets. Shower, wind down, and read in bed for a few hours before going to sleep.

question sheet

For those interested, here are the original questions from Tanay.

Tanay's original self interrogation sheet