2015 has come and gone in a hurry and we are already 1/2th of the way into 2016. Reflecting on the past year it seems as if the list of things I wish to accomplish has grown larger and the time in which to accomplish them seems to have grown shorter. Startups tend to do that.
I remember times in my early years where there was nothing I wouldn't give to drop everything and work on a startup. It felt incredibly exciting. Here were people just like me, creating things that thousands if not millions of people could use. Of course, looking back I would say it was a bit naive and a very romanticized perspective on how those sort of things would work. Paul Graham makes a poignant statement in his essay Before The Startup about how your early 20s are a horrible time to begin a startup. Among other reasons, you'd be missing out on all those serendipitous things that happen in your early 20s. Backpacking around some unknown country, skipping class/work to hack on an interesting side project, or perhaps even both at the same time.
When I started my transition, it was one of optimistic hesistation. There was little doubt in my mind that this would be and will be a truly exciting period of time; The spectre that haunted me however was the continual fear of losing touch with the very people who played a role in bringing me to this point. You spend 12-14 hours a day intensely focused on a set of tasks, only to come back the next day to do the very same. Days, weeks, months, years pass and when you finally stop and wonder, "where did the time go?", the time is already lost. Birthdays pass. Friends get married. Saying "See you later?" starts feeling more like just "goodbye".