I’m 22.
By: David A. Chang
Tags: Reflections, Year In Review, 22

Sometimes you just get lucky

I had two job offers for this entire gap year — Jubilee Media and Datadog. I found out about Jubilee in January, and Datadog in February, after I had decided on the gap year. Two of some of the coolest companies to work for, in my opinion. Kind of insane.

I was this close to not being employed for the entire year.

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We spent maybe 5 hours on the YC application. Barely even thought we would get in. I kid you not, 2 hours prior to us hearing that we got an interview, we discussed whether or not we realistically would launch by New Years.

My first reaction to the interview invite: I wonder when they’ll let me know that the acceptance was a mistake.

Now we’ve poured in something like a combined 100+ hours between the four of us & launched this past week, on top of having full time jobs. All just to set up and prepare for an interview we didn’t think we had a chance of getting. Fingers crossed.

Hopefully, we get lucky.

Pain + reflection = progress

Life has fucking sucked, a lot. Life has also been fucking amazing, a lot. I’m realizing more and more that any form of pain should really be capitalized on, learned from, and taken action on. Immediately. It can be a blessing for life and things in life to suck.

I realize I come from an incredibly privileged place and haven’t suffered an ounce compared to some people, but this is just a particular lesson I’ve learned in my life.

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Tangentially, I’m trying to learn how to celebrate my wins with others. I’m not sure why, but some achievements I just never share, and am uncomfortable receiving praise for.

Maybe it’s because I think I just got lucky.

No one knows what they’re doing

Not you. Not me. Not even fucking Elon Musk. Maybe Elon Musk knows what he’s doing.

But being at two companies that are wildly successful in their own ways, you realize that everyone is trying to figure it out, even those who are experts. To me, that’s an incredibly empowering idea, because that means if even the experts don’t know, it’s ok for you to not know, too. And if they can figure it out, then hey! Maybe you can figure it out!

Get in the arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore

Thanks Annie Wu for the great quote inspiration.

I believe that each one of us has some amount of opportunity in our lives, whether we were given it or we created it ourselves. Until any of us takes the plunge and jumps into the weeds, opportunity is simply potential.

Fuck potential. I want to do everything in my power to realize my own potential, and just get into the damn arena already.

Easier said than done lmao.

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Me and the 7 billion other humans are afraid of a lot of things. Even if we hop into the arena, we still might be afraid to let others know.

It’s scary to tell someone that you spent 10 months working on something, because then they might take a crap on your idea. It’s scary to tell someone you started working out, because then they expect you to start losing weight. It’s scary.

This year, part of getting into the arena also meant being ok with showing other people what I was doing, even if that meant exposing my own vulnerabilities.