I was happy with how my last post about being 21 came out, so I'll keep going. This blog is just about feelings, anyway. This one is a lot happier (and so probably more boring!).

*22*

I made Ruby and Rails a priority in my job hunt, though in mid-2006 Ruby was still very niche. I got a couple of offers pretty quickly - the first doing PHP somewhere for some small unmemorable outfit, and one at a fluffy-looking consultancy that offered lots of hours for a pay cut, with Ruby held out as a maybe-if-you're-lucky carrot. I was unhappy and felt unemployable, and went through more agonizing indecision than I should've before saying no.

Thankfully, holding out led me to thoughtbot. thoughtbot is now a consulting giant in the Rails world, and deservedly so, but at the time they were a tiny and rather poor operation in a beat-up old office above a mattress store in East Cambridge - and they were betting their future on Ruby and Rails. It meant a substantial pay cut, but I liked the people and they had the same faith in Ruby that I did, so I took it.

After that, things took many rapid turns for the better. I moved into a nicer apartment in a better location for cheaper rent, and my new roommate Mario and I became excellent friends for the years since. I held parties, rode my bike, and woke up every morning looking forward to going to work. For the first time since my senior year of college, once real life was on deck, I was able to truly relax and stop thinking of the future.

I made my room an open space and filled it with light, and had my first home environment where I truly enjoyed working on projects in my spare time. I built a small music review/download site for beloved game songs called Klondike Audio. I couldn't keep it up for more than a year, but it was a good experience - the thing I remember most is how immensely satisfying it was to be so motivated as to work on something for 12 hours in a row on a Saturday.

thoughtbot's bet on Rails paid off slowly but surely, and we continued hiring awesome people. The culture allowed for everyone to be themselves, and I'm still friends with everyone I worked with there. Some are very close friends. Our weekly poker nights remain some of my favorite memories of Boston. We soon moved into a lovely, brightly lit office in Downtown Crossing, and we could all afford to go to RailsConf in Portland, my first professional conference and my introduction to the Extra Action Marching Band.

The Tribe collapsed, but I soon got involved with ImprovBoston and made it into an ex-Tribe video improv troupe, Neutrino Boston. With Neutrino I got lucky again, as it had a group of extremely talented people. I performed with a couple other groups too as the year went on, and for the first time ever I was doing improv work that I was proud of.

I had a pretty serious (and obvious) crush on my friend MaryBeth, but she was well and taken by a mutual friend, and so I pined in silence. At the same time, I was starting to feel like my time in Boston was coming to a close. I didn't have a good reason; I had made many awesome friends, loved thoughtbot's Boston office, had a great apartment. But I'd always known I'd only be in Boston for a couple years or so. It was time to go.

And I was thinking New York City. It was romantic, would be a bigger challenge, still reasonably close by. Since thoughtbot had ties in NYC and someone there already, I hoped they'd let me continue working from there. But come May four months before I'd supposedly live there, I had still never stepped foot in the place. I figured I should visit to make sure.

The train arrives underground and connects directly to the subway, and I remember being irrationally afraid to emerge from the subway station for my first glimpse at the city at 11pm to walk to my hotel - in the Upper East Side. But of course, it was bustling, gorgeous, and filled with yellow taxis with angry people inside. I finished my re-read of the Chronicles of Amber in the window of a cafe, and slept in a tiny hotel room on a plain white mattress resting on some wood.

I commuted into dense lower Manhattan for a couple days, and tried to visit every borough possible, logging each one with a new service I was trying out from my phone, called "Twitter". It was beautiful and like nowhere I'd ever been before. By the time I got home, it was clear I'd be moving to New York City.

I did get to return to NYC one more time before moving there. I had a few mancrushes on people in Neutrino that I somehow transmuted into persuading them to do a unicycle improv show called Uniprov with me - and to let me submit it to the Del Close Marathon that year. When the DCM made the questionable decision to accept us, we swung into 2 months of intensive unicycle and improv rehearsal that resulted in a degrading and physically dangerous mixture of two ancient respected art forms.

Actually attempting to be creative and funny while riding a unicycle on stage proved nearly impossible, but failing at it on the UCB main stage in New York City was an immense honor. We did have a couple good improv moments, and Jack McBrayer complimented us on our unicycles backstage. It was the last big improv show I ever did, and Uniprov remains one of the most awesome and pure things I've ever been a part of.