The Day I stopped writing The Day Series

I can’t believe it’s been 2 months since my last post on this blog.  Seems I have some ‘splaining to do.

To make a long (two month) story short, a lot has gone on in my life recently.  In the past 2 months I have:

• Quit my job
• Driven across the country in a UHaul w/ my car in tow
• Broken up with a girl that was crazy — and that I was crazy about
• Flown across the country twice
• Interviewed at 6 companies
• Had one hell of a going away party
• Spoken at 2 conferences
• Met about a hundred new people
• Said goodbye to a lot of good friends
• Was asked to speak at another conference
• Had a dizzying first kiss with a girl
• Un-quit my job
• Wasn’t able to say goodbye to a lot of good friends
• Gone to TEDxBoulder
• Sent a LOT of drunk text messages
• Fallen in love with Pearl Street
• Completely changed the way I work & live

So there’s been a lot on my mind.

To summarize with a bit more narrative

A few months ago I decided to move to Boulder, CO.  This was something I’d wanted to do for several years.  Ever since I drove out here in 2004 for a month to ski during my grad school winter break, I’ve felt an affinity for Colorado.  I didn’t want to live in Denver, and from what I had heard Boulder seemed cool.  Then TechStars landed in Boulder, and the town started to get a lot of national attention for all the tech & startup work coming out of there, so it was an obvious choice.

Why move now?

There were two times I almost did it.  The first time, I coincidentally got my first “real” job out of grad school at EMC.  At the time, all I saw were dollar signs; so I stayed.  The second time, I instead decided to built a house because “it’d be a great investment!”  It would only be for a year, and I’d make $100k because real estate was hot; so I stayed. This time, the catalyst was a girl I was dating.  Notice I said was :)  After we broke up, I spent a few weeks trying to figure out whether or not the move was “for her.”  I realized it wasn’t, and decided to take the plunge.  I gave notice at work, flew out to Boulder, interviewed, got offers, mulled some stuff over and decided that the best thing for me was to stay with Punchbowl.  They let me un-quit.  I now work from home and I will be flying back to Massachusetts one week a month.[1]

So what?

Why I am telling you all this?  It’s definitely outside the theme of this blog, but I wanted to give you all some context as to where the hell I went.  Living in a new place and not knowing anyone translates to something: alone time.  Not lonely time, but time alone.  I’ve been able to settle into a rhythm that is leaving me with a feeling of being refreshed and revitalized.  My “list of topics” for this blog has grown by over 20 in the past week, and starting tomorrow I’ll be blogging them regularly.

Thanks to all those people that have got in touch with me in the last few months — both strangers and friends — who asked why I stopped writing.  I was surprised that anyone even notice.  To those people, and everyone else: be seeing ya’ll soon.

-Ryan

[1] There will be blog posts on ryanangilly.com detailing exactly what happened with respect to quitting Punchbowl, interviewing elsewhere, and unquitting Punchbowl.  The whole experience was pretty crazy, and I think any fan of this blog would appreciate them.  I’ll reblog them here as the come out.