"SHIP OR DIE" -- this was scribbed on the back of a half torn sheet of paper i put in front of me. i grabbed it and stuffed it into my backpack.

it had been over a year since the party in Austin.

i didn't want to get on the plane, but i had to. staying was not the plan so the magic tricks i kept pulling off were getting costly. it would be better to come back with a plan.

i called a waymo and went to the park. i took one last look at the golden gate bridge. "i have got to get back here."

from my time hacking in san francisco, i came across a few "survival guides" from those that had been there longer and it was clear that to increase your runway and survival odds, there were a number of things you had to do. and most of it would take months.

i probably could have kept going. i was only supposed to be there for two days. i got myself into a somewhat prestigious hackerhouse called 'The Residency'. i was about to ask for a founders inc desk, but to be honest, i wasn't sure what i'd do with it. it would just make leaving harder.

for anyone in austin, founders inc is like capital factory, but mixed with YC. it's a great coworking spot, and invests in younger more ambitious technical founders.

i'll never forget how it felt touching down back in austin.

san francisco is like a time warp. time moves slower, but your actions feel faster. there's something in the air. everywhere you went, everyone was the main character of their own arc -- they were hustling and you could see hunger in their eyes.

just by simply being dropped into it, i began to move faster, and i think it changed me. so much so that when i got back to texas, everything was infinitely slower. everything around me felt like it was outdated -- i outgrew everything.

there's an unusually high amount of impatience in san francisco. versus in texas, i had to drive constantly to get anywhere, and everything was slow. the density of entrepreneurs is lower, and the overall pace of life is slower. its quite funny actually because texans and americans in general say this about europe. so it's like that, but the other way around.

i think its because of the density of the city. you take the worlds smartest, most ambitious, hungriest, craftiest, mischevious misfits and cram them into a seven by seven mile island. you run into everyone. everyone knows each other. you can quite literally speedrun your way through the city if you wanted to. there are opportunities lurking at every corner. the only thing stopping you is yourself.

unfortunately the price of admission is steep.

i had hoped to achieve something far greater in my time in san francisco, but i quite literally learned way more about myself than hundreds of therapy sessions -- that's a bargain.

but there's the problem. my internal frame of reference completely changed. once you've gone 180 mph, you become unsatisfied with 80.