E.T. phone home: finding himself

“One day you could be president,” the parent tells their child; an overused cliche, with the statement going more untrue as the years go by. Another cliche is for parents to tell their children to be doctors or lawyers, timeless professions which often garner lots of wealth. I have been fortunate enough to have my path in life be left open-ended, no stereotypes or career cliches imposed on myself.

However, with that open-endedness comes great uncertainty and ambition. Over the last 18 years of my life, I have had many aspirations. Some of them far-fetched, some of them within reach, and some achieved by luck and determination. Thus, I am very thankful for those who gave me a chance to go far beyond the limits of my imagination. Alas, when one appears to do well at a motley of roles and tasks, it is difficult for oneself to find the true magnetic North and go in that direction.

For me, I know what lies at that North Pole: hope and inspiration for the world. Like an old Boy Scout rule, “leave the site cleaner than you found it”, I want to leave the Earth having made it better than when I arrived on it. Achieving that goal is what happens when I arrive at the metaphorical “North Pole”. Finding the most enjoyable and successful route to get there is much less clear.

In the last decade I have been experimenting with the inner workings of technology, I have found that it is a tool that can be much more impactful than any one person when harnessed correctly. I want to prove firsthand that my observation is true, yet there are so many interesting ways to do so.

One flavor of technology I enjoy very much is flight simulators, mainly for the endless possibilities they have. For the last four years I have been building websites, platforms, and other software to help players of YSFlight get the most out of their game experience. I do this partly because I enjoy when other people use what I build, and partly because what I build will help myself. As YSFlight is a very open game (but not open-source) it is the perfect playground to test my new ideas. Learning from all the failures has made me a better software developer and entrepreneur. The few successes keep me wanting to crank out more code and satisfy my need to solve problems.

Every day I hear people complain, be it their computer is not doing what they tell it to do, public transit is slow, the economy is not recovering, or a relationship they have is failing. Very few of these people actually turn their complaints into action.

I want to be one of those people which act, not yak.

But where to start?

That is the question I aim to answer by the end of the summer. The only restriction: I must solve one of my own problems first. I hate being dependent on other people, and I hate when other people become dependent on me. That means I am not doing my job well; there should not be a single point of failure.

With that restriction in mind, I have decided to put all Eric Tendian/Tendian.io technology service requests on hold (so for example if you ask me to work on an app project with you I will say no). I will continue to help build the Packback platform, something that I enjoy doing. But if I am to accomplish my goal, I cannot continue to agree to solving others’ problems at a time and mental/emotional expense when the gains are outweighed.

Is this decision selfish? Maybe. Do I believe it is the right one? With all my heart. The problems I want to solve may be my own, but they are shared by millions and possibly billions of others. Recently reiterated at a meeting at my internship, startups (and by extension people) cannot be good at everything - they must do one thing brilliantly well before moving on to another challenge.

Now I believe it is my time to figure out what problem I should solve, and solve brilliantly well. It is time to begin the journey.

Wish me luck.

- Eric