Our eyes reach about 80-90% of their adult size by the time we're born. It's probably one of the only ways I recognize myself as the years sprint by. Otherwise, there's almost 0 permanence in my body. Before 2024 I looked like a different person every 4 months. Even now with great routine, changes occur (although maybe not as aggressive as when we're away from schedule). But there's something quite beautiful that the eyes I looked at my mother with when I was 5 - are the same ones that fill with love when I'm in her presence today at 24.

The last year of my life was important in tying up loose ends and laying the foundation for the new. How much water do you have to pour into a cup of coke to make it 100% water? Not just in appearance, but taste as well. You'd have to pour everything out first. We can't render years or moments of our life obsolete. But we can pour in the new to convincingly feel like it's a different drink. And in a lot of respects it's exactly that. A new drink. Entirely different. Some actions (mistakes included) aren't just learning lessons. They fundamentally shape how we live our now. For better or worse.

In 2024, I changed my last name. It was one of the most empowering things I've ever done. I sign documents now as David Ayala. My friends who would playfully call me their own version of the former last name, now call me Ayala. Or they make their own spin on it like Ayali. There are people who've only ever known me by that last name. It's easy to underestimate how much people accommodate for your happiness. Perhaps it's a respect thing. I'd always smile seeing how people would go out of their way to change my contact name on their phone.

I got rid of my phone number I've had for the last decade. I remember randomly scrolling through over 1,000 contact names. I just thought to myself, I don't know any of these people anymore. And most of them don't know me. I have friends that are neurotic with this kind of stuff. They'll type in their notes app all the names of people they see regularly. And they'll assign some kind of tiered-vibe check. Whether they felt drained after spending time with them. Creatively inspired (this metric is so funny cause the friend who uses it swears by such a weird definition of what this means). If they learned something. My metrics were much simpler. Could I call this person on any random day and not feel weird about it. Is this someone I want to share the totality of my life with (not just select moments or feelings). And just like that 1000 names turned into 88. I remember when it was just a handful. These days I could never be alone, no matter how much it may feel like it.

Lost just as much as I won and won just as much as I lost. Almost dying in 2020 almost paradoxically made me feel as alive as ever. And in turn forced great change. For the last 5 years I've thought a lot about what I've lost and what I've gained. What really constitutes a person changing. Are similar thoughts in a different environment the same person? There's definitely a certain innocence that came from ignorance that was lost. Profoundly more thoughtful about what and why. Beyond the biological instinct to survive. What motivates us to live? You get to have a very clear answer to that when you're sick. Like what would you rather be doing than being in a hospital bed. Or what could possibly calm you while you wait for them to come back with your blood report to see if you can get the fuck out. More patient. I have some similar traits. I lost parts of me I wish I could get back. I thought I could balance things even when everything was pulling me towards something new. Maybe certain people I could get to keep? Nope. The reality is everything about my new life cost me my old one. Which in a lot of ways is spectacular. Everyone I get the privilege of being around now. Everything around me. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to put into words just how lucky I feel. But sometimes I wake up thinking about someone or something from a past life. It's selfish to want it all. But I do for some reason. I want the wisdom that came from that time. I want the opportunities. The new friends. Without trading in old characteristics that felt uniquely me. Without losing love that once was. Or support that shaped me to get to this point. Years of time passing works for you and against you. Especially for anything that ended sour. You start to forget the emotions that started things going bad in the first place and you're just left with a tired hand holding grudges you barely remember the start of. I was separated from my sister for 7 years. Think of the strength of anger and resentment capable of driving 7 years between a bond like that. My sister got to stay at my new york apartment. We shared this moment. Where we realized how different things were. She hugged me and we stayed silent for a while. I went to bed that night thinking how I lost 7 years of love. Over anger.

When negative emotions clear up. What's left? If it was meaningful: love that was always there.

I still keep in touch with my oldest friend. A friend I made in the earliest years of elementary school. We joke that he looks just the same. He was the kid you befriended that every parent would secretly urge you to be like. Incredibly charismatic. Was holding the door open for everyone in the 3rd grade. Please and thank you. Simple things. But meaningful nonetheless. It's nice when people who have an abundance of context are around. They've seen every version of you. And give you the grace to make mistakes, but also to learn from them. When they celebrate your wins. They know what it took to get there. How much it means not just for yourself but your family. Loved ones. Unsurprisingly he's still in touch with everyone from our middle school. That's the kind of effect some people have.

I think this year will be one you hear the most from me. I think I'm finally ready to talk about a couple things. For the last 3 years, most of these writings have been fleeting. They've been personal but relatively broad. I also describe events like they're a common fact for you too. Like we lived through them together and you have all the context. I've thought a lot about having any kind of presence online. It's internal discourse I've always struggled with. But I've benefited tremendously from words. Both in private and publicly. Even from those who notoriously avoid any kind of public sharing. We can't really intellectualize matters of the heart. Some experiments from the last 3 years. The last 7 years even. The results are harping to get out. After years of asking why post anything online or have any presence whatsoever, there's really only one answer. I think it's important to share. If your words help even one person. Or make someone feel something. Isn't that what all creation is about? perhaps, but that's not why i think anyone should. I think people, myself included, should write or post cause they feel like it. Not to impress. Or to teach. But like most things, because we want to do them. When you scroll on my site. And see places or people that might be unfamiliar. It's a horribly small sample size. It's what I choose to share. Why those places or people? Why those moments? Couldn't even give you a satisfying answer other than those were the ones I liked for this site.

So this year - unlike years prior. I have some specific things I want to share.

We near the completion of another year. All of us. Regardless of what was lost or gained. The time continues. That was the single most daunting fact in 2020 when I was sick. Now it's a comforting reminder of the nature of what's truly eternal. The bodies that serve as divine instruments are not timeless absolutes. We are not timeless absolutes. But the words we act on are. The ideas we bring to life. Their date and moment of inception will be much greater than ours ever could be. Only they have the potential to be remembered forever. Hopefully they are. Make them with love. Love is permanence.

As I write this, the value of compounding becomes shockingly apparent. In every aspect of my life. Some friendships are hitting the 8+ year mark. Once strangers I met through dinner in 2022, are now close friends inviting me to their wedding 2 years later. A quick kiss one year ago turns into spending time together in a state we've never been to. The staff at the restaurants I frequent now give me a wink & stop me to ask how my mother's doing. Navigating the idea maze + gaining conviction was a matter of months this time around.

Many moons ago, my friend invited me into their apartment. He's the kind of person everyone seeks out. The ability to make someone feel special in such a short amount of time is an important hallmark in truly rare conversationalists. He confided in me that he felt lonely. Impossible I thought - but then he framed his grievance in way that reverberates strongly in memory to this day. He said if something happened to him. Something heavy. And for whatever reason he wasn't allowed to call his family. Who could he call that would come to his apartment and shoulder the grief with him. Not to say people wouldn't, rather who would he feel comfortable asking to shoulder that grief with him.

I spent years thinking about how to solve that in my own life. The conclusion I came to is fairly simple. To get love you have to give it. Receiving it is still somewhat of a challenge. There's a lot I still hold close to the chest. This is where compounding makes all the difference. The nature of doing more with less means the depth in the tether of those moments is unrivaled. It's almost like entering a flow state or escape velocity. Decisions happen naturally. You're not consciously thinking about the next pass. There's a seamless connection between mind and body. In my life currently, I know who to see or when to call. For most situations. It's a very simple statement but I can't overstate its importance. If all we have is each other, then surely that's an invitation to put even more effort.

2024.

Since I can remember I've always been told life moves in circles. I haven't lived enough to feel like that's true. I've always thought perhaps it feels that way because we're often in the pursuit of the new. How many places have we been challenged to make ours. Streets we've memorized. Foreign eyes that eventually became all too familiar.

But sometimes life certainly shows us the same hand - or a similar one at that.

Concluding 3/4 years of work is never easy. You don't get a call from a random 212 number that lays out what the next script is going to be: where you're going to live, who you'll fall in love with, and what the next idea worth dedicating your life to will be. Something I've never been able to put into words about the last 4 years is just how difficult it's become to stray from my emotional norm. Any deviation is met almost too calmly. You can lose everything next week? Nice. Things went life-alteringly well? Nice. I think it has something to do in large part with planning years ahead. It might be 2022, but mentally you're checking off boxes for 2024. When things happen, you've kind of been expecting them for months/years. I hope that makes sense, it's the best way I can explain it.

I had a very delayed reaction to processing the finality of the moment. I was on the phone with my brother & former co-founder. Laughing about something I can't quite remember. And the silence that typically follows laughter was extraordinarily loud. I realized for the first time in a long time. This wasn't laughter in our apartment. No words even tangentially related to digital health were spoken. We weren't hunched over a computer typing away. Tomorrow I'd wake up and there wasn't an office we'd be seeing each other at. We were on a phone call. Thousands of miles away from each other. Each with a different day to day. Fully immersed in the new. I felt a deep sadness. I struggled to get the next word out. For the first time in 4 years that feeling trumped everything else. The immense gratitude that came with how things ended. The happiness that came from working on what I loved with people I loved. The hopefulness for what was to come. All of those feelings were there. Just much quieter than the sound of nostalgia.

Kendrick Lamar has this quote that I love. The essence of it is that it's up to us to make the most of whatever happens. Good and bad moments. Turn pain into power.

The happiest I've ever been in my life was when I first learned about this dharmic concept that things are never inherently good or bad. Never for us or against us. They simply are. It's easy when things are going well to tell yourself everything happens for a reason. I'm much quieter when something heavy happens. Then I'm not so giddy about everything happens for a reason - well, at least not until it's over. But there's real power in cutting the proverb short. Things happen. And in the realm of what we can control, there's an abundance of power. There's freedom.

I grew up voraciously religious. To the point where when I had a friend tell me they were agnostic in the 8th grade, I got home and fell to my knees crying because I thought they'd go to hell (you're allowed to laugh). But as I grew older I used the justification of things being inherently bad as a means to abandon ties with my faith. Quite selfish in retrospect. Like bad things were okay until they happened to me. You've probably heard that argument often. Maybe you've grappled with it in your own life. Why would the divine ever allow bad things to happen. As you read this someone's business exit is netting them a 7 figure wire. Another family is putting a gofundme link for their child's cancer. How can we make sense of the latter. I've heard the counter often. This life is just a test for the next. Those who struggle here will be rewarded. Making sense of that always hurts my head. I think that's where the issue lies. Trying to rationalize what truly can't be. Assigning human based labels and emotions to the passage of time.

For the same conditions there's 2 wildly different story archetypes. Someone who gets diagnosed with X falls apart completely. Someone with the same diagnosis miraculously has their situation turned around & they walk away with a new (but beneficial) perspective on what it means to suffer. To be patient. To be here.

When I got over my illness. There was so much guilt. Why did I get to be relieved of my suffering. I tried to subside the guilt by believing that things happen for me. I thought it was clear now. I got sick so I could live the life I live currently. That made sense to me. And somehow the most emotionally (and physically) taxing time of my life, became the best thing that's ever happened to me. But that was as incorrect as ever. In reality. In 2024. I can't tell you why I got better. It's nice to pretend that it's part of some bigger plan. But that would be grossly presumptuous for the billions of people that would be doing incredible things had they been relieved of pain. I also just as easily could've gotten better and never started a company. And then would I really be thinking that everything was aligned? Most likely not.

Everyone, regardless of their situation deserves to dream. In my life I've stopped trying to make sense of everything. What something could mean is of very little importance to me. If it's good. If it's bad. Instead I think intently on what reality can be forged next. No human classification could ever stop me from dreaming.

Maybe it's time to find faith again.