I realized recently that the toughest part of moving out to San Francisco is how much I’ve had to grow up. It seems funny to think that I can finish college, or be 24 years old, and feel as if I haven’t prepared myself for the real world, but that’s the unfortunate reality in which I currently find myself.

Some things are just a matter of trying things out which I have never tried. These are actually fun. As an example, I’m learning to sail. My world in Raleigh, NC wasn’t one where I would pick up sailing on any given weekend. I’m no good at it, and that’s okay. Learning to become good at something is pretty hard, much less learning to become great at it. The need to be excellent is still something by which I define myself, but I’ve come to understand when to be excellent, and when to simply experiment. This was something I needed to learn, and it’s something that I can point to and say that this has made me a better person, engineer and entrepreneur.

The thing that’s changed which is most frustrating, and really earth shaking for me, is that I now find Raleigh to be a bubble where everything was a certain way, and where things don’t change, but maybe that’s the consequence of going to school ten minutes down the road from home. I know that things have changed, and I know that in its own way Raleigh is growing up, but for me, right now, it’s become a place where I was, not where I am going to be. That’s really hard for me because I always thought Raleigh was home, and now I’ve come to realize that it’s a place where I just don’t belong anymore.

I never knew growing up was going to be so hard.