dontcryformeusa.com

2016 January 9

To all of my followers left reading this, AKA Mom and like 2 other people, I’m officially moving my blog from spencerfcloud.tumblr.com to something a little more professional that makes more sense: dontcryformeusa.com.

What’s the history of “Don’t Cry for Me, USA”?

This began as a travel blog for my study abroad semester in Argentina. Following my sister’s footsteps when she studied in Spain, I did my blog on the same platform, Tumblr. Way back in 2011, Tumblr was only 4 years old, half the age that it is now, and it didn’t fully grow into its current identity. While it’s not a bad platform for attracting users (it currently has about 555 Million monthly active users and sold to Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 Billion), it’s not ideal for me. For some reason, my brain isn’t wired to be entertained by the micro-posting and re-posting culture that flourishes in Tumblr’s community. This blog, with long stories and paragraphs, isn’t optimal for this website.

I will create and curate all aspects of the new website using a custom-made application.

Why re-create a perfectly functioning blog from scratch?

Partially, it’s for independence from any major blogging platform and its whims. After all, I’m at the mercy of any major updates Tumblr makes. While any conceivable updates Tumblr makes probably won’t affect me much in one way or the other, it’s still good to have independence if possible.

More importantly, however, I want another opportunity to develop my programming and design skills. Technology has been a major part of my life lately and I don’t see it going away any time soon. I wouldn’t consider myself a super-nerd, but I do enjoy technology more than the average person. I haven’t had many opportunities for a low-risk way to create and maintain my own website, and if I want technology to become a bigger part of my future, I need all of the opportunities I can get.

How does this tie into travel?

After all, this is a travel blog, and this entire post is about technology and the tech industry and I’ve barely mentioned travel once. However, technology and the tech industry may become the most important thing to my future travel plans and, by extension, this blog in the near future.

The reason why I haven’t updated this blog more than twice a year since 2013 is that I haven’t led a lifestyle that supports travel since 2013. When November 2013 came, I returned to the Midwest US, worked until school started, returned to school, started a summer-long internship at a desk, started school again while maintaining my internship, then starting a full-time job from that internship in June of 2015 and I’ve been working ever since.

It hasn’t been boring, and the work itself is not bad, but the structure of a desk job doesn’t suit my desired lifestyle well. It offers support and stability, but support and stability is for families, not 22 year-olds without kids or spouses.

My Current Job

I work at Yahoo as a billing analyst for Argentina. That means I get to communicate to Yahoo’s Buenos Aires employees and use Spanish every day. It’s as close to working in Buenos Aires as possible in Omaha, NE, but nothing can fully replace the experience of being there.

Sociological Revolutions

This isn’t to say that I want to just move somewhere else and get the same job in a different location, but I need an independent job that can support travel more – maybe in Omaha, probably somewhere else.

While I can sometimes work remotely at my current job, I do need to be in the office as much as possible. The vacation time is good by office job standards, but 3 weeks/year isn’t a lot by my standards – I sound like a spoiled millennial saying that. After all, my parents’ and grandparents’ ideal life was get married, get a good enough job, get a house, retire. The end. But that’s not for me. Let’s break down why.

• Get married: I already said I didn’t want to be tied down by a spouse right now. People are living longer and the years in people’s 20′s are now being called “emerging adulthood” by sociologists. The window to raise a family and enjoy raising children has widened by about a decade and a half.
• Get a good enough job: (Long paragraph since this is the toughest to justify rejecting.) The economy doesn’t need people as much as it used to. The market has more than recovered from the 2008/9 recession, but the unemployment rate has taken a lot longer to decrease. This is because companies have become more automated and replaced jobs with algorithms. But I’m not in danger. This will sound egotistical, but I’m intelligent and talented. I speak fluent Spanish and I’m good with computers and people. My combination of skills is rare and the kinds of jobs I can do won’t be replaced by robots for a long time. Also, as time goes on, the need for money decreases – this is the upside of automation. Think about the things that were unavailable to most people a decade ago that are free now. Most of it is information-based, but we’re slowly going into democratized physical access as well. Remember when I posted on how my friends and I drove a BMW around San Francisco for a day last March? That was coordinated through a phone app and it was cheap. A couple years ago I would’ve either had to be rich or be a trusted friend of a rich person to do that.
• Get a house: I’m barely going to argue this one. Apartments living is the way to go. As far as I’m concerned, as house is a cage that you pay to imprison yourself in.
• Retire: This is some long-term thinking, but I don’t think I want to officially “retire” when I’m old. Retiring is for people who have careers that they hate and can’t wait to quit. I don’t plan on hating my career. There may be a point in my life where I start working less because I have less energy, but I’ll never stop doing things until I die.

What kind of fantasyland are you living in, Spencer?

2016, where the internet exists. My generation is the first to have no memories where the internet wasn’t available in people’s homes. My current goal is to become an independent contractor, working with people or businesses and finding ways to improve web-presence or work flows. A major project I just finished at my current job was improving the billing flow for Argentina, something outside of my job description that I did anyway because a) it sounded fun and b) it improved my everyday job as well as Yahoo’s cash flow and bottom line – not drastically but by some amount nonetheless. But I need more experience in this area of work and life, which is why I’m stopping “Don’t Cry for Me, USA” on Tumblr and starting dontcryformeusa.com.

I don’t expect contracting to be a cushy vacation. In fact, I expect it to be harder than my current job. But that comes with more independence and freedom to travel when I want.

————

Anyway, no more Tumblr posts. Maybe one post, but it will only be redirecting people to the new site. The site won’t be as pretty as Tumblr, especially at first, but I will update the look and feel as time goes on. I’ll add email subscription functionality among other things. Maybe I’ll add commenting if I’m willing to risk random meany-heads saying mean things to me on the internet. But for now, goodbye Tumblr. If I get the urge to reblog a bunch of Chris Pratt memes I’ll be back, but don’t bet on it.

Oh yeah. I’ll be in Denver next weekend, January 15-18, so expect a small update soon. Here, though, not here.

Ok, bye.

Comments are closed.