Today I turn 30! The cheesy thing to do on the decade years is to post something reflective, so I figured why not?

If I could give one piece of advice to younger-Ian, it would be to view networking less cynically. I always thought of networking as making connections with older, more established professionals - in a way that was almost transactional. In practice, this has almost never been true.

My network is organic. It's who I talk to daily and weekly, outside of a professional capacity. My college friends helped me get a job at Zillow. Online friends helped me get an interview at Discord. Twitter mutuals I shitposted with got me my contract job with the Anime Awards. I've realized that my network isn't something I have to force, and I'm much less cynical for it.