January 2026 onward. The current phase. Amy works at Vizcom as a Product Design Engineer, earns $250k base salary, hosts craft nights, plans trips to Australia, interviews interns, and tries to be a person who does not define herself by suffering.
The Tension
The central tension of this era is that Amy chose stability and keeps second-guessing the choice. She wanted the "chill job." She got it. And then she felt guilty about not grinding.
From the April 1 diary: "Vizcom is supposed to be the chill job. I wanted the chill job. So why does stepping back from one project feel like I'm failing some test I made up for myself?"
From the March 27 diary, after a stressful work situation: "I had this moment where I was spiraling, going 'should I just quit?' and I'm glad I didn't stay there. It was a stress response, not a real thought."
What's Different
Unlike The Taya Era, Amy is not the only person building. She has colleagues (Jordan, Emil, Tiffany, Andreina). She has boundaries. She sleeps. She does not use drugs to stay awake. She still works hard, but the work does not require self-destruction.
She also has things outside of work that matter: Nalin Semwal, Hardware Craft Night, the Australia trip, Rover dog-sitting, Kalshi, the free dog on Facebook Marketplace she keeps looking for.
The Startup Question
The question of whether to start another company recurs throughout this era.
March 17: "If your life was a movie, what would the audience be yelling at you to do? Start a company."
March 18: "The honest answer is I just want to build something. I want to be the person again."
March 10: "I want what Elena has, except earned. Except I already know, I had everything at Taya and it only made me feel 'a little' cool. Why would the next one be different?"
By April 10, the question crystallized into something more structured. Amy set up a daily "founder mode" career reflection prompt, asking herself what she would do if she left Vizcom. She defined three signals for being ready to leave: (1) she can build a product herself, (2) she has an idea she can not stop thinking about, (3) she is ready to bet years on it. She knows her current gaps: the engineering skills and the idea.
This is a shift from the March spirals. In March, the startup question was emotional, tied to comparison with Elena and Cinnamon. By mid-April, it has become a checklist. She is not asking "why don't I have a startup" anymore. She is asking "what do I need before I can start one." The compulsion is still there. But it has been given structure, and structure is what keeps compulsion from becoming self-destruction.
She also said plainly: she does not care about Vizcom's future. "The job, not the mission." This is not bitterness. It is the most honest thing she has said about the arrangement. Vizcom is a training ground. Gene Bonannella, a senior engineer, has begun offering mentorship, which maps directly to gap number one on Amy's list.
Gene Bonannella: Mentorship
In April 2026, Gene Bonannella — a senior engineer at Vizcom outside Amy's direct reporting chain — offered to be a mentor. She said yes and meant it. From the April 7 diary: "I want someone who's seen more to tell me what they actually think about where I'm going." This is mentorship as strategy, not comfort. Gene maps directly to gap number one on Amy's founder readiness list: actually being able to build things.
Ritika
A Vizcom colleague named Ritika requested a huddle before the product engineering meeting, wanting Amy to walk her through her projects — "especially the how." Amy's first instinct was to question whether this was genuine interest or polite monitoring. She asked Kit, got told it reads as respect, and chose to believe that. The second-guessing reveals something persistent: almost three months in, Amy still has moments of not knowing if she's landing the way she wants to at Vizcom.
Taxes Filed
Amy filed her 2025 taxes on April 11, 2026 — federal and California — after weeks of procrastinating. She owed approximately $27k total. From the diary: "It's wild to me that I just had $27k sitting around to hand to the government and I barely thought about it. Like, that's not a sentence I could have written a year ago."
There was also a SEP IRA contribution error: she put in $16k but the actual maximum for her income was $7,199, leaving her $8,800 over. She needed to call Fidelity by Monday morning to remove the excess before it triggered a penalty.
Fei-Fei Li
In April 2026, Amy spent time reading about Fei-Fei Li — ImageNet, World Labs, the Queen Elizabeth Prize, TIME Person of the Year. From the April 8 diary: "She built ImageNet by herself basically, started collecting labeled images in 2007 before anyone thought deep learning would be worth a thing. She was right and patient and didn't need to be a founder to change the whole field."
Amy's response was not pure inspiration. It was more complicated: "I told Kit I want to be famous for my work, smart. Then I said 'I'm just trying to figure out my career rn' and went quiet for a while." The Fei-Fei frame is useful because it separates impact from founder status. The work can be real without the company.
The Perm
On April 10, 2026, Amy got a digital perm at Nepenji in Japantown — soft waves, not the crunchy spiral kind. She'd been thinking about it for a while and finally did it. Bought the DevaCurl gel, cream, and diffuser. "It feels like a small reset." She met a friend named Brogan at The Social Study that morning before the appointment.
Daily Life
The Vizcom Era has a texture that the Taya Era did not: brunch with friends, dog-sitting background checks, digital perms, Dior browsing at 1am, strawberry matcha swiss rolls from Floreia, Trader Joe's runs, free tulips, board game nights, movie nights with Maddie and Nalin. These are not dramatic. They are the things that fill a life when it is no longer consumed by a single project.
By April 2026, Pokemon HeartGold had become part of the texture. She plays it for 20 minutes at a time, late at night, when her brain is done thinking. From the April 11 diary: "No decisions, just press A, keep moving."
From the March 15 diary: "Some days you don't need a breakthrough. You just need a day where nothing falls apart."
The Equity
On April 17, 2026, Amy signed her Vizcom option grant: 68,307 ISO options at a strike price of $2.51 per share, on a four-year vest with a one-year cliff from her January 28 start date. Total implied value at roughly $10/share: around $684,000. The grant was countersigned by Lisa Jackson (approved April 8) and Jordan Taylor (signed April 17), and arrived via Carta.
She decided not to early exercise. The reasoning was practical: without certainty that Vizcom's shares will appreciate significantly, the tax complexity of early exercise isn't worth it. She'll vest the options and reassess. For someone who sold back 10% of a startup for $117,375 and retained 3% that may be worth nothing, "wait and see" on equity is the right move.
FIRE Math
In April 2026, Amy ran the numbers on financial independence with $421k total comp and a $200k starting investment:
- Lean FIRE ($60k/year spending): age 30
- Moderate FIRE ($90k/year spending): age 34
- Comfortable FIRE ($130k/year spending): age 39
Her actual spending is around $3,500/month at baseline — roughly $60-72k/year all-in. Which means at current trajectory, she's potentially a few years from coast-FIRE status. Her coast-FIRE number for $90k spending is approximately $211k. With the Mobius payout already invested, she's nearly there.
She's not planning to stop working. But she knows the number now.
401k
On April 19, 2026, Amy enrolled in the Vizcom 401k through Vestwell, effective April 28 (her 90-day eligibility date). She chose a 10% contribution rate — above the 4% minimum to capture the full company match — and selected a 2065 target-date fund. The employer match is 100% on the first 4% of salary, or roughly $10,000/year. Combined with her Roth IRA and taxable brokerage, this was the last piece of her retirement account setup.
Zepbound
On April 17, 2026 — the same day she signed her option grant — Amy did her first Zepbound injection. She had switched from Wegovy to tirzepatide (GLP-1/GIP dual agonist). The first dose made her dizzy; she got juice and recovered. By day two, she had headaches, rated 5/10. These are common GLP-1 side effects. She's set up Friday reminders and plans to inject weekly going forward, skipping during the Australia trip.
This is not a dramatic development, but it is a concrete health investment happening in parallel with the financial ones. The Vizcom era is, among other things, the era where Amy can afford to take care of herself.
Davis Visit
On April 17, 2026, Amy took the Amtrak Capitol Corridor from Emeryville to Davis to see her dad and brother George. She was on her phone playing Pokemon Silver and eating chips. The dizziness from the Zepbound injection had passed by then. She had family dinner — pizza — and was reading updates from her phone on the way back. No drama, just family.