September

Welcome to this special edition of my monthly recollection of somewhat everything that I’m reading, watching or listening to among other things that are happening around me.

Growing UP!

I am extremely grateful to God for the gift of life each day. The past year was quite a roller coaster. I got so many wins and losses but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. There’s still so much to do, so many huge decisions to make and so many lessons to take home. Cheers to yet another year. 👏

Taking a Break 😪

I took a step back for a moment and tried to live a little. Although It was weird and under-productive, it felt good taking a break. I wanted to catch my breath and rest a bit.

I don’t believe I have the most tasking or exhausting career but I’ve spent quite a lot of time going the extra mile that I’ve constantly forgotten how to live.

There’s some FOMO but I am trying not to pay attention to it. I want to get work done, learn something new and enjoy the journey while at it.

Breaking Habbits

I didn’t do the “No Soda September” challenge this time round. I didn’t feel like it and I honestly don’t feel bad that I broke my routine either. I proved a point, that if at a certain point I wanted to quit drinking soda I would do it without any fuss.

I am contemplating on picking up a new challenge or habbit for October and probably try something else the month after that. I will try to make it a monthly routine rather than an annual one.

Career

I am constantly working on future proofing myself by learning new skills which I believe will keep me relevant in the long run. I am currently learning Vue for my work and surprisingly I find it easier compared to other alternatives such as React.

Website Improvements

I took some time to make some improvements on my(this) website and I am impressed by what it looks like now. I believe I still have a few tweaks I could do to make everything much nicer but so far so good. Here is a summary of all the changes that I made.

Building in Public

One of my side projects, @KOPSPN is doing great so far although I am not quite satisfied with the last fix I made. Some score commentaries slip through the cracks and it feels so plastic rather than an actual commentary. I still have some work to do on that front but I am thinking of creating a YouTube channel purposely for this project to help build a larger community.

Watching 📺

I am still struggling to find something worth watching on Television. I found myself watching old videos of Ali Abdaal on YouTube which was encouraging and given that now he has a team is a testament of his hard work.

Classroom Of The Elite may have had its last episode of the season. This show is well directed. I am somewhat sad that I will be going through my week minus looking forward to the next episode.

I also watched Santo although it requires a great deal of undivided attention, I think it’s a great series. It has so many twists and If you can’t concentrate you may find it boring and confusing. I wouldn’t bother catching the second season because It is not worth it.

Other shows and movies I’d recommend watching include; Cold Eyes, A Million Little Things, Prey etc.

Reading 📚

I have read Finding Me, The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Grit. This is the most I’ve read the entire year. I am about six books into my goal which is to read thirty books this year. I believe there’s still time to get it done.

Here is a list of my top reads this month;

I share more articles that I’ve read here.

Listening

I am trying to catch up with podcasts but sadly that’s not going well. I don’t have wireless audio gear for some reason which was one reason I used to listen more. I hope to change that in October.

I enjoyed this episode on Getting Rich, Designing Your Life Afterwards, and Risk Management with Arvid Kahl and Daniel Vassallo by Indie Hackers.

Miscellaneous

Marc Andreessen compiled a collection of his best blog posts into an e-book which I think is pretty cool. I have a couple of articles that I have enjoyed writing and this is something I believe I can do sometime in the near future.

I am slowly shifting away from Apple Notes for note-taking. I don’t like the fact that I get locked into a system and since I write this blog in markdown, there is somewhat a caveat when it is time to publish my articles. I came across this app called Simplenote which allows me to write in mark-down and to preview what I have written so I decided to give it a try. I am enjoying it so far although I wish they could make some improvements such as quick commands or shortcuts for tables in mark-down and also a way to change a font family.

New Words

I came across a few words that I(you) can add to my(your) English vocabulary.

Conclusion

This was quite a fun and productive month. I celebrated my birthday, I went to a couple of parties where I got to see some friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I believe I am finally settling in with work and I am managing some of my time more responsibly.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to send out the last edition of my newsletter but this one will be out once published.

Favorite Quote

Jump and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall - Ray Bradbarry