It’s been 3 weeks since I last published a post, which means I’m now completely off of my aspirational weekly newsletter schedule. That said, I’m not going to stress about it. Life happens!
Over the last few weeks, I celebrated my (actual) 25th birthday, visited Christine in Vancouver, and went on a backpacking trip to Yosemite. In between all the traveling, spending time with loved ones, and keeping up with work, I haven’t had much time or energy to sit down for a couple hours to write up a post.
I’ve also been struggling a bit with writer’s block. I drafted a handful of posts 50-60% of the way through a while back and have a couple of ideas in the backlog, but I didn’t feel confident that they were about topics I wanted to share and/or read myself. Some of my ideas included:
-
How to end up with millions for retirement with a 9-5
-
Is it better financially to buy a car or rent/Uber?
-
The drawbacks of pursuing infinite growth
While these might be interesting articles, at least for the time being, I think they lean a bit too analytical, and I’m not in the mindset to write about them right now.
I’ve been in more of a reflective mood recently. After turning 25, I realized I have some big life decisions that are creeping up on me. I’ve been asking myself questions like:
-
Do I want to continue down my current career path?
-
Where do I want to live?
-
At what point do I want to fulfill my dream of traveling around the world?
I haven’t quite answered those questions yet, but following the product manager playbook, I’ve been taking baby steps by planning some experiments.
-
To decide what I want to do with my career, I’m starting to reach out and connect with people from different backgrounds to understand what their lives are like, how they like their current work, and if they would do anything differently.
-
To understand where I want to live, I’ve been spending a lot more time this year visiting cities around the U.S. and deliberately thinking about what kind of environment the city provides and whether or not that aligns with what I could see myself living in.
-
To understand whether or not I’ll even like the idea of long-term travel, I’ve planned a 1-month solo trip in Europe at the end of the year, where I’ll be hopping from city to city in a place that’s not East Asia or North America for the first time.
During this period of reflection, traveling, and other life events happening, a lot of my routines were disrupted. Things I used to do like going on a walk every day after work or cooking most of my meals were much harder to maintain. In any case, now that I have a few of my next steps outlined, I’m ready to get back into a rhythm.
A couple things I want to start doing again:
-
Go on a run / walk every day
-
Eat breakfast and cook dinner every weekday
-
Sleep before 12 (and get 7+ hours of sleep)
-
Read before bed
-
Write this newsletter!
I’ll let you know in the next post how successful I was in getting back on track 🙂
❤️ My favorite things (from the last few weeks)
-
⛰️ Backpacking in Yosemite – I was invited on a 3-day trip to hike the Pohono Trail from Taft Point to Dewey Point with my work friends, and it was the perfect weekend trip! We had 3 beginners on this trip, which is why we chose a shorter distance, but that didn’t hold us back from seeing some stunning views. The trail conditions were very good, there were no mosquitoes, and the weather was truly perfect. I felt so energized after getting back, and I’m looking forward to my upcoming trip this weekend to Ansel Adams Wilderness park!
-
🍽️ Published on Main – Christine booked a reservation at Published on Main for our anniversary 🫶 It’s a Michelin-starred restaurant with a very Vancouver-y menu. My favorite dishes were the “Heirloom Tomato Panzanella” appetizer and the “Hay” for dessert, which I can only describe as a carbonated shaved ice with custard. It’s hard to explain why, but it was delicious!
-
🍔 Making a burger from scratch – On a whim, while browsing the grocery store with Christine in Vancouver, I decided to buy some ground beef and sliced cheese because I thought it would be interesting to make a burger. A few days later, I roughly followed a recipe to make burger buns from scratch, pressed some patties, topped it with some sauce and cheese and voila — I made a burger! Miraculously, the patty wasn’t overcooked or undercooked, and Christine and I agreed my first burgers-from-scratch were quite the success 🙂
Sorry if my writing is a bit clunky in this newsletter, I didn’t spend as much time proofreading and editing as usual. Feel free to hit reply if you’ve had any similar thoughts on making big life decisions and any ideas on how to navigate them.
Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next one!
Tim