Day 276: September Review

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What went well?

👯‍♂️ Amigos

I started off September hanging out with Shiva and his friends in San Diego (making new friends IRL was such a treat), spent a week with Kevin and Michael in Rancho Santa Margarita, caught up with some friends while staying at home for a bit, and now have been living with David and Ranna in Oregon since the end of September.

Glad to have been able to spend quality time with homies (and not get sick) since seeing people is still pretty weird and rare. I’m especially glad to have come to Oregon — being at home was starting to wear on me, and changing my environment has made a significant difference to my work, habits, and day-to-day mood.

What didn’t go well?

🥴 Haze

These monthly reviews usually start off with me wondering what the heck I did over that month and having a much better idea once I look at my Road to Ramen posts, my calendar, etc. For September, that second part didn’t happen — the past month is still a haze even after looking at my logs. Simply “being” (vs. doing) is not a problem in and of itself (and it’s important to recognize that in the cult of productivity that can slowly creep into our thinking), but this feels less like I prioritized things other than work and more like I’ve been absent from my own life. Just sort of running on auto-pilot. Thankfully, this has been much less the case now that I’m focusing much more on self-care (sleep, exercise, nutrition, meditation) and have an environment that’s much more conducive to my well-being (living with friends, having a decent work setup, etc.).

There are some tell-tale signs of me entering the checked-out mode:

  1. I start going to sleep really late (like past 3am)

  2. I start spending a lot more time on my phone + social media

  3. My Road to Ramen posts are all “personal” posts (often means I was up at 3am and barely managed to write something before collapsing in bed)

    • I scraped my posts (using Browserflow, of course), and here’s how often I made personal posts:

      • September: 12 personal posts
      • August: 14 personal posts

    • Compare that to July, when I wasn’t in such a funk: 7 personal posts

Metrics

Users

Time

This is the least I’ve worked this entire year (I started tracking my time in January). On most days, I struggled to muster up the motivation to get anything done. Thankfully, changing my environment has made a significant difference:

Overall reflections

These last two months have been sort of rough, but hey, it is what it is. Even though things sometimes feel a bit hazy, there’s still so much to be thankful for: good health, spending time with family and friends, being able to spend every day working on things I love, and just straight up existing. Can’t forget the last one.