Day 791: February 2022 Review

status

What went well?

🛠 Started making progress on Browserflow again

I didn’t make as much progress on Browserflow this past month as I would’ve liked, but it was certainly much better than January. I’m starting to get into flow states again which has felt really nice after such a long hiatus from working. As my fitness goals continue on in the background rather than being at the forefront of my attention 24/7, I’m excited to ramp back up and start tackling some of the big initiatives for Browserflow that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now.

💪🏽 Healed from injuries

In the February update on my 3-month cut, I decided to shift my training from skill-focused (planche, front lever, climbing) back to hypertrophy to allow the plethora of injuries I’ve accumulated in basically every part of my arm (finger, wrist, forearm, elbow) to heal. I’m so glad I did because I’m starting to be able to climb and do handstand work without active pain again! (I haven’t resumed front lever and planche training yet.)

When I strained my pulley, I was aghast that the recommended time to take off from climbing was 4-6 weeks. I decided that my strain “wasn’t that bad” and that I’d be able to return much more quickly than that. I tried climbing again a week or two later, and surprise surprise, my pulley started flaring up. I decided not to be an idiot and just rest up, and when I tried climbing again after 5 weeks, it actually felt good. I’m still easing into it by training a grade or two below my max, but I’m so happy I can start climbing again! Perfect timing just as my cut comes to an end.

Lesson learned: The body heals in its own time and instead of rushing it, find other passions and activities to do. In my case, it was focusing on hypertrophy training. (I wanted to do more mobility work and dancing as well but didn’t get to incorporate it.)

😋 Lots and lots of cooking

One of the unexpected highlights of this cut has been getting much more experience cooking. I am definitely not a “foodie” (if there were a pill I could take every day that fulfills all my nutritional needs and eliminates the sensation of hunger, I’d probably take it), but I’ve enjoyed coming up with creative ways to prepare meals that are delicious, filling, and high in protein. I often find myself wishing there were people I could share the dank meals with so I could spread the delight (my roommate Shiva largely finds eating to be a chore so there’s not much of a point in offering him food although sometimes I can’t help myself when it’s especially good — of course, he always graciously obliges and says nice things ❤️). In the past, having lots of roommates was a nice low-stakes way to get feedback on cooking because they’re not committed to an entire meal, but that’s unfortunately currently not an option. I might just need to bite the bullet and invite people over for meals even though it feels like a big jump going from cooking for myself where I can alter the meal as needed on the fly vs. making a large batch and trying to satisfy palettes other than my own where people are forced to eat the food even if they don’t like it due to social norms.

Anyway, here’s a gallery of food I’ve made!

What didn’t go well?

😪 Not enough social fulfillment

The end of February marks the end of my fourth month living in LA, and one of the areas I identified early on as lacking was having a thriving social life, which I was used to when living in community houses and also while traveling. Well, the lack of one hasn’t changed much, and it’s not surprising given that my life for the past 3 months has largely been working out and cooking. The one activity that was more social in nature and conducive to making more friends was climbing, but I had to put that on hold due to injuries.

It’s not like my social life is completely nonexistent — the crew I lived with in Vegas meets up regularly for poker and game nights; I’ll meet up with friends one-on-one to climb or co-work; I occasionally go to events and make new friends; I randomly reconnected with a friend from my Facebook internship days and went on a hike at Griffith Park with his housemates which was a ton of fun — but it still doesn’t feel quite where I’d like it to be. I think I’m looking for a group of homies that regularly hangs out, shares similar values to me, and is the kind to go climbing one day and then randomly plan a camping trip the next. Of course, those kinds of friendships take time (or I could also just move back to SF where I already have those kinds of friends 😛). If I want to create these bonds in LA, I need to put myself more out there by attending the kinds of events I enjoy and proactively trying to foster friendships. One of the best ways to do this is to organize gatherings, so I should put more thought towards doing that too instead of waiting for friends to magically appear.

😰 Low energy

I’ve written about this extensively in the February update to the 3-month cut so I won’t rehash it here, but for a while, it felt like I was fighting an uphill battle where I had a hard time mustering the energy to get through the bare minimum of my daily routine, much less do additional things like work on Browserflow, take dance lessons, or finally start putting together a plan for mobility training.

Thankfully (and surprisingly), it got much better! I think this is likely due to the fact that I started eating more and my body was like “oh thank god”. I’ve started feeling like myself again and this is also why I’ve been able to start getting back into Browserflow work. Feeling grateful to my body for putting up with this cut and starting to supply me with energy and good vibes.

🍜 Stopped writing daily

In the first week of February, I decided to stop writing daily here because it felt forced. This was definitely a result of the low energy I was experiencing due to my cut — the last thing I wanted to do at the end of every day was write when all I wanted to do was drag myself to bed. Now that I’m starting to feel good again, I could bring back writing daily, but honestly, I’m not sure if I want to at this point. It’s been quite nice getting off the daily treadmill and simply writing the more substantive updates here. For now, I plan to continue writing longer posts once in a while.

Goals

I spent an unreasonable amount of time putting together this graphic to centralize the statuses of all of my 2022 goals in one place which I’ll be including in monthly reviews from now on:

Browserflow Core Metrics

Jan 2022 Feb 2022 % Change
MRR $3,825.50 $4,304.50 +12.52%
Active Subscriptions 89 100 +12.36%
Churn Rate 11% 8.30% -24.55%
Website Visitors 6563 5432 -17.23%
New Users 345 295 -14.49%
New Subscriptions 32 19 -40.63%

I knew growth would eventually slow down for Browserflow, and that day has finally come. It means that I’ll need to actively work on improving Browserflow’s marketing and ease-of-use to create a real source of growth.

Overall reflections

  • Fitness

    • Very excited to transition from cutting to eating at maintenance and resume skill work (hopefully without injuries this time!)

  • Browserflow

    • Time to ramp back up and focus on creating tutorials and documentation for users

  • Personal

    • This month, I’m going to prioritize getting back into the flow of things with Browserflow, but once that’s stable I want to prioritize forming a sense of community in LA