March Updates

This month I’ve been cosplaying as a classic F500 corporate worker - I got extremely lucky with an old mentor at work and I’ve been staffed on a relatively “chill” project. Things have been good? A few hours of free time on weekdays and a nice weekend feels pretty balanced to me. It’s not enough time to work on a side project (or maybe I’m not willed enough to do so), but I’m starting to see how industry jobs can get cushy.

One thing I appreciate about NYC people is that they are extremely non-cliquey nor gatekeepy. Someone please invent some better adjectives to describe this, because it’s far more than just “open.” Everyone is down all the time, and you can just add yourself to friend groups. A good number of hangouts end with some variation of:

[to me] “Actually, you wanna come to this birthday party on the 15th with us?”

[to their friend] “I’m sure Derrick wouldn’t mind”

[me] “uhh I wouldn’t really wanna crash a birthday like that”

[to me] "its cool, also we’re hosting a Severance watch party tomorrow night too if you’re free”

It is really refreshing coming from Vancouver’s more low-key culture. We need a sociology major to figure out what’s going on here.

Latest Happenings

• Walking Around a Shit-ton: I’ve always had this notion that I need to plan an activity in order to leave the house. But I’ve been really enjoying walking around, whether it’s for a mini-food crawl or window shopping. It’s a great way to get outside and facilitate some great conversations!

  • Packing list: a friend, some pocket change, a warm jacket

• ^ Literally 90% of what I did this month. Not much in the way of novel activities to flex this month.

Content for Consumption

• S/O for friends! Few of my friends are starting to create on Youtube. Check them out:

  • Adam: Hour-long DJ mixes with soul / funk music. Super vibey. Adam if you’re reading this please drop some more. In fact, I’m listening to this right now.

  • Johnny: Living life and building a videography portfolio at the same time. Quality stuff that really deserves to get picked up by the algo.

• Took some time to reflect on my birthday - here’s a really thorough annual assessment that I attempted to complete (and failed). Hopefully it can help you guys find some direction.

• Are 401ks Becoming Obsolete?: Putting money aside for retirement is the responsible thing to do, but I literally can’t imagine what the world will look like in 40 years. How should we think about this?

• 50 Years of Travel Tips: Hands down best “travel-tip” advice I’ve ever read. Anyone who’s travelled widely will recognize these tips as gold.

Hou’s Hacks

• List of: Links for free magazine subscriptions to GQ, Architectural Digest, etc

• WHOOP Free Trial: Try out a new health tracking band for free! Personally I use an Apple Watch but some of the insights they’re claiming to have seem interesting.

Joint Ventures

1. For all the full-timers: How do you guys plan out your PTO? Like literally how do you decide on vacation vs. visiting home? There’s no structure??

2. Anyone else starting out in content creation? Let me know because I’d love to see!

Thanks for reading!