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2018 July

Summary​

Probably the first month in a long while I have been truly happy for multiple days in a row. Not only did I find work this month and finally stopped this soul crashing journey with my university. It's actually a dream job. Writing software for something I truly believe in with an amazing team in one of the most incredible cities on the planet. It's more than exciting!

Most of the month I spent learning JavaScipt, TypeScript and Node. Still so much to learn. And there is even more I have to learn and understand. Building complex web applications isn't easy if you want to make them performant and easily extendable. The company I joined is named Deedmob and it tries to revitalize the social sector of volunteering. Using technology to make it incredibly easy to do something good in the most meaningful way at any time in any place. But beyond that Deedmob is really a glimpse at the future. A future where the things you do don't have to produce some monetary gain. From my own experience, even I derive meaning from what I do in my life. If what I do can be done by a robot more efficiently than me in every way, it's hard to not go through some existential crisis of what is your purpose then in life?

I believe in making the world a better place. Not just for me, but for everyone who lives it. I want to build awesome things and share it with everyone. And I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to work on something that is making something this great. And I can't wait to see what comes of it and what the future has in store for us.

Oh and I went vegan too this month. Becoming more mindful of my place on this planet and the impact my actions have on other people, this planet and myself included.

Timing​

Diary​

  • (4) I might keep this diary after all. It has been a very stressful past couple of weeks. Added a 'simple' habit of No complaints to Streaks. Such a powerful habit yet quite a hard one to really follow through with, at least for me. I am insanely dissatisfied of where I am in life. I read that university should be this great place where you get to learn awesome things, meet new people and actually have some will in you to live, learn and create. In my case university sucked anything creative from me and has been destroying me inside for over two damn years. And it seems there is no escape from this constant state of sadness because I lost all hope for my life and hate every moment that I don't get to spend on things that I truly care about. I want to learn and create things at my own pace. I want to not feel depressed about it and I want something to change in my life. Anything, really.
  • (4) Here's to the resurrection of this diary though. I haven't touched Day One in quite a while now aside from occasional dream journal entries. And I quite like keeping things organized and clean, and this looking back pieces genuinely make me happy in some ways. Maybe this Summer will let me focus my mind and actually steer the boat that is my life in the right direction.
  • (4) Completed my final exam today for the year. I am still not sure if I should really follow through with uni after all this time. Perhaps I am just not smart enough for a CS degree and I should do art or law or something. I feel like I grew a lot as a person over this time though and actually 'matured' in some ways. In others not so much. Like my ability to prepare and do well on exams.
  • (4) For now though I have two interviews coming up, hoping those two go well. I also can now fully and I mean really fully focus on finally fixing my OS. Fixing Karabiner, installing new version of OS, getting my development environment just right again. And build those ideas into the world.
  • (5) My biggest problem I think is that I can't perform under stress. Fortunately I think I finally solved this for myself.
    1. Write what I want to do in Alfred. Or take the task from 2Do, Trello, MindNode or by selecting some text (like TODO: in code). And now it's my active TODO. I have to do it and nothing else.
    2. If I ever feel I get distracted, I press a hotkey and my active task is shown in the middle of the screen with Alfred. No excuses.
  • (5) So far this approach has been working extremely effectively for me. I think all my failures, or what I consider as failures at least, stem from my disability to focus. Focus my mind to do the things I need to be doing in the moment and not succumbing to external pressures like stress or worry or comparing myself to literally anything else in the universe.
  • (15) Had a great trip to Cyprus for a week. Realized just how good the food and specifically Mediterranean diet really is. Greek salad with terama salad and fish is amazing.
  • (15) One other thing I found out on my quest to minimalism and perfect zen is that I got addicted to cleansing and cleaning things, sometimes to the detriment of my own life. For example I accidentally removed (cleaned) emails for plane tickets and then erased the trash too. Fortunately I still had tickets saved somewhere else. New rule. Everything that does get trashed, stays in trash for a week and then automatically gets cleaned.
  • (15) Oh and I haven't mentioned it yet but I finally found my first ever internship as a web developer at Deedmob. For two months for now but perhaps for longer afterwards if everything goes well. There's an incredible amount of things you need to know to build any kind of complex website with many interactions. React, JavaScript, HTML & CSS with Redux are the main ones I need to learn well and learn fast.
  • (15) We also settled on what new version of Learn Anything will do. And that's ability to create custom roadmaps for any topic. Or lists of resources for any of the topics although the main focus is on the roadmaps. Any user would be able to create a roadmap which is essentially a list of topics & resources that he/she thinks is the most effective way to learn any topic and then other users can search through many of the roadmaps made for the topics to find the one that works best for them (i.e. more videos over articles because he/she prefers videos). The roadmaps will also have a visual element to them that will allow creators to not only list things in a list but also create visual connections to show the 'big picture' stuff and how everything relates and the different paths you can follow to learn the topic. The visual roadmaps can even partly be generated from textual lists and we will also build really great tools to make creating both the textual & visual roadmaps enjoyable and open it to contribution to make it easy for multiple people to propose changes and collaborate on these roadmaps together.
  • (15) Speaking a bit more of Deedmob, I am super happy to have joined this startup as its mission and the problems it tries to solve are close to my heart. Volunteering is something quite a lot of people do already but don't realize that it's volunteering. Helping other people with your skills and time, free of charge is something a lot more people will be doing in the future. A lot of people derive their purpose from the work they do and volunteering is an easy way to feel that what you do is meaningful. And it's available to anyone at any time with a rich catalog of things you can do that you are bound to find something you like or love. Volunteering is also the perfect opportunity to meet new people and make connections and share experiences in life together. Personally that's my favorite part of it all as I do hope to expand my horizons in this regard and meet and connect with a lot more people as I travel through life. So I am pretty excited to do my part in making Deedmob the perfect tool for this.
  • (16) Doing what you love is incredible. It solves so many problems. It's crazy how different my life has become now that I can actually truly enjoy how I spend my time. Knowing fully well that what I am doing contributes to something meaningful. Either it is me learning any new thing. Or building things. Or relaxing and just enjoying the moments in life. I know that I want to do it. I am not forced to do it by anyone and that brings incredible amount of productivity and peace with it that I really never had before. I am also finally genuinely excited for the future. The experience of developing things in 2018 is out of this world. It was never this good. And it will get better. I never felt these things during my time in uni. Perhaps only in the brief moments I got to work on the things I love like LA and all of my GitHub projects but even then I couldn't really fully enjoy it because I always had this nagging thought that I should be a student and memorize and learn things in context of what uni deems important. Hopefully that's in the past now and I can simply build awesome things. And write.
  • (16) I am also happy with how paying attention to my physical & mental health has been paying dividends. The calmness and focus that mindfulness brings to my life. The satisfaction that I am leading a healthy lifestyle that is enjoyable and actually simple to maintain. All of this, you only really appreciate once it's taken away from you or once you lived for a long time without it.
  • (20) Was introduced to Huel by a friend and I am quite intrigued to try it out. I won't go on to fully replace my food with it but I will supplement my nutrition with it. I often have a problem with under-eating and not hitting my macros towards the end of the day. This will easily solve this problem in a seemingly healthy way. If I need to eat 350 calories to hit my macro goals, it's really easy to hit these goals with a simple shake.
  • (20) Despite this addition, I will still eat at least one salad every day with some avocados, tomatoes and other great food. And continue experimenting with cooking and learning to cook healthy and tasty food from the many ingredients available.
  • (22) I think I might go vegan. I've already been eating a mostly vegan diet and the only non vegan food I do enjoy still is fish. I started to love oat milk recently especially as addition to coffee or tea. Going vegan is mostly a decision of environmental impact and lowering my negative impact on the planet. I've read a bit about vegan nutrition and seems that I can get nearly everything I need to lead a healthy life from plant based sources so that's great. Only thing I need to do is to supplement with B12 which I already do. Another thing I will miss is sushi although there's tons of vegan sushi out there too. It's great though how easy of a decision becoming vegan is in 2018.