Retro - May 2023
Welcome to my first retro! I'm trying to do regular monthly reviews to share key updates with some relfections along the way. My goal for these retros is to keep family, friends and casual observers informed on my life, and to also give me a chance to periodically document and review my Journey.
I'm still figuring out what type of format would work best for these retros, so they will probably change over time. But for now, here's the layout I'm going with:
- Updates: Sharing things that happened in my life over the past month
- Progress: Seeing how I did against the goals I had for the month
- Reflection: Doing a little introspection to see how I'm feeling
- Brainspace: Any thoughts that are taking up space in my brain - not necessarily relevant but hopefully interesting (though no guarantees!)
Updates
This past month was pretty packed. Here's a not-so-short list of all the things that were going on in May for me:
- I ran my first 5k on May 6 here in Pittsburgh (and did a lot better than I was expecting to!)
- I went to Denver with my wife for her work conference over the weekend
- I went to Philly the next weekend to celebrate my brother-in-law's med school graduation!
- Roadtripped with from Pittsburgh --> Boston --> Buffalo to look for apartments and visit family (did I mention we're moving to Boston?).
- My wife and I celebrated our legal wedding anniversary (we celebrate 2 anniversaries thanks to Covid) with a nice long bike ride, date night at a funky ramen/arcade bar, and a quick visit to our wedding venue in Buffalo for some nostalgia.
- Less romantically, we also stopped in New Jersey between the first leg of our drive from Pittsbugh to Boston for a nice "refreshing" break at a hotel without any running water.
Overall, this month was pretty packed with something going on every week. It's been fun, but hectic.
Dinosaurs in Boston!
Sharks in Buffalo!
New Doctor (courtesy of rosiephillydoodle on instagram)
The famous pink staircase at Misuta ChowsProgress
In terms of things I was trying to accomplish, here are a few key metrics I started tracking. I'm not sure if I'll keep these for future months or not, but going through this exercise might help me figure out what I should be paying attention to.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Money Earned | $368 |
| Steps | 457,750 steps |
| Miles Run | 11.8 miles |
| Volume of Weight Moved | 48,840 lbs |
I'm not going to read into these numbers too much for now.
Top Goals for May 2023
In terms of priorities, I had a few key goals for the month of May:
- Apartment Search: Find an apartment in Boston and create a moving plan for getting all our stuff there
- Have Fun: Enjoy the month, including catching up on some anime, playing some pokemon showdown and spending time with family/friends
- Build in Public: Get this website and blog off the ground
- Earn my First Dollar: Sell some extra furniture, come up with some ideas for scalable ways to earn money and start tracking my earnings and time investments
You can check out my full list of goals for the month of May in the dropdown below along with a grade and some commentary on each:
Full List of Goals from May 2023
| Primary Goal | Subgoal | Grade | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Have Fun | Reach 1500 ELO in Gen9 randbats on Pokemon showdown | A | Broke 1500 finally! I only did it with the help of a browser extension which feels like cheating a little, but at the same time, I have been getting better at making reads on my opponent too. |
| Record 1 video of randbats | F | Didn't record anything, but came up with some ideas | |
| Draft an outline for a short story | C | Wrote a short outline. It's a little incomplete still though... | |
| Build in Public | Drone Project MVP | F | Didn't work on my drone project at all this month |
| Manga Project MVP | B | Worked a little bit on the manga project at the beginning of the month | |
| KPW Update website | A | Did some meaningful improvements to the website, and started adding content. Overall got the ball rolling and I'm pretty happy about it | |
| Earn My First Dollar | Sell Inventory from Apartment | B | Sold the TV we weren't using from our apartment. First sale done, but didn't get to the other things yet |
| Manga Project Business Use Case | C | Only minimally worked on this | |
| Drone Project Business Use Case | F | Didn't work on this at all this month | |
| Tribal Business Use Case | B | Did some outlining but was hoping to do more here. | |
| Financial Independence Strategy | B | Did some reflection on my goals for reaching financial independence and the different strategies that might make sense and that appeal to me | |
| Health | Run 5k < 25min | A | Ran 23:01 for my first 5k which was way better than I was expecting! |
| Health - Appearance | Get ears pierced | F | Didn't do it yet...just didn't make the time for it. Prob save till after we move |
| Teeth health | C | No dentist yet, at this point, prob going to wait till we move | |
| Find better deal on contacts | F | Didn't do this yet...need to order in the next month though | |
| Apartment Moving | Find an apartment | A | Spent a lot of time and effort this month (including traveling to Boston) and found an apartment that we were both happy with. My wallet isn't too happy though |
| Decide on Moving Plan | A | Spent time talking with Nikki about how we want to move. Came up with a budget, looked up the options and now have a tentative plan that we are both onboard with. | |
| Start Packing | F | Haven't started | |
| Family | Schedule bro trip | F | Haven't done |
| Start planning family holidays for end of the year | F | Haven't started | |
| Life | Vacation with Nikki | A | This was initially supposed to be a beach vacation, but turned into an apartment search. We made the most of it though by spending time exploring Boston together and celebrating our anniversary in Buffalo |
| Cancel audible membership | A | Done | |
| Global entry application | F | Haven't started | |
| Networking | Make plan to call some friends | F | |
| Make plan to visit NYC | F | ||
| Call YC connection | F | ||
| Reading | Read Dopamine Nation | F | |
| Read What's Our Problem | F | ||
| Listen to Metabolical with Nikki | B | Spent our car ride listening to Metabolical together | |
| Become bilingual | Try learning Kannada / Hindi | F | Didn't start |
My main accomplishments from this month were:
- Apartment Search: Signing a lease for an apartment in Boston and coming up with a reasonable moving plan
- Fun: Saw a bunch of family and friends, spent lots of quality time with my wife, got better at pokemon showdown and caught up on some anime
- Build in Public: I have been putting a lot more time into getting this website off the ground with content and improvements. I'm pretty happy with how things are coming along here. Writing my blog posts has also given me a lot more structure and perspective on my goals and priorities.
- Earn My First Dollar: I've got some ideas here that I'm excited about (stay tuned).
Reflection
Overall, I would say this month has been fun, but also stressful. I felt worn down doing so many trips back-to-back, and this also made me feel somewhat restricted given how little time I felt like I had to work on all my goals. There were also some difficult conversations I had during the month as well, which was probably made worse by how I was feeling overall.
Looking at a few specific categories:
Freedom: As mentioned above, I felt relatively restricted this month with my lack of control over my time. This was somewhat frustrating for me.
Motivation: Despite not feeling totally in control, I feel like I was pretty motivated this month to work on some of the projects I have in mind. My motivation did shift across multiple projects as I started to plan my life out more broadly, but I feel like my total level of motivation has stayed relatively high, despite not getting as much done as I'd have liked to.
Fun: I think I definitely had a lot of fun this month, and in many different ways. I got to see family and friends, I had some new and memorable experiences along the way, and I also played a bunch of pokemon showdown this month as well and caught up on some anime too.
Brainspace
- I've been enjoying watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with my wife as our new bedtime show. Just finished Season 1!
- I've really been vibing with Escapism by RAYE. I heard this song a couple months ago, but recently got it stuck in my head. I have a weird habit of binging a song non-stop for a few days until I get sick of it. Probably drives the people around me a little crazy (actually I know it does).
- Some thoughts for next month's retro:
- I should define what my top priorities for time tracking are at the beginning of the month
- I should think more about what the progress metrics I want to track are