May 30, 2023 1:56 pm
May 30, 2023 1:56 pm

Recap of a Monster Week and Month

Log in or Register to save this content for later.[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]

I’ve been posting two times a week thus far trying to find a good publishing rhythm I can stick to long term. I’m leaning to a publishing schedule of Mondays and Thursdays but alas, I’ve failed to publish a single article this week. What gives? Where have I been?

Nobody wants excuses so I won’t give you one. What I will do is share what I’ve been doing all week and what content you can expect over the next month or so.

Back to work…er I mean school

I started this blog a week or two before fall final exams and for the last month I’ve been a stay-at-home dad. While I’ve been home, my partner has been bringing in the paycheck for our family. A month was a long enough time to get a taste of what a stay-at-home blogging lifestyle would look like in a household in which one parent still works full time. Working as a blogger while another parent earns income is certainly not FIRE. In fact, Financial Samurai notes that one of the main criticisms of the FIRE movement is the exact lifestyle I’ve just described. However, I do believe that blogging while a stay-at-home parent is one of the best uses of your time. I intend to do some writing to further explore this topic as someone who’s had a first-hand taste of the lifestyle.

Apart from being a full-time dad for the last month, I’ve also recruited for and applied to internships, interviewed for summer positions, rebalanced my portfolio, bought a house in the East Bay, and completed a DIY blinds project among other smaller projects. It’s been a busy month that has given me plenty of topic ideas. The blinds DIY project is interesting to me because I didn’t intend to make that a DIY project. I measured and bought the blinds intending to pay Home Depot for installation only to find out later that they only do custom blinds installation. Thus, I was left with cut blinds which could not be returned and quickly figured out that the project was actually quite simple! Stay tuned for a future post about my blinds installation as well as a cost breakdown of how a DIY compares to paying a professional.

Speaking of School

With the return to full-time school, I’ll no longer be a full-time parent. While I’ll miss time with my daughter, I know that my education is worth it for my family’s future. Given my interest in finance it should come as no surprise to readers that I’m enrolled in a few financially focused classes such as corporate finance. However, the course I’m most excited for is an experiential learning course where a group of students consults for corporate clients such as GAP or Charles Schwab to come up with innovative solutions to some of their business cases. I won’t be sharing any proprietary information on here of course, but I do hope to learn transferrable skills that I can use in future work and writing.

Other Topics Coming Soon to an Article Near You

While my publishing pace slowed this week, my brainstorming did not. If anything, I thought of more ideas than I normally would. Here’s a few of the topics I have in mind:

  • Make a goal to walk more this year. I’ve had an Apple Watch for a couple years now and really started to monitor what my step counts look like on a monthly basis. The results have been quite positive, and I’d like to share what’s worked and what hasn’t to increase my step count.
  • Using a home modem/router or renting one from your cable company. I finally took the plunge to get my own modem instead of paying a monthly charge to rent one. I did a rough calculation when I bought the equipment and intend to more fully look into the costs and benefits in a post.
  • Observations on blogging. At two months in, I’ve blogged long enough to meaningfully reflect on my time. Importantly, I still clearly remember the details of my expectations coming into blogging so that I can share a newcomer’s perspective. I expect over time that I will forget some of the startup struggles as i become more proficient with the available tools and would like to record my thoughts sooner rather than later to take advantage of my inexperience.

Thanks in advance for your understanding of my delayed publishing. Now it’s back to the grindstone! See you all on Thursday with more.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column] [/et_pb_row] [/et_pb_section] Log in or Register to save this content for later.