The Challenge of Juggling Everything

I was happy with the start I experienced on steemit. Wrote my first post, uploaded my first video on d.tube not long after. Watched that video for it's first 7 days of profit earning. Was happy that I made a few dollars off of it -- more than I expected! I then tried a follow-up video upload, but the upload failed. And it's been about two weeks now, that I've been trying, on and off, to get a second video uploaded to d.tube, but to no avail.

I've had a few other minor accomplishments since then. In the realm of liberating myself from invasive software, I've made some pretty good strides on the mobile front. I've been running a AOSP Android without Google services. I have no Facebook or Instagram on the phone. I do still have Whatsapp to keep in touch with a few contacts. Since Whatsapp is suppose to be using Whisper end-to-end encryption, I do wonder if Whatsapp is secure. However, I would rather have people on Signal (or something even more secure).

I had a bit of a scare. I think one of my old online accounts was compromised, and I received spam asking for crypto payment. This sent me into a panic, updating all my accounts. I have since started using unique email addresses for most online accounts (for example [email protected] with email forwarding) and updated most of my passwords. I found it interesting that some accounts are actually not that easy to change/update. Services that I signed up for years ago, but haven't used since then. I also closed/deleted accounts that I felt weren't being used enough. No point leaving so many floating accounts out there. And just falls inline with my idea of streamlining and cutting loose things we don't need, be it clothes, books or digital assets. I also found a theme/icon set which is black and white, and I find this helpful and pleasant to limit phone usage and also feel get about the more "me first" styling of the phone's software.

I also had a job application, which took a lot of time to put together, but I was able to get it submitted on time. Even though I'm not sure what the results of the application will be, it was a good exercise to just put together all the documents and complete the task. The purpose statement essay was also a really interesting mental exercise for me, because it required me to think back on the last decade of my life. In only two pages I had to string together a theme of the last decade. This was a real challenge to be able to piece together a narrative which I felt was both concise, clear and honest. It was also an unexpectedly sobering experience to reflect on the past decade and be forced to see things as they really are. There were things, such as my average performance level, consistency, type of decisions, personality type, which I felt rang true just by noticing the trend over the last decade. But this trend might now have been how I always frame things, so this exercise forced me to reconcile some of my perceptions with reality.

The email and purpose statement overlapped with a third task, which was renewing and updating my local domain: yussefmilburn.com. The purpose statement reminded me that I do enjoy writing, and I would like to keep writing, both as a way to enjoy and improve the endeavor, and hopefully find a way to earn come from writing. But in keeping with reducing digital invasion, I didn't want to keep making posts on invasive platforms. With my domain renewed, I setup a simple blog and photo album. The blog is a place to do my own writing without feeling I'm being leeched off of. The photo album was where things started getting interesting. I started going through memory lane, uploading sets of photos which I had started to organize years ago, but had never done anything with. This gave me a chance to look through some of the photos again, walk down memory lane, and also begin grouping the photos, and seeing them as part of a more holistic journey. And in all, it alls me to engage with two activities I enjoy, writing and photography, and hopefully push myself to do more of these activities, even looking for ways to earn from them.

I also met with an acquaintance who is in graduate school, and wants to use me as a research specimen for a type of coaching. That was an interesting experience, and one I will write more about after completing a couple sessions with him.

After completing the job application, I have now begun focusing on graduate school applications. And have already made some headway.

So while momentum on steemit faded for a moment, I feel I was actually making ok progress on the things I need to be doing. There is also still much more to do, but that's a good thing.