Here I document my adventures in travel, lifestyle, and thinking differently with the hope of broadening people’s perspectives. I hope you enjoy!
Last week I began the long process of completely redoing the way I use my iPhone. As someone who who grew up around these devices, it always seemed that each new update and feature was serving up better ways to be productive and stay on top of the important tasks in my life. However, I am beginning to realize that these features, developer intentions aside, do not actually make me more productive or allow me to stay more closely in contact with friends.
My friends know I‘m notoriously late, but I don‘t tend to view myself and someone who is always running behind. Germans are stereotypically extremely punctual, and that is something I would say I value as well. Yet, numerous, unconnected, outside sources all were verifying the same thing: I am not punctual.
This year for my birthday, I am embarking on a 21 day no complaining challenge, and I invite you to join me.
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to live my life. I have a notion of what that looks like after college, but my lifestyle now doesn’t reflect that. Perhaps this has to do with a hesitancy to box myself in before experiencing all the new opportunities college has to offer, but I am inclined to think it has more to do with the notion of constraints. Whether it be set class times and schedules or limited financial resources, there are some things which play a major role in shaping my daily life, but that I am unable to change without diverting some major life trajectories.
Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you may be on, I think we can all agree that as citizens we have an obligation to be active players in shaping our government. One way we can do that is by voting. Over the past year or so, Anthony has been a tireless advocate for encouraging people in Texas and the rest of the United States to vote. Here is his story:
My new roommate, Mo, founded his own organization called Fuego! This past week I had the opportunity to sit down with him and ask him more about how that all came together.
This past summer I was lucky enough to be able to intern with two employers at the same time. One of those employers provided me with the opportunity to work remotely, the type of job oftentimes held by digital nomads. Although I loved being able to work from afar, having such a job brought with it a host of unexpected challenges.
This month I decided to delete all my social media apps (Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat) in order to try and focus on living in the moment. So far, here are some of the things I have noticed.
Over the past five or six years I have focused on optimizing my life. However, I have recently noticed that some optimizations do not always have the intended effect, and perhaps make things even harder than they were pre-optimization. While there is certainly something to be said for problems such as these arising simply out of an increased awareness rather than that they actually formed due to some prior change, I think it is worth considering the impacts such optimizations have on our lives.
