[08.06.22] Alec's Update #43
"Are we pandas on camels or birds in a flock? - Dance Gavin Dance
Well, well, well — fancy seeing you here 👀
167 days 8 hours and 20 minutes later — I have decided it’s time to drop another newsletter.
Wowza, welcome back fam ❤️
Something you should know about me — I’m a person that’s very big into the idea of doing things when I feel most hyped about it. Thats how I am with music, video games, side projects etc. It’s taken me quite a long time to feel this motivation to write this newsletter, but shout out to everyone during the last 167 days that asked me where this has gone and pushed me to just get something out there. Salute to you my friends!
I want to start by saying whats up to all the new homies (there are quite a few of you 😅). Welcome and thanks for dropping a subscription on this thing. When I first started writing newsletters, I was posting every single week. Mainly I would talk about personal development, hype ZipSchool (then Buildspace) moments, and some music that had inspired me throughout the week. I even still make “Weekly Feels” Playlists every single week — I’m on my 74th lol.
I think I’ve been intimidated to write this next newsletter. I wasn’t quite sure why I was writing these. It started as a brain dump of things that happened during the span of two newsletters. It grew into a place where I could keep my family and friends updated on cool things I was up to. Thinking back though, I realized this newsletter grew into a place where I could document the biggest changes in my life and hopefully give insight to people going through the same thing. This newsletter forced me to stop and synthesize the small and large things happening day over day.
I want to continue doing that, but I do think I need a game plan here, more so a goal to strive for. Just like I do at Buildspace every time I’m about to dive into something new, I ask myself the question — “What do I want to learn from this?”.
So, what do I want to learn from this?
It was really cool write down how this newsletter had grown. I didn’t realize the progression until I sat and thought about it for a bit. I’ve come to see that I want this newsletter to be a place where I can talk about anything that has been on my mind, but I think more specifically I want to learn:
How to have a better “voice” in writing - I have been having a great time learning what “my voice” sounds like in my writing. I think it’s a REALLY hard skill to master, but the people who do master it end up having a skill that can be used in virtually anything.
How to take complex thoughts and express them - I think this is such a cool thing to be able to do. I remember my very first interview with Microsoft, I was asked to explain the internet to my Grandma and I fell in love with the question. Overall, I think this will help me become a better critical thinker with a side effect being I’ll be able to help others understand complex subjects!
How to appreciate every moment of my life - If I’ve learned anything the last 167 days is we all do incredible things every day of our lives, but it always seems to get washed away with something that happens right after. I want to appreciate all the things I have done to the fullest. I suppose the bigger question here is, is this even possible?
Nice. This is feeling pretty good! There is a clear understanding on my learnings, but now to make this happen I need to set some goals for myself or how do I know if I’m making progress on these learnings? I think there are a few “metrics” I can look at here:
Number people reading my newsletter every month. - If my writing is getting better, I would assume more people would want to read it!
Introducing a “Monthly Feels Rating”. - For our standup at Buildspace we rate how we are feeling from 0 - 10 (0 being awful and 10 being amazing). What if I do this for myself, but on the criteria of appreciation? 0 would be I haven’t appreciated my days at all and 10 would be I’m appreciating every second of the day.
Number of newsletters per month. - I think this one is pretty straight forward, I won’t push the needle if I don’t write anything. Now, I don’t want to set a cap on myself, but I do want to set a minimum number of newsletters I should be writing every month. Let’s make this magical number 2. The only reasoning I have behind this is I feel like mid way through the month and end of month are great reflection points.
OKAY EVEN BETTER. Dude I’m feeling pretty hype right now. I have a plan in action and I’m feeling excited about it! I suppose you could say this will be the new format of the newsletter 🤔.The last thing to mention here is I should stay true to myself — I’m doing this for fun and to gain some awesome learnings.
Hype moments in Alec’s life
Heck ya 🤘. There has been a lot thats happened since the last newsletter that I wanted to share with you! So, let me dive into that:
I moved to the Eastside of Manhattan 🏠
It’s crazy to think, but I have already been living in NYC for over 1.5 years. I realized the Eastside was my spot and closer to a bunch of friends and things I like to do! Here is a lil looksy at what I’m working with:
Side projects are starting again 🏗️
If you didn’t know, I was a pretty avid Twitch streamer. I used to build apps with my community all live on stream! I had some of the best learning experiences on those streams. The cool thing was all those projects were side projects! It’s been a long time since I hopped on a stream.
As part of kickstarting the newsletter, I plan to also kickstart my Twitch streams again 🤘.
If this sounds cool to you, drop a follow on my Twitch channel here to know when I go live! Here are some projects we are going to tackle on stream:
Cliqubite - An NFT based food community. I am SUPER excited about this one, but it’s an idea that me and my girlfriend Rebecca came up with. TL;DR - we partner with restaurants and drop limited NFT collections with them that our community can get by going there and tagging us in a picture. These NFTs will have utility behind them that can get them access to special deals + events we plan to throw. Drop a follow on our instagram page if you’re a fan of epic food pics and NFTs!
Weekly Feels Apple Watch App - You know my weekly feels playlists? Well it’s SUPER annoying to create them every week + add them to the latest playlist (it takes like 5 taps and I hate that). I want to make an Apple Watch app where I can literally just tap a button and it adds the current song I’m listening to the proper playlist. Das it!
Listened - iMessage app that that tells if your buddies have ACTUALLY listened to a song you sent them. I share a lot of music to people through iMessage, but I never know if they truly listen to them! Would be super cool to have an iMessage app that simply shows if someone listened to the song.
Buildspace is on another level 🧱
A lot has changed since I last wrote. Some of the biggest news, we closed our round successfully, we brought on new team members (now a team of 10) , and we are working on making Buildspace the place where builders have all the tools to reach their full builder potential. We have dropped tons of new updates and ideas — I would suggest going to check out our page to see whats new! We are full steam and would love your thoughts every step of the way.
Lifestyle habits are coming together nicely 👟
I used to always write about how I can better my daily life with building better habits like running, sleeping earlier, etc. Well, I have been on a pretty solid flow (tons of work that still needs to happen still though). I have been doing this thing where I don’t set an alarm and let my body naturally wake me up and it’s been game changing. I feel so refreshed even if I sleep bad or don’t sleep enough. I have also been exercising more and something even more wild — I’m not vegan anymore. I still eat as vegan as possible during the week, but on the weekends I sort of just eat what I want 😅.
Well that’s about it!
There is definitely a lot of things I missed (and this thing is getting crazy long), but I’m happy to have been able to share it with you :). If you got this far, thank you! You are helping me more than you realize!
We have a new flow for these newsletters, a new cadence, and some metrics to hit. Let’s see what happens!
I do need your help though.
If you think you have a friend that could benefit from this newsletter, drop them a share by clicking the button below. The more accountability I have from people reading this THE BETTER. It would be sick to see this thing grow and see more people get some use of it!
ALRIGHT - I almost forgot about the Weekly Feels playlists! I drop these at the end of every newsletter to show you the vibes I was in the past week :). Definitely let me know what your favorite jam is here 🤘
Until next time — Salute y Saludes.
Alec
"Number of people reading your newsletter" Is a great metric, consider this a +1!