Welcome to September — this will be the first complete month I’ve been in one location for probably about a year which is crazy to think about.
Started the morning with an exciting soccer watching session in Laguna Beach with a great friend of mine. Sadly Arsenal only tied with Tottenham 2-2, however, given it started off 2-0 against them, they rallied well and pulled out a tie. I thought that once we hit our stride we looked pretty good, it only took 45 minutes. Also, while our attack looked powerful there was a lot of room for counter attacks and out midfield and defense looked shaky. I hope to see some improvement.
Anyways..
As I continue to build a routine and develop habits I’d like for home, my mind begins to pick up on different things and once again is focused towards development. After the soccer game, I met up with a different friend from high school and much of our discussion was about what we had done in work/life and what our goals are and how we’re going after them. It’s nice to get this kind of forward facing discussion back since so much of the conversation while traveling was immediate — logistics for getting places — or focused on the past — getting to know people and their histories.
Writing this before I squeeze in my daily yoga practice and bed at 10:42 PM means I’ve procrastinated the two habits I’m currently trying to build until late, but at least I’ve gotten there. Maybe I’ll feel up for some Duolingo as well, although that can be more frustrating.
One plug I want to put out there as I think about it is the importance of a VPN. I ordered a subscription to be able to watch Game of Thrones abroad, but I’m going to keep it. I know have it on both my phone and computer and think it’s pretty important regarding your online security. It’s not a panacea for all potential problems but Ben Franklin (I think) once said something like “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” under his Poor Richard alias. It’s roughly $8.50/month and does two key things:
Allow you to access anything worldwide i.e. content restrictions (not a huge issues in the US)
and more importantly
Keep your internet secure and anonymous
Allegedly some avid online shoppers also utilize this to game algorithms that serve up different prices to different users/regions on sites like Amazon. Try that out for yourself if you’d like. Oh and remember if you’re going to use amazon, use smile.amazon.com since then some of the money gets donated to charity!
G’nite!