Rebooting the systems

Change has arrived

Hello friends, it's been a while. In my last post, I divulged that my carefully-laid and well-honed systems were falling apart due to a storm of change that was heading my way.

It's been about a month since that last post and, for the most part, I'm now on the other side of all that change. A lot has happened in the intervening weeks.

Move to Birmingham

The biggest change is that I've moved from Chattanooga to Birmingham. The move from California to Chattanooga in 2018 was largely motivated by work. The move to Birmingham, by contrast, is rooted in the desire to set up shop for the future.

Birmingham makes sense for us for a few reasons. My wife's family has been there for generations, so it's a bit of a homecoming for her. There's an entire community of people that have watched her grow up and who are figuratively greeting us at the docks as we pull into port. It’s been awesome to move to a place where I actually already know people, whether or not I’ve actually met them before.

The cost of living is comparatively low, which is attracting droves of people like us, who have slowly been migrating away from the coasts as we collectively enter middle age. The city is growing, and along with the changing demographics, I expect that the Birmingham of the next 50 years will look vastly different from the last 50 years. I'm excited to be part of that change.

I have a new job

As I write this post, I'm on day four of a new job. If you've been following this newsletter for a while, you'll know that I've been on sabbatical for the past 11 months. I'm excited to get off the bench and jump back into the field.

I've spent a lot of time writing about how what you make is important but what you keep is all that matters. Getting back to a two-income household will allow us to start keeping again, and that feels really good.

Now that I'm back to the working world, the challenge before me is to figure out how to rebuild my systems within the new terrain I now inhabit. The habits and tools that enable my desired identities will have to be refashioned to fit within the new constraints of a 40-hour work week.

Experience has taught me that the most durable and sustainable approach is one that layers on one system at a time. So to kick things off, I'm first going to focus on rebooting my creator system, and this post is a kickstart to that effort.

Enter YouTube

While I was out in the non-system wilderness over the past month, I decided to try my hand at YouTube. I gotta say, I like it. For years now, YouTube has been my go-to place for information and entertainment on the internet, and I'm excited to explore this medium for sharing my experience, knowledge, and lessons learned going forward.

I still plan to post on this newsletter, but I will likely lower the frequency from weekly to every few weeks. I'm a complete beginner on all things video, so my limited creative time and effort will be tied up with learning the fundamentals as I go from crawl to walk to run.

If you'd like to support my efforts there, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. You'll get a front row seat to my journey in learning a completely new skill and having some views at this admittedly rough stage will really help grow the channel.

Here's a taste of what I'm up to.

Thanks in advance for all your support. It’s good to be back on solid footing.