Gabe's Monthly - June 2024 🐉

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Over the last two years, I’ve re-developed a love for writing. I’ve published a few dozen blog posts on my personal website, shared more across socials, and journaled nearly daily. I’m grateful to a wonderful person for giving me the bug.

For this first edition, I’d like to give you more context on my journey to this point.

Introverted to extroverted

If you’ve known me for a while, you’d know that I was always incredibly introverted. I was a wallflower in high school.

I observed society more than I did much to change it.

Video games and coding were my only real interests - everything else felt like a distraction to me, a puritanically-raised alien in the US to immigrant parents.

That slowly changed. I started tapping into my humanity, experimenting. I went to Europe and Asia for the first time in 2017 and had my mind blown by the differences in cultures and people. My worldview permanently changed for the better.

I really just gave myself permission to get out and have fun. Fascinations and hijinks ensued.

Experiments turned into repeated trajectory-changing experiences. For example, I discovered what I now know will be a lifelong linguistic interest. I started seeing and doing more. Participating in the vibrations of our planet.

Naturally, little by little, I increasingly enjoyed talking. I realized that opportunities don’t fall on your lap. You have to have conversations, promote yourself, and connect the dots with others. Tune into their wavelengths.

Ask anyone you know how they got their job or their client(s). Odds are, they knew somebody. Or they knew somebody who knew somebody.

Life heavily rewards the courageous.

Now with that context…

June 2024.

This month has been a gift.

It’s one of those months where you’re reminded about all of the beauty that life can consistently have when you put the effort into showing up… in both the broad strokes and the little things.

And the variety, the serendipity, the randomness work beautifully in harmony, helping you architect what becomes your reality.

You arrive somewhere in the nick of time to meet just the right person who presents an opportunity or says just the right thing at just the right moment in your life.

Multiply that several times over, and you’re truly manifesting life-altering luck.

I moved to San Francisco this month, and I cannot overstate the change of pace, arriving with an open mind and bountiful energy.

While there are moments where I long for certain comforts and amenities that I had in more spacious and affordable suburban cities…

The ability to effortlessly interface with inquisitive, technical, and creative minds on a daily basis is a massive part of consistently and rapidly creating that life-altering luck for yourself.

Your storytelling, your perspectives, they all shape up to become better. You get challenged and learn from those well-traversed in other domains: why not this way, why not faster, what’s stopping you from doing X..

And most importantly, cultivating relationships is one of the most fulfilling things in the world.

I used to favor being a lone wolf, even as I branched out more. Solopreneurship was all I would have contemplated.

But starting a company and hiring a wonderful colleague, CY, in April by happenstance changed that more than I personally predicted.

For fun, I retook the Myer-Briggs personality test. I tested INFP years ago, but now, I tested ENFP.

Not that it’s the end-all be-all, but during testing, I noticed myself with very different answers now. Regardless of whether the test is true or not, it is now a (useful) self-fulfilling prophecy: it’s easier to be courageous.

To put myself out there. On the internet, with strangers, anyone.

And the reality is, the results of our beliefs are more important than the beliefs themselves.

One example, I’ve been posting on YouTube daily for the past > two weeks, and while I don’t exactly post bangers, it feels.. easy in a way it never did years ago.

Everything has come full circle. I am now a candle that enjoys lighting other candles, which in turns burns my candle brighter. I am an energy generator.

And this energy is not a zero-sum game, as I once thought.

If you know me personally, you know that I carry contagious positivity. Propping people up comes easily, seeing the good things they don’t always see. Being optimistic.

The next obvious step was to find joy in lighting others up with what I have to share, and to becoming open to receiving energy too.

We associate flywheels with business, but it feels like I’ve unlocked a personal flywheel.

And the karmic goodwill couldn’t be more rewarding.

You reap what you sow, and more.

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Thanks for reading. If you got something out of this, I'd love to hear from you on X (formerly Twitter) or LinkedIn.