What's up with Alex (me) december 2019

Introduction

I am on a 2 year journey to change my environment & habits & follow my intuition and see where it takes me.

This is the post #3 and it is part of a series of posts I'm writing monthly since I moved from Barcelona and contains a mix of professional / tech & personal life stories.

You can read the first one here.

Saas product

As some of you might know one of my long term goals is to build a Saas product.

The motivations behind it are:

Share something valuable with the rest of the world.
Have fun while doing it.
And also add some extra income source to the business.

In my previous post I've said that I did almost no progress on https://portfolee.app/ in the previous month, but I'm happy to say that my first hours of the year 2020 were dedicated to it and I hope to be able to keep doing it and post more updates soon.

By the end of the month I'll also start the Happy Startup School's 2020 Vision program who's goal will be to help build a product while at the same time having a positive impact on my current software development business so instead of one suffering from another, they should co-live in harmony.

The people behind that program are amazing and I know them personally since I went to Alptitude 2017 and I can't wait to meet (online) and engage other entrepreneurs & makers and see where those 20 weeks take us.

Software business

Business at the end of the year was pretty relaxing because of many people on vacation and not much noise around.

It was perfect to recharge batteries and at the same time work in silence on some projects without anybody bothering.

Now that is changing as everybody comes back and I look forward to finish some projects, engage new ones and see what new negotiations brings this month.

Lifestyle

I haven't been doing too much exercise lately.. and I should get back to running a bit.

I'm still hanging out with the dog on a daily basis and at least once a week we have a short trip on the hills.

It's not snowing yet here and it is sad to see that. But it is cold, and so I've managed to go and practice some ice skating. I find that pretty fun because of both doing exercise and listening to music, great way to get out of the house.

I've been also thinking to go skiing and I had an opportunity to go but didn't take it. But I hope I'll manage to do it in the next weeks or until the winter ends.

Traveling (& coding)

Brasov

I've forgot to mention that I had a spontaneous trip to Brasov at the beginning of November.

I had went on a short trip to the mountains with my dad to take some pictures for social media and decided to just go a little bit further to Brasov and visit an old friend. He could be reading this (Hey man!) and he is/was also a developer.

And it's great to meet again with old friends and see how warming and welcome they are. Thanks for that and maybe will come visit again during 2020.

Iasi

Anyways, just before Christmas I got on a train to Iasi to visit my aunt. I enjoyed a lot that city and I'm so thankful for the city tour they gave me where I've learned more about romanian writers in a day than I did when I was a kid at school.

This train trip was also very productive and I had forgotten how focused you can work when you have no stable internet connection and not much options to choose.

It forces you to choose the best task at hand and since "you're on a trip" you're not expected to be in a meeting or anything like that.

You just put your headphones on, choose a project, and work on it while staring at the people on the train or at the landscape.

It is a perfect moment to have a breakthrough on a project and overcome a part of it where you couldn't find the time to focus. The longer the ride, the better.

By the way don't get scared by trains in Romania if you ever take one, I was surprised by the bumps on the rails. It's fun while the train doesn't end up going off the rails.

Next up? Maybe Greece

I've got another aunt in Thessaloniki, that I've already visited this summer and I enjoyed being in a different place with a different culture that I don't understand.

I might jump on a random trip over here, either a short one for a couple of days, or who knows, maybe I'll stay a little longer and engage more with the place.

Learning stuff by hanging out with people

The past weeks I've noticed that if you hang out with other people you might end up learning new things.

Like, stuff about cars, that I know almost nothing, just how to drive one.

Who knew Antifreeze had to be mixed with something before putting it into the car? I didn't.

Christmas & new year

Well if you're not romanian you might not know that over here we have our own trick or treat version but not for Halloween:

Before Christmas, kids go from house to house singing and getting some very boring round piece of bread in return.

But wasn't all Christmas that boring, I've also had the chance to go to one of my friends from back from school and dance like crazy while listening to loud music. If you add to that some alcohol & a barbecue you get the traditional romanian Christmas.

As for new year, well, that was not so much of a traditional party but a LAN one. Yeah, turns out me, my cousin and my gamer brother played some Borderlands to celebrate 2020.