Personal Update

 

Some readers miss my long-form blog articles, where I update my life. As I try to ramp up my YouTube presence to create an alternative marketing funnel, most of my effort has been put into creating video content three times a week. The material is designed to drive more traffic to my previews, so I'm not doing personal updates for a while. So let's do a detailed update this week and skip the videos for one round.

To start with, folks might wonder why I'm becoming a YouTube influencer. The main reason is that my gig at Temasek Poly has been paused for one semester, and there's no guarantee that I will be given more gigs moving forward. AI deployment will make in-house lecturers more efficient, so it will be harder to get gigs moving forward. Still, I might be wrong, so I may embark on a new journey that would not pay off immediately, but it may be helpful to promote my other business lines in the future. 

How do I manage my tempo for new videos? My position is to create 2-3 times a week, spending only 1-2 hours doing up a video, only making incremental improvements along the way. So the sound quality was terrible for many videos, and troubleshooting was slow. The upside is that such an aggressive rate raised my subscribers from 400+ to almost 800 today, and more fans watch my material for the content, and I am slowly improving. 

My logic is that if my pals can spend hours playing computer games, I can do the same for my videos and get better scores while I improve my video and audio editing skills. Of course, my videos can't match other influencers because I only use free software to get everything out. 

So that is one major project that will take up 25% of my time. 

On top of YouTube, as AI is disrupting revenue, the only response is to adopt more AI in my life, which explains why there is a sudden engagement with AIAP for their foundational certificate. I learn about AI in this course, but I also use AI to code the program I submit for marking. On top of it, I developed an AI course for kids, which I marketed pretty "badly" last week as I had to self-teach Eventbrite to get a ticketing and payment system out over an afternoon on a Saturday. This is an example of eustress, stress that is good an rewarding even though it's pretty uncomfortable to suck at something in your 50s. My AI training will pay dividends much later. I'm still digesting the regression and classification algorithms and thinking of ways to fit them into the time series data I employ in ERM classes.

So that is another project that takes up 25% of my time.

So that's not all. To understand the ENTJ personality, we won't do very well if we're put on the defensive, so I gotta charge along if there is a gap in my schedule. I can still optimise my cash flows if I have no classes to teach.

Enter my attempt to reprice my mortgage. It has been pushed down from $2,700 to $2,300. The problem is the annoying request to pay 2% of my remaining mortgage out of "goodwill," which I intend to do once my Bank of China dividends come in today. But my next big project is to clear one room in my mum's place to rent out for a nice sum. We are almost done, but the rental income is secondary as I need another eyeball to look over my mum, so I can be contacted if she falls. Getting a tenant kills two birds with one stone. 

So, imagine that I can finally make some adjustments to my life by reducing monthly expenses and expanding my income.

So, without further delay, I will spend some real money to switch my footwear to Skechers. There was a sale in JB, so I swapped out my old worn-out sandals as they might cause me to slip in the future. I fully intend to sum up my working shoes by the end of this month, for those black trekking shoes that look so much like work shoes, I know some lawyers even wear them to court. 

And it won't stop with shoes, as I spend 8 hours on my bed, I'm looking at getting some memory foam to improve the quality of my sleep. 

To understand what I'm doing, Google "Vime's Boots Theory". I'm repurposing this to apply to more comfort rather than durability. With money, just pay for more comfortable brands - enjoy your life.

Finally, I've made the plunge to get into an insulin injection regimen for my diabetic treatment. Lifestyle changes and medication have finally reached diminishing returns, and I've been having discussions for months. Next week, I will receive training on how I can manage my injections and moving forward, I have to inject myself three times a day, but it's actually cheaper. I get to take out some drugs which have been devastating me with side effects for many years. 

So, what's in store for me in the future? With a basic AI cert, I need to train my gaze on the ACLP. Getting a slot is as hard as getting Lady Gaga concert tickets. Once I do that, I will start experimenting with launching cheap online courses on the web, just to challenge myself on whether I can do so.