Move to Chicago

I am 26 + 10 months + 9 days, and today is my first day living in Chicago. It’s also my first time living outside my home state of Minnesota.

It’s a really big time for me and Taylor. Big city, new friends, new jobs (kinda). A new chapter of life. It’s both exciting and scary.

So I decided I should start a blog to capture each day in this new chapter.

I’ve kept a journal on-and-off for the past 8+ years, plus a daily spreadsheet to record my time-spend. A blog felt like the natural progression of both of those things (easier to query and share than a physical journal, more colorful and fun than a daily spreadsheet)

My ground rules for these blogs:

• Commit: Spend no less than 15 min and no more than 60min each day

• Share: 1) a memory, 2) an idea, 3) a feeling, and/or 4) a resource

• No overthinking: these are meant to be simple journal entries, not editorialized book chapters

• Write for myself: I need to remind myself that I’m writing these for me, not for the approval of others. Easier said than done.

Hopefully that will be a good balance to ultimately keep me writing. The goal here is pretty simple — capture my thoughts, refine my writing, try and help my future self in the process.

Some days will probably be a few bullet points of complete garbage. Other days may end up being somehow profound when I’m looking back in 10 years and writing these with my direct-connect neural link device.

Ultimately, life is about the journey. Specifically about the memories you make along the way. And it seems the best way keep good memories is to record them somewhere outside your brain.

So there we go. Thanks for reading future me.