What I’ve learned after quitting my ‘normal’ job
Click, click, click, sip, click, make an annoyed face, click some more, make notes, click, get more coffee, sanitize my hands, click... If you repeat those actions long enough, you’ll have a pretty good idea of my experience working in a 9–5 office during a global pandemic.
There I was, in August 2020, sitting at my desk with yet another (pretty terrible) coffee and the lunch I could only eat at my desk, with the same thoughts running through my head.
“If I could dedicate all of my working hours to writing, what could I achieve? Would I even be…
And what you can take away from them
In everyday life, I often come across people who, after finding out I’m transgender, become curious about it all. “What’s it like?” “Does it feel weird?”
I’ve been medically transitioning for five years. After several assessments over four years by different doctors, I was finally approved for HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) and gender reassignment surgeries (‘Top Surgery’ and Hysterectomy) from the age of 20.
When I first got the approval, you would’ve had a super hard time wiping the smile from my face. …
And what to do about them
Content marketing is another one of those marketing iceberg sub-disciplines strongly related to SEO. When you start getting into it, sometimes it can feel like all of a sudden, there’s a whole lot more underneath the surface. Which, to be honest with you, is totally accurate.
You might think, content marketing, that’s just writing blog posts, right? Well, my friend, you are only partially correct. The content is what you see on the surface (which, while we’re here, isn’t just blog posts), and the marketing is all the fun technical and strategic knowledge work behind it all.
I can tell…
Advice from ancient Greece that still applies today.
Socrates was a prominent philosopher in ancient Greece circa 470–399 BCE. In all honesty, I hadn’t really thought about him much until I played the game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, in which he is a leading character. However, the more I played the game, the more interested I was learning about his real-life counterpart.
His specific style of questions and dialogue later came to be called ‘The Socratic Method.’ In these conversations, he would ask people probing questions about a topic until he unearthed a contradiction and proving inconsistency in one’s argument. Thus, he was considered quite a controversial figure. …
From cheese-lover to carrot cruncher
There I was, lying in my hospital bed with blood circulation wraps on my feet, each alternating their turn to inflate every few seconds—Cshhh, fffff, Cshhhh, ffffff.
It was maddening. To try distracting myself from the noise, I popped open Netflix and put on the documentary ‘Cowspiracy’. My face scrunched up, and my head whirled from what I saw; I had to see more—cue‘ Forks over Knives’ and ‘What the Health’.
Watching these documentaries didn’t immediately turn me vegan, but they did leave a lasting impression that contributed to my decision later on.
It wasn’t until another two years later…
And strategies for building your own network.
A little while back, I decided to quit my full-time job to focus on freelance writing and my Ph.D. One of the things that I quickly discovered was how lonely both of those things could be, especially freelancing.
At a standard 9–5, even a writing one, you have people to bounce ideas from and get advice, as well as KPI’s to achieve from external goal setters. Heck, you’re around other people. Considering the previous year's events, as a freelancer, building up a supportive and positive network of other freelancers is more important than ever.
Take a second to think about…
Here’s what I learned by BuJo-ing in 2020.
“The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is now.”
Unknown
The above quote doesn’t appear to have a source, but it does appear to be a revised version of the phrase attributed to ‘Chinese proverb’, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is now.” No matter the source, it’s something I tell myself whenever I find myself in a bit of a rut.
One of the main problems in life, at least for me, is kicking out bad habits and installing new, healthier ones. …
What it is and what you can do about it.
Sometimes, you get a notification from your bank in the middle of the month about your balance. Damn, overspent again; I don’t even know where the money goes. It just disappears. You check your statement, and it’s full of $4.99’s here and $9.99’s there. It doesn’t seem like much, right?
Months can go by like this until you realize what one of the main culprits is: subscriptions. I bet you’re reading this right now thinking about how many subscriptions you’ve got. Maybe you can’t even think of them all.
Or maybe you only have one or two, if that’s the…
If you’re getting into content marketing, listen up
Let’s start this off with a quick list of what content marketing is, and is not — just so we’re on the same page. If you’re a business selling a product or service, content marketing is:
- Educational in nature
- Answers questions people are asking in your industry
- About your audience, not your brand
Content marketing is not:
- Promotional material
- A sales pitch
Don’t get me wrong, your content should be about your industry and inevitably you will need to mention your brand — otherwise, what are you creating it for? …
Submission guidelines and more
Welcome to The Self-Experimenter, a publication made for those who like to experiment with different aspects of their lives.
We all like to find life-hacks to improve ourselves, from quitting caffeine, journalling, to taking cold showers every day for 30 days. Not everyone can keep a self-experiment going the whole way, but we sure like to hear about those who do!
The mission of this publication is to be the home for documentaries of personal experiments and challenges — in the pursuit of creating a better you.
An important note: this publication does NOT advocate dodgy health advice or other…
Alexander Boswell
Aspiring Polymath | Freelance Writer | Business PhD Candidate | He/Him | alexanderbboswell.com
