For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get my photography side hustle off the ground. My initial assumption was simple: people are always looking for photographers, so if I start with very affordable rates, clients will follow.
I did all the necessary setup and busywork early on: insurance, a new camera, PPA membership, and the other basics that make things feel official.
What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to land paid clients. I’ve done a few TFP shoots, which were useful for practice and portfolio building, but so far I haven’t earned a single dollar from photography.
As I build my photography side hustle while working full-time as a software engineer, I keep returning to one idea: minimalism. Both fields pull me in different directions. Programming has taught me to strip things down to their essentials. Photography constantly tempts me with more gear, more tools, more stuff. Balancing the two has made me think deeply about what minimalism really means in creative work.
The Simplicity of Code # In programming, I live in a world of virtual tools. A laptop, an editor, a few accounts, and I can build almost anything. Over the years, these tools have faded into the background. GitHub, IDEs, frameworks, and cloud platforms all exist, but they feel weightless. They live on the screen, not in my bag.
We’ve all heard the classic question: “What would you do if you won a million dollars?” It’s a fun daydream, but let’s be honest, most of us know that’s a pretty unlikely scenario, so we don’t really think deeply and give very surface level answers. Instead, let’s talk about something that’s actually going to happen to most of us: retirement.
Thinking about retirement is a lot more grounded than fantasizing about sudden riches. Pretty much everyone retires at some point, and many of us are saving (or at least planning) for that phase of life. Even if it’s not something you’ve thought about in detail, it’s a realistic scenario. And the beauty of asking yourself what you’d like to do in retirement is that it can help you figure out what you truly want to do with your life right now.
“The things you own end up owning you.” - Chuck Palahniuk.
I was a minimalist. It was a very easy and stress-free life. I did own many things, but only after careful planning, and I was quick to sell things that didn’t meet my expectations or once I stopped using them.
I also used to live well below my means. I felt free because loss of job or any other financial crisis would not affect me much.
It’s both intriguing and somewhat disheartening to observe how trading concepts often mirror human behavior. Here’s how:
Follow the Trend # In the investment world, the saying “past performance does not guarantee future results” is well-known. Despite this warning, many successful trend followers have found that stocks moving up generally continue to do so, and vice versa.
Interestingly, this concept applies to humans as well. Those who are happy and kind often continue in the same manner or even improve, while those who are miserable tend to spiral downward.
In my view, horizontal spaces should be minimalist and vertical spaces can be maximalist. This way you will have a lot of horizontal space to sit at, write on. And walls covered in art to entertain you and also reducing echoes and creating a quieter space.
To me fake plastic plants mean that one is too lazy to take care of real plants but they want to pretend to be someone who they are not.
Nothing wrong with not wanting to take care of real plants. But why not decorate your place in a way that reflects who you are.
In our backyard lay a series of deck drains that perennially harbored standing water. Despite my best efforts, tracing the end of these drains proved to be an elusive task, seemingly due to the fact that it was compacted and buried beneath layers of earth.
I even ventured to employ a drain snake to address the issue, but the screws securing the drain covers were victims of rust, rendering them immovable.
I think a lot of people would love to live their life as if they are on a permanent vacation. Before I was married, I didn’t make a lot of money but felt like every day was a vacation.
For me, vacation means:
Eating out/not cooking Not cleaning Spending time outside Not working Ready to travel Eating out is cheaper than cooking, if you are not picky. I ate mostly fast food. Of course, it is not healthy but it is vacation. Also it is still better than overeating home-cooked meals.
Follow up to my last post, the people I admire the most are usually startup founders or business people. And then creators of open source software.
This weekend, I also met my engineer turned entrepreneur friend and saw Jobs movie. It seems I know what I should do.
I want a business that gives a lot of freedom, especially freedom to be with my kids. If I can involve kids in the business, it would be even better. Would love low stress business but it is not a requirement.
“What should you do with your life?” This is the question I almost ask myself daily. I am still not sure what my long-term goals should be.
I have gone back and forth between pursuing my hobbies as a career, focusing on corporate career, and starting businesses.
Recently, I learned a simple question that can provide you insights into your deeper aspirations. The question is:
Who are your heroes? # Ask yourself who are your heroes, who do you feel inspired by, who do you read about, and who were your heroes when you were a child.
I am not sure if women experience midlife crisis but I know several men who have experienced or are still in the middle of a midlife crisis. I have a theory that every 20 years, men need a big change.
Usually, there is a big change in 20s, people are moving out of their parents’ homes, going to college or starting their careers.
And when people turn 60, they are getting ready to retire. Downsize their homes.
We just recently bought a beautiful single-family home. Before this, we lived in a townhouse. And before the townhouse, I had lived in apartments. Buying a townhouse was a big step, but buying a single-family home is a whole new beast.
First, buying a house is probably a sound financial decision. There are plenty of articles and research that shows people who own homes are financially better off.
But very few people talk about negatives of homeownership. And I think because of the lack of that information, a lot of people make incorrect decisions and end up regretting their home purchase. I did. I had huge buyer’s remorse the day we moved into our new home. I am still getting over it.
There is a saying that we overestimate how much we can do in days but underestimate how much we can achieve in years.
Nothing makes a father as proud and happy as his children. My biggest guiding principle for my long term goals is to provide Ayden and Zayn with an environment where they can grow to be happy and successful. Also, it is important to realize that I cannot make anyone happy or successful. The only thing I can do is create an environment for them to grow in.
Just the other day, I happened to skim a blog post, “My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span.” It struck a chord, and I realized that I’m in the same boat. It’s been ages since I’ve properly read a book. Even when I have audiobooks on, I’m doing something else and hardly ever genuinely enjoy them.
I’ve got this habit too, of kicking off loads of projects and then ditching them once it’s time to roll up my sleeves and do the detailed work. Setting up a new project is a rush, but finishing something? That’s a snooze fest.
I moved all my blogs back to Hugo. I have gone back and forth between Wordpress and Hugo several times. WordPress makes it really easy to write and publish content. On this domain, I was using WordPress as a bookmarking service. With PressThis plugin, I was able to use a bookmarklet and publish a new post from any page on the web. But that plugin has not been updated in a while and it seems with every new WordPress release something would break. A few times, I was able to hack it to keep going. But lately, I cannot keep up with it. I will have to figure out a better way to bookmark but for now, I didn’t want to deal with WordPress. And easy bookmarking was the only reason why I was using WordPress.
This year I crossed off one of my bucket list items: I got my Open Water Diver certification. I had done scuba diving before in Honolulu. It is among my top 3 best experiences. Ever since that vacation, I had been wanting to get into diving more seriously.
But since we live in land-locked Dallas, I didn’t think it was possible or worth it. Then this year in February I saw a Groupon from International Scuba, and I decided to just go for it. I think the Groupon was for $250, but then there was fine print which said we needed to buy our own mask, fins, snorkel, and boots. I bought all this gear from International Scuba as they offered free gear rental for checkout dives. But this added about an additional $200.
I have had this domain since 2003. Originally, I wanted to make video games and Chaosplay was supposed to be a video games studio.
But then it was mostly a blog. I blogged about video games and programming. A bit about personal life. Eventually my focus was on photography, so I blogged about photography.
When we became parents, I was blogging about parenting.
I wasn’t a consistent blogger. I stopped blogging many times. Also several times I wiped old posts and restarted blog with clean slate.