This Week:
- An honest update on my software business MVP.
- What it looks like road tripping across the U.S.
- Where I ended the week!
September 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 10/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🏠 Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S.
- 🚐 Virginia
- 🚐 West Virginia
- ☕️ Charleston, West Virginia
- 🚐 Kentucky
- ☕️ Louisville, Kentucky
- 🚐 Indiana
- 🚐 Illinois
- 🚐 Missouri
- ☕️ St. Louis, Missouri
- ☕️ Kansas City, Missouri
- 🚐 Kansas
- Deerfield, Kansas
- 🚐 Colorado
- ☕️ Denver, Colorado
Metrics From The Week
Business Progress Update
New Features
Bit of a messy one this week driving across the U.S. but I found a good rhythm, spending the mornings in coffee shops, then driving to the next city in the afternoon.
This week I got a good chunk of the next feature, collecting outlier channels, finished. It’s an ongoing process, but I’ve got cron jobs searching for channels, analyzing videos for outliers, and looking for outlier channels. I kept the UI simple, just adding filter buttons for: Watchlist, Niche, and Outlier Channels. I’d like to clean this up a lot but it’s not the most important thing to do right now.
With this “good enough” for now, I moved on to the other big feature/feedback, extending the timeframe for analyzing videos and improving the outperforming videos page. I updated the results to include the outlier videos I’m now collecting and added a new ‘niche’ channels list for the user.
I have been thinking about removing the Watchlist feature because it felt like a constraint, but I’m starting to like this setup of having a Watchlist, Niche list, and then All Channels.
The results still aren’t where I want them, I’m getting a lot of not-super-useful outlier video results like news channels, so I’m gonna have to figure out how to make those results more useful.
Increasing Uncertainty
I’m starting to get more worried about what’s going on with the API audit/quota application. The longer this goes on, the more nervous I get and the more I start to question if it’s even worth continuing to develop new features in the meantime.
I had been using multiple Google Cloud Projects to temporarily give me a buffer of enough quota until I could get the quota increased. But, they’ve been flagging them and shutting them down since that violates the terms of service. Fair enough, but it just means I basically can’t run my software anymore because it consumes more quota than I can get on one project. This would be fine IF the quota were increased, but it hasn’t yet, so I’m being squeezed right now.
I now find myself in this position where I basically can’t run my software on any new data (cached data is fine but I need to generate new data), meaning I can barely generate new data and definitely can’t handle any more new users… Layer on top of that basically no word on WHEN this will be resolved…
Will it resolve tomorrow? It could.
Will it resolve September 30th? It just as likely could.
Getting my quota increased for my last site, CommentCompass.co, took about a week. This is making me think that whatever is going on now is not usual. The more I think about it the more my mind goes to the dark thoughts… What if they deny it? What if there’s a problem with what I’m doing? What happens if I have to scrap all of this?
I wish I could end this saying something optimistic but there’s just so much uncertainty, so much out of my control, and so little communication that I honestly don’t know what to do. I’m just taking it day by day at this point trying to figure out how to navigate this situation.
If you want to hear me process this and ramble through this situation, I made a couple videos on this topic this week: I don’t have a plan B… It’s all or nothing, and I can FEEL the growth from this chapter of life.
Road Tripping Across The U.S.
The time has finally come 💪
Virginia
West Virginia
Charleston, WV
Stopped for a morning coffee shop session and walked around downtown a bit.
The vibes were so great in the coffee shop I went to. There were numerous times someone walked in and saw someone else they knew and said “oh hey John! How are ya! How was the race last weekend?” THIS was that sense of community I was talking about missing during this video I made in Spain What I’ve had to sacrifice for living this life on the road. It was just cool to see it in person even if I wasn’t in it.
Kentucky
Louisville, KY
Louisville was the coffee shop where I overheard this group of mid-30s friends catching up. I spoke about the… wild… stories I overheard at the end of this video: Road tripping: All these cities are starting to look the same 😶
Indiana/Illinois
Missouri
St. Louis, MO
Kansas City, MO
Incredible coffee shop in Kansas City (Messenger Coffee Co. + Ibis Bakery). Amazing vibes, 3 floors, open-air bakery area with fresh baked goods on the ground floor. 10/10.
Kansas
Deerfield, KS
I stopped by my cousin again on the farm to say hi! (A Wild Week On The Road: From South Dakota’s Hidden Gems To Life On A Kansas Farm, July 16th, 2023)
Colorado
I didn’t realize there was more nothingness out here in eastern Colorado than in Kansas. Wow!
Denver, CO
We are BACK! Wow it feels kinda weird to be back. This is my first time in Denver without any ties (apartment, stuff in storage, etc.), just my van and me.
This isn’t my final destination but I’ve got a couple things to do here before the more final-ish destination. As I type that I realize that no destination is ever really final with this lifestyle 🤷♂️
Thoughts From The Week
The Early Settler
Something I thought about as I drove across the U.S. this week was what it might’ve felt like to be one of the early settlers that crossed the U.S. (I spoke about this in the video that goes live today Sunday September 8th, 2024).
Watching the landscapes change from green forests to progressively more and more flat and dry, to all of a sudden coming up to this huge mountain range. I just think that would’ve been so cool and mind blowing to see for the first time. The big advantage I get is doing this in a week, but I can’t imagine how many months and how difficult it would’ve been to do by foot/horse-and-carriage.
I think there’s something about that feeling of experiencing things for the first time and I thought this was an interesting frame that brought back some of that “wow” to many landscapes that I’ve seen before.
Feeling The Growth
I had a conversation with a friend this week and we talked about growth and evolving. It was through that conversation, talking about new perspectives I had, things that had changed since our last conversation, and what we were up to, that I was able to FEEL how much I’ve been growing lately.
I spoke about this in this video: I can FEEL the growth from this chapter of life
It’s been rewarding having these glimpses to past mindsets and perspectives and seeing how I’ve been evolving.
And what’s been even cooler than that is the fact that this was literally the first bullet point I wrote about when I decided to get back on YouTube posting daily videos back in November 2023 (The Week Of Sweaty Workouts, Deep Talks, And Morning Videos, November 19th, 2023). I wanted to capture this growth in real time for my future self.
Documenting this period of my life – I feel the most intentional I’ve ever felt and I feel like I’m making so much progress every week. I can really envision my future self right now. I can hear him saying, “you really didn’t capture any videos of the greatest transformation of your entire life? Like really? I wish you had recorded yourself more. I want to see the transformation, not just read about it.” So, I want to attempt to capture this so I can look back on the growth and transformation.
What’s Next?
🌲? 👀