year 30

30 was a year of side quests, learning new skills, building better relationships, and holding gratitude for the family, friends, and experiences i have. mostly unfiltered.

minor flex while i write this as i am sitting in bed, watching the sun rise in my river view room here in beautiful lisbon, portugal. to top it off, i'm here to celebrate the beautiful union of two of my wonderful friends, can life get any better?

now that i'm 31, i've been wanting to reflect on my 30th year because it has been... different. i started my 30s by celebrating and fundraising over $2.5k for the bc children's hospital foundation (come check it here), immediately driving down to california to see my very pregnant best friend, and then seeing one of my favourite djs (baynk) at a pool party in san francisco. all within 72 hrs. (by the way, 31 has also been crazy so far so i guess birthday weekends we just send it like at john summit experts only at the gorge 2026).

if you don't know me (which i honestly think only my friends know about this unless you google me), i have always liked living in the moment, experiencing new things, and learning new skills. so why not take that to the extreme in year 30 and share a couple of lessons i've learned along the way.

i started 30 employed but ended 30 by opening and running a brick and morter laundry service, starting a master's program in computer science, quitting my job, starting and completing a 6 month farm program, travelled to the philippines, china, and germany for fun and work, joined a volleyball league, started pickleball, built and shipped a counter-drone system to compete at a national defence competition, and commissioned from sergeant to an army officer with my regiment. most of this has not contributed positively to my bank account but i hope will build out the weapon that is my brain (haha) and in building the best version of myself everyday. i've had phenomenal moments and extremely frustrating moments but i can genuinely say i have cherished every single thing i've learned along the way and am happy.

so here are my top 3 learnings:

be grateful

i cannot stress how grateful i am for the support network of my family and friends in the endeavours that i have chosen to partake it. the patience it must take to deal with my bullshit or lack of communication is so impressive. (i have 100+ unread messages combined in my texts and various messaging apps, which is a poor reflection of me obviously and i will own that!)

honestly, it's humbling because everyone has shit going on, so for anyone to even hold the time and space for me is more than enough. for me, being grateful for my relationships, my body and mind, and my resources has led me to be super content and being unhinged (megamind maxxing).

being unhinged is the new hot topic and i agree we should all be more unhinged but kind! i have found being able to find happiness or gratitude with what i have has unlocked barriers of "you can't do this" or "you don't have enough time or money" because money will always come back if you are able-bodied and persist but time will not so do it now. i wholly acknowledge i come from some bit of privilege but humility does go a long way and having grit beats having all the money in the world because you'll make it back, eventually.

you can really spend time doing everything you want because you're not restricted by a perceived mental block. yes time is limited and yes you won't get to do everything but appreciating what you can do will let you prioritize and move into the next phase of your mission. so in the wise words of jocko willink, "get after it".

and don't forget, appreciate and make time for your homies because they have shit going on too.

full sends only

this is the one of the key quotes that i will take to my grave. i'm not sure how much explaining needs to happen here but literally just fucking send it. *obviously without doing harm to others or yourself (ideally).

if you've gotten through lesson one above, i hope you start seeing that life is too short to just do the bare minimum in any facet of your life. yes we have bills to pay and situations we live in, but if you can send it in some way or another, just do it. go outside of your comfort zone in the moment, try that new flavour of ice cream, go and scream at the world at the top of your lungs if that's what gives you energy.

while we won't all get the glory or become the person who changes the world, you should live your life like you're the main character because you are.

all problems are people problems

this is not a new concept and i heard it for the very first time on lenny's podcast with andrew wilkinson paraphrasing "...there are no problems. There is only people problems."

i did learn this lesson the hard way. whether that is certain people working for their own agenda instead of the collective good or the business partner who skipped town, the common denominator always seems to be the people involved. yes the systems in place can suck but that's also because the people who put them in place might have also sucked and that still makes it a people problem.

how do you solve for this? i honestly don't think you can. unless we, as humanity, evolve to a level of collectivism and understanding that serves a greater purpose than our limited needs on maslo's hierarchy.

anyways, i have found you can mitigate people problems in the following ways (just in my experience):

1. be so good at your job that you are unassailable (unrealistic but we all try).
2. find what is wrong: is it the system, is it the person or is it the system that put the person in place? once you find that out, you'll have clarity on how to react and respond to a problem.
3. can you control the situation? in the 3 rings of control, you can either control something directly (ie your behaviour, how you communicate, etc), you can influence something (make a political move), or something is completely outside of your control (you're shit out of luck). when you realize that you cannot control someone else's behaviour completely, you'll realize the best thing you can do, is just do the best you can do (back to point 1).

so those are just a couple of the lessons i've really leaned in for the last year, there are so many more but we'll start slowly whittling away at them i'm sure.

anyways, i'm starting to get hungry and impatient for my first pastel de nata of the day so i will leave this first blog post with the following quote.

“i need a room full of mirrors so i can be surrounded by winners" - kanye west on twitter 31 oct 2014

thanks for reading. say hello at hello@adeleka.ca.