Get a life. A real life.
Why I have been MIA for 2026 so far
As promised in my last email, here’s why I have been missing in action for 2026 so far.
In 2023, my son was born. It was my first major life event. In the following year, I experienced a major death event: I lost my aunt, who was like a mother to me. Life and death, in a year. At the end of that year, 2024, I sat down and wrote my annual review, as I had always done for the previous seven years. In that review, I wrote about memento mori and living more intentionally. I subsequently published a monthly recap to keep myself in check. Yet, I found myself slipping. As much as I tried to “live intentionally”, I was still doing the same things as before and just going through the motion in life.
Perhaps the universe decided I needed a harder shove. At the start of this year, within a week, I welcomed my daughter and almost lost my wife (to postpartum hemorrhage). How fragile is life! Was I paying attention to what actually matters? This shove gave me courage to make decisions that pivoted my life. I sold my equity in Pebblely back to the company, stayed home to look after my daughter, and spent a lot of time with my wife. After half a year of reflection and experimentation, I’m glad to report I think I’m onto something.
And, hence, this newsletter. From now on, I aim to send you a weekly email, updating you about my life and projects. I have dreamed up a master plan. If it works, I can finally be present with my family, run a software business, and write altogether. It has been a long time, perhaps years, since I felt this excited. What’s telling is that I don’t know if my grand plan would work, yet I wake up every day wanting to work on it. And this excitement, I think, is half the battle won.
For many years, I hesitated writing about my life because I never found it interesting. It is just what it is. But I realized I was just not attentive enough. Looking back, my life has been filled with so much adventure:
I was working at an all-remote company before remote work was a thing. My parents wondered if I actually had a job until COVID happened.
I grew Yeti Distro, a paid newsletter about tech companies’ distribution strategies and my work at Buffer, to $150 monthly recurring revenue. This was when I made my first dollar from the internet, and I still kept the Stripe notification email.
I was training to join the Singapore national triathlon team while working full-time. I never made it, and life took over.
There are many more stories like these, if only I had looked more closely.
But, more importantly, interesting living doesn’t require grand gestures, just full engagement with the ordinary days. In A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Anna Quindlen shared:
“I never think of my life, or my world, in any big cosmic way. I think of it in all its small component parts: the snowdrops, the daffodils; the feeling of one of my kids sitting close beside me on the couch; the way my husband looks when he reads with the lamp behind him; fettuccine Alfredo, fudge; Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice. Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.”
She put it simply, “get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.”
Or as Himmel the Hero said in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, when his party was stuck indoors on a rainy day, “adventures are made up of ordinary, shitty days like these.”
So, what exactly am I doing?
I’m typing this in my living room as my sick daughter is napping in her room (which used to be my study) while Claude Code is editing my code. This quite sums it up. I’m building a software business and writing newsletters and library pages while parenting two children with my wife and rebuilding my fitness. I’m also learning Japanese and learning to read books slowly. Piano is next.
Just a heads up, there will be a lot of AI. Like Master Qifrey in Witch Hat Atelier said, “If you feel that restless urgency and want to learn [magic] quickly, the best thing you can do is to make it a part of your life. There’s no better teacher than living itself.” While many people seem worried AI would replace them, I’m exploring how I can use AI can reshape life and work as we know it. I haven’t found the perfect balance but having the freedom to find a balance is such a blessing.
If all these sound like what you are looking for, stick around. Or even drop me a reply!
In my coming emails, I’ll be sharing about...
why I left social media
how working with Claude Code has been very similar to working with my technical cofounder SK
how I used Claude to help me build a 12-week fitness program and guide me along
and more
I can’t wait to share them with you.
Talk soon.
Alfred
Oh, by the way, I realized I still own the domain, founderdads.club. I didn’t have time to turn it into a community for the past two years but it now feels like a suitable project to take on. I’d love to have a place to chat about parenting, business, software, and AI. Anyone else? :)
From my library
A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen (Quotes)
AI and automation are all cool and stuff. But some things are more useful when done by hand. I chose to type out A Short Guide to a Happy Life so that I will remember it better. Due to copyrights, I can’t publish the full piece, so this library page contains my favorite quotes.
Similarly, I type out the new Japanese words I learned every week to practice pronouncing the words (on top of doing Duolingo every day).
AI coding, context, and usage limit
I have been hitting Claude’s 5-hour session usage limit faster and faster. Here are some things I’m trying to squeeze more out of my subscription.
Around the web
Something is very wrong with modern longevity science by Dhruv Khullar
Okinawans, one of the Blue Zone folks, live long lives not because they lead a special lifestyle but because they likely reported older ages to get postwar benefits. Blue Zones turned out to be more of a business venture than a scientific health study. Instead of chasing longevity secrets, I just try to exercise every day, cook more, spend time with my loved ones, and pursue my interests.
There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate by Cal Newport
A meta-analysis released last fall showed that consuming short-form video content, as delivered by apps like TikTok and Instagram, is associated with poorer cognition and reduced attention
Cal Newport suggest we read and write more to build our cognitive fitness (which I’m doing a lot more nowadays if you can tell!) I quit social media earlier this year because I finally admitted it does more harm than good to me. I sometimes miss the latest news but the important ones would always reach me eventually. I’m even planning to grow my software business without it. Can I? I’ll let you know how it goes.
The best financial advice I can give you is to sell your car by Hanna Horvath
In Singapore, a 10-year certificate to own a car, which does not include the car, is about $100,000 USD. Cars are so expensive that my wife and I have hesitated for many years, even though we can afford one and it’d be much for convenient when commuting with our kids. But not having a car has also helped force us to slow down. Wait for the bus, enjoy the scenery, chit chat along the way.
fettuccine Alfredo