I recently finished my second month here in Las Vegas. As I mentioned before it has really exceeded my expectations for somewhere to live. I’ve lived in several suburban places in my life: Michigan where I grew up, Boulder, Salt Lake City suburbs, Mountain View (Silicon Valley), and a town in the south island of New Zealand. I have fond memories of all of those places, but I do remember being bored. It’s not a bad thing; you learn to live with it and integrate it into your life. It’s been weird but I’ve never had a day being bored in suburban Las Vegas, and if anything I continue to accumulate more things that I’m looking forward to doing here in the future.
I’m fortunate that my neighborhood has an almost exactly equal distance commute to several good coffee shops, grocery stores, gyms, and nature. I don’t have to drive past a good coffee shop that’s 5 minutes away just to go somewhere different that’s 20 minutes because there’s so much within a 7 minute radius of my place. I don’t go to the Vegas Strip except when there are visitors or a special reason, but this also makes that area a treat for me.
My girlfriend and I have friends in different circles that we see on a weekly basis, and we went to an early Halloween party a few weeks before the day itself which we spent handing out candy. I also started getting into Pickleball with people at the gym (another source of easy and fun socializing) which has been addictive and fun.
Outside of a weekly hike and post-work pickleball and socializing, I’ve been pretty productive with my trading work throughout the week. There’s so many micro ups and downs with research, maintaining things that are running, etc. but I feel good with how things are progressing and I’ve been able to come to the realization that I’ll have infinite ideas, and I don’t have to perpetually feel like I need to have “just a few more things done and then I can start living my life”. The past few years I honestly let things slide somewhat like my sleep, health, and in general staying on top of life things due to thinking there was a magical end to my trading work that I’d be able to rest, and catch up on everything when I was done. There has been micro-periods of that, but ultimately as long as I’m working on trading it’s going to be a consistent flow of work that I can make progress on during a regular work week, and not need to go on these indefinite seven-day work binges.
At night when we have time I watch film and television with my girlfriend and cat, and then I read a bit before bed. We’re still working through a lot of things on Hulu as we haven’t had access the last few years living abroad, and wanted to list some of my favorites besides “Devs” and “Fargo”.
We watched a series called “Mr Inbetween” that I was really unsure about due to it being Australian and a lack of reviews, but ended up loving. It has violence and some sadness in nearly every episode, but the comedy and struggle to be a better person for the people you love really tie it together. I’m a sucker for the old school tough-guy genre, but this one has more emotions and feels.
Another good series was “A Murder at the End of the World”. The creative duo of Zal and Brit Marling is one of my favorites, and I realized whatever aspects/character of their series that I don’t particularly care for, they often really go for it trying to incorporate weird and uncomfortable things. They also have lush locations/beautiful houses that make their worlds so enjoyable to experience outside of just the story.
I have some local Thanksgiving plans in a few weeks, but otherwise I plan to work, improve my physical health, and enjoy life here in Las Vegas this month.
Leaving you with a picture from a hike yesterday at a park called Valley of Fire and one of my cat who likes to keep me company if I take a post-work nap.
Andrew Manser 
❤️🎬😎🎬❤️