My First Bike Build

I always felt like something was missing when riding my road bike. Constantly thinking about what gear to be in zapped the enjoyment out of riding. Gears were a distraction. Riding a fixed bike piqued my interest because you only get one gear. Yes, it created more challenges but that excited me.

The simplicity of a fixed bike led me to want to build one myself. Knowing jack shit about bike maintenance, I learned everything using this thing called the internet. I did run into road blocks but still came out with a bike that didn’t fall apart when I rode it!

Riding fixed for a couple of months now, I enjoy it quite a bit. One thing I realized is that riding fixed is a metaphor for life: it’s not the most optimal method, it’ll test your patience, and you’ll run into adversity, but if you make it through to the end, you’ll grow from it.

spend less, work less

---

I worked a lot in my 20’s making a good chunk of money. As a result, I spent frivolously. Money was going out faster than it was coming: a 7th pair of shoes here, an iPad 2 there. Society taught me that buying things would make me happy. It didn’t. All it did was force me to work myself into the ground, setting off a vicious chain reaction:

I lived in LA for 6 years and all I remember is working. Work was my life.

As I entered my 30’s I didn’t want work to consume the rest of my life. I wanted to become less dependent on work and the only way to do that was to cut down on the hand that feeds that dependency: overspending.

You don’t buy things with money, you buy things with hours of your life.

Debt is insidious. It’s debilitating, yet socially acceptable, which makes cutting down on overspending a challenge. The strategy that helps me the most is asking myself two questions before I buy something:

Am I willing to sacrifice hours of my life to buy this?

Time is our most valuable asset. Sacrificing life to work should only be reserved for necessities.

What is the real reason why I want this?

This requires courage as what you may find can be ugly. For me, I realized that I spent frivolously because I felt insecure and unhappy. I thought buying things could fix that, but I now know material possessions can’t fix this and never will. Being brave enough to accept this reality is the trump card I use to nix overspending.

Asking myself these questions helps me avoid destructive spending. Of course, I’m not perfect and I do splurge sometimes, but it’s far more under control now.

Thanks to less spending, I’m able to work half as much, while still making enough to live comfortably. This has opened up so much time for me to focus on the most important things in life: health and relationships.

The less you spend, the more you live.

a simple proposal

---

a simple proposal from Philip Thangsombat on Vimeo.

Paulina and I knew we wanted to marry each other for a couple years now. Leaving the proposal as the only element of surprise I could work with.

I wanted the proposal to be so simple and normal that she wouldn’t expect it. That’s all that mattered.

So the day before Labor Day we went to our favorite walking spot along Lake Washington, set up my camera, and took some funny photos like we normally do.

The rest is history.