Hey y’all 👋🏼 I hope you’ve been enjoying Sana’s Notes so far, if there is anything you’d like to hear about from me, just hit the Reply button and let me know! I hope you enjoy this week’s catch-up.

— Sana Tabassum

🍎 food for thought

I graduated last week!!!! 🥺 That was a big life moment ticked off the list. I don’t really know where I’m headed next in my career, but I’m almost running on a high after closing this chapter. It was really great to be back in Greenwich, seeing my friends and peers and just taking a moment (or the entire day) to celebrate our achievements.

I’m still slowly settling into my new freelance role which comes with its ups and downs 🤷🏻‍♀️ Meanwhile, the idea of pursuing something in the architecture industry has been at the far back of my mind. Working in the creator economy, especially on a freelance basis has taught me a few things.

What I’ve learned 👇🏼

• I’m built for flexible working. Working at a fully remote company has been amazing for an introvert like me. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of team socials and daily interaction but this balance is definitely my cup of tea 🍵 I think more and more younger people are starting to feel this way in recent years. Which do you prefer?

• Working for others can sometimes fuel your own fire 🔥. Even after working all day, I still get the itch to work on my own projects and use what I’ve been doing at work to improve my own stuff. Some people might call this crazy, but I honestly love it!

• Working in the creator economy PAYS WELL 👀. This simply reinforces the fact that the architecture profession is severely underpaid, which is part of the reason holding me back from applying actively to jobs. It’s still in progress but I’m not in any hurry. I kind of want to save up first and see where this side of my skills takes me.

🍗 content nuggets

I believe this ‘Golden’ tip has been taken from Ali Abdaal’s PTYA course, who is then referencing Peter McKinnon, another great creator you should check out. To cut it even shorter than 2 minutes, he suggests an easy-to-ship format called Two Minute Tuesdays.

The :scale YouTube channel has been collecting a little dust because I’ve been trying to create the perfect next video. But there is no such this as perfect is there. That’s why I’m thinking of bringing back Archi Diaries, but as small vlogs documenting what I get up to as a creator during the week. The frictionless process of simply filming and uploading was something I really enjoyed, so perhaps it’s time to experiment with this format again.

My lovely, talented friend, Daniel Dehghani is back with another awesome video! In the video he speaks about the rise of Threads, how this has created an entirely new space and the fine lines between inspiration and imitation 😉

🦋 casual magic

I love a good movie so it was a no-brainer that I went all in on ‘Barbenheimer’ and watched both Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back 🍿 Not sure if I was just tired from spending all day in the cinema but both films were just alright. Seeing the marketing magic the Barbie team have done, I was expecting more but it was a good one-time watch.

I especially loved the set and costume design 👏🏼 I can definitely see the hype about Oppenheimer, the sound design was unreal and although I felt some scenes were unnecessary, I think it was a great piece of storytelling. I think Cillian Murphy shines in a role like this and the commitment to the role is obvious.

🔥 on the back burner

Since there aren’t many of y’all here (yet), I thought I’d share a crazy little project that has been in the works for some time. I’m writing a book 🙊 Full details to come in the next few months, but I submitted the first book proposal this week and I’m feeling really good about it!

That’s all from me this week. It’s been a reaaaaally long Wednesday and I can’t wait to get into bed.

— Sana x