Welcome!
About the Journey
For A Better Monday presented itself as an opportunity I was willing to take after a job loss in early 2016. My goal was to change my lifestyle and eventually my life altogether. I thought I should start from the very core, and decided to regenerate my body first. I thought if I happened to be successful with my objective, the rest will follow naturally. It has been a fantastic journey so far (Feb 2018), and in the bigger scope of things, I feel in my flesh and mind that I have made great progress. It has not always been easy. Since it’s an adventure, unexpected challenges arise once in a while. In many occasions I had to take a step back in order to be able to move forward later on. If you want to read about how everything started check out my first journal entry.
If you are interested about the tools I have been using to make this journey possible, make sure to check out my page with all the starting points. Starting points in a metaphorical way could be defined as seeds for change. These seeds once planted can blossom into an amazing experience, which could help any of us to better our current physical and mental situation. If you’d like to know in more detail what have been happening to me as I have been progressing since I’ve planted these seeds, here’s a link to all my journal entries.
About Me
My name is Ali, I am 42 years old as of July 2017. My main passion in life is to make music. From the early 90’s to 2011 I actively played in bands as a bass player. Since 2011 I haven’t been playing with other musicians, but I have been pursuing my solo recording adventure: Black Sea Storm. Here are a list of the bands I played in: Swoan, Bosom of the Urgent West, Channing Cope, Kenseth Thibideau Band (as a stage musician).
In the late 90s I purchased my first modem and was introduced to internet 1.0. As for many of us, having access to the web changed my life too. The most important impact it did on me, other than increasing the minuscule geeky neuron population of my brain; it got me into reading way more than I used to. At that point in time I had been mostly reading comics and school books. For some reason as a child I did not like to read in French too much, thus I wasn’t that much into reading. Internet allowed me to have access to websites in Turkish and American English. My English was very poor and my Spanish was nonexistent back then. Today in 2018 I can proudly call myself a quadrilingual human being. Living abroad and accessing information through internet definitely helped me in learning new languages.
In September 1999 I moved to the United States, and stayed there over a decade. During my stay in the US, other than playing in bands, I was able to attend college, learn American English, and later on Spanish. After three years accumulating credits in San Diego City College, I was able to transfer to UCSD and enroll into a major called ICAM (Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major). The actual major was bringing together several passions of mine. I truly enjoyed the six years I’ve spent at San Diego City College and UCSD as a student. While living in the United States, I mostly worked in Coffee Shops and Restaurants. A year after graduation I was offered an opportunity to manage a mid-size Mexican restaurant and a Tequila bar.
March of 2011 I returned to Switzerland and started to work for a software company specialized in foreign language learning. After working five years for the company, I lost my job due to economical reasons the company was going through. This gave me the opportunity to start this journey: An attempt for a healthier living that I called For A Better Monday. The actual name of the blog comes from a song title of my former band Channing Cope.
After a year of being unemployed and earning several professional certificates in IT and Project Management, I decided to leave Switzerland and move to Argentina to start my life all over again. Since me moving to the US in 1999 was the very best thing that ever happened to me, I decided to take a second plunge into the unknown, and see if a man can be extremely lucky twice in a lifetime.
As of February 2018 it has been over a year I’ve been living in Buenos Aires. I am still alive, and thank to this beautiful city and For A Better Monday, I am feeling better than I ever felt before. I am approaching the two year mark since I have started to introduce change in order to be a healthier and happier person, yet it feels like the real adventure is just about to start, and the best part of my life is still to come.
Why For A Better Monday?
My main motivation behind initiating this journey isn’t to become healthier for the sake of just feeling good. What motivates me is to be able to perform better physically and mentally, so I can dedicate my energy to the projects that matter to me the most. I want to look forward to Mondays and all the other days of the week to get work done and enjoy life to its fullest. I am hoping that what I have been learning on this journey can be relevant to others. If For A Better Monday can be an inspiration to initiate similar journeys around the world, my main goal in making this adventure public will be reached.
I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I would like to make it very clear that I am only sharing my own experience on this website, and have no intention to give any specific advice on health. Please read the disclaimer section for more information.