Usamah Maphumulo

💡 Assignments due. Projects running. Strategies being tested. And somehow I have to keep all of it moving at once. An honest look at what it actually takes to manage a degree and a freelance career simultaneously without either falling apart. I am writing this on a Sunday, and I cannot stop thinking about the […]

💡 Some weeks the work is exciting. Some weeks it is just work. The ones who last are the ones who can’t tell the difference. The psychology of staying consistent across multiple pursuits when none of them are paying off yet. I have been finding it hard to write recently. And before you assume there

A Foucault podcast, a seminar on truck surveillance, a scene from Suits, and a quote from Dan Koe all walked into the same week. And somehow they all said the same thing. Three years ago I started learning digital marketing. That became web development. Web development became web design. Web design became data analytics and

An industry visit, a conversation with a BI analyst who spent his whole career in finance, and the realisation that shallow insights aren’t a data problem — they’re a domain problem. This week we had an industry visit. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Industry visits have a way of feeling like a field

Second year. Two modules on analytics. And I’m sitting in class learning the name of something I’ve been doing by instinct for a year. The self-taught vs classroom contrast — theory vs muscle memory, corporate prep vs freelance reality. I knew this was coming. When I decided to teach myself data analytics in my first

💡 Posting every day for six months and getting nothing isn’t a consistency problem. It’s a quality problem disguised as one. I’m unpacking why consistency advice drives me insane and what I’ve actually found to be more honest and more useful. I missed last week. Didn’t post. Didn’t publish. And I’m not going to pretend

First networking event of the year, a perfect person to speak to, and I blew it. Plus, why I’m glad I didn’t finish my to-do list this week. For the first time this year, I went to a networking event. Not as a web developer. As an e-commerce analyst. And I wanted to show up

  It’s been about two months since I decided to go at this full time as an e-commerce analyst. And the first place I went, like most people, was Upwork. Here’s the thing though. I know I’m not fully ready. I know that. But I still find myself on the platform every single day, scrolling

Everyone’s stacking certificates. Nobody’s asking the right questions.   I’ve been on LinkedIn again. I know, I know. I have this thing with LinkedIn where I can’t fully leave it but I can’t fully enjoy it either. There are people on there worth knowing — genuinely interesting, doing real work, willing to have a real

I’m pulling back the curtain on my first real months as a freelance data analyst — the cold emails, the silence, and why I kept going anyway.   It’s been about 6 months since I moved from web development to data analytics. And wow. It’s been a rollercoaster. I feel as if nothing I do