THE JRNY 016 - What Has Been Troubling Me
Hey Reader 👋 ,
The newsletter you're currently reading is a bit different because this is normally a unidirectional transaction. I write my newsletter, you read it and that's it; it ends there.
This time, I am actively asking you to reply; thus creating a bidirectional transaction.
The reason for that is that I need advice and who else better to ask than the people who have been following me since the beginning of my journey.
This is going to be the messiest shit ever because my thoughts are literally a bowl of spaghetti right now so bare with me.
Let's go.
The Setup
Situation Uno
Bro, I don't know why because I know that I don't want to work at a 9 to 5 my whole life. There's just something about being at my desk, working for somebody, always having to clock-in 8 hours per day or having to take precious vacation time whenever I feel burned out that doesn't sit right with me. This might be the part of me that doesn't want to look back at my life when I'm about to die and say to myself "wow, is this all I did?" and then die. How depressing would that be.
And don't get me wrong, I am actually enjoying my work at the moment, the team is nice, the work environment is pretty interesting, but there's something inside me that wants MORE.
With that being said, this means that I eventually need an exit plan and maybe school brainwashed me too much, but I need to know what that exit plan is, I need to know what I'll be working on in the next 2-5 years. At least, that's how I feel.
Okay, while writing this, I realized that what I need, in general, are goals that will amount to something. I honestly feel like I haven't done anything productive in the last 3-4 years of my life and I don't want this to happen with the next 3-5.
I'm going to switch subjects now and come back to the exit plan later.
Situation Dos
I've always always always wanted to inspire people to be better. Whether it be through my newsletters, my youtube videos or whatever ideas I had, it was always to make people better or inspire them. I thought of countless ideas how to make people better, but I recently realized that the best way to inspire people is simply to focus on myself.
Because when I focus on becoming the "best version of myself", that's when people who are in similar situation as me as going to be able to say "holy shit, if that person can do it, then I can probably do it to".
But I am far from being the "best version of myself". In fact, speaking objectively, in the state that I am in right now, I am not someone that I'd find inspiring. I wouldn't want to be around myself, follow myself on social media or lookup to myself. I'm not saying this in a negative way like "ew, get away from me" or "omg, you follow this person? ew", but more like I'm not "omg, I want to be this person" or "holyshit, this person inspires me so much".
This concludes situation dos, I want to focus on becoming the best version of myself especially mentally.
The Entanglement
I am a man of single task focus. What that means is that I operate most efficiently when I have a single task at hand and my sole goal is to complete that task. This is one of the reasons why I excelled in school and also why I was in a better mental space during those years (I think).
My task was to graduate with high grades. Whatever else was going on in my life, I didn't care much. If I had free time, I could binge 3 days of anime straight. If I wanted to hangout with friends, I could. If I wanted to procrastinate an assignment, I could. But when that due date was approaching or when it was final exams period, it was grind time and I'd be in the library all fucking day baby. Plus, the best part of it all was that there was an end period for everything. Assignment due dates, last exam before a long vacation and also a graduation date !
Now in my post-university life, it's fucking hard having a single task to focus on. There's a billion things to focus on and my caveman brain just can't handle it.
Here's the main entanglement.
As I said before, I want to focus on being the "best version of myself". This concretely means working on my mentality such as having more self-confidence, being more optimistic, not getting angry as often, etc. and also doing things that I genuinely enjoy. One such thing, as I've learned recently, is playing sports (or just exercising in general).
The problem is that focusing on that does nothing for my goal of having an exit plan. Yes, remember my exit plan? Quitting my normal job. Where does this fit in the picture? I don't fucking know and that's the problem.
Like what if I focus on myself for 3 years and then 3 years later, I'm like "well, I still don't know how to monetize playing sports with friends and watching anime -nervous laughter-".
Finally, the last part of the equation is that I think a potential solution to my problems lie in learning a new skill or rather mastering a skill. A useful skill will easily translate to an exit plan (most likely by freelancing or starting a company depending on the skill) and is also a way of "being the best version of myself". A skill would also fit really nicely in my "single task focus" mentality. The big problem here is, of course, what skill should I learn? I guess I'd also want it to be enjoyable because if it's enjoyable then I can become more proficient at it which in turn increases my probability of freelancing/starting a company.
Alright 2 last things to add.
To add to the "learn a skill" text, I also suffer heavily from "grass is always greener" syndrome. When things get a little rough, I love looking at other things and being like "omg, that looks so much more awesome than what I'm currently doing" and start to doubt myself. That is an additional reason why I think it's important to like the skill that I might learn.
The last thing I want to add is that I'm not even sure if learning a skill is the right path. I've listened to a couple of podcasts with successful people and I feel like a lot of them don't have any hard skills. They're just really good business people with a great mind who are able to rally people around them (well, I guess that IS a skill, but a lot less tangible than what I had in mind).
The Ask
That's it for me.
As I said, I would really appreciate it if you would reply with your thoughts or if not, feel free to you know, message me or send me an email if you prefer talking webcam to webcam.
Thanks for reading.
PEACE.
Hey you ! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post.
If you like something in the article or simply want to discuss with me or give me some constructive feedback, feel free to email me @ onlythetruenjhs@gmail.com
We'll talk more next time and until then, don't forget to enjoy your life! ✌️
— Nicholas