I voiced my feelings and shaped them into words in my first ever blog post. I thought this would give me a subtle boost to rekindle my motivation to do something about it and it has, just not enough. I should have been smarter than to expect it would be that easy, otherwise the world would be full of rainbows and unicorns that fart pink butterflies. But I acknowledge that after having so many parts of my life under my control, this isn’t the case now (part of growing up I suppose is losing control of many of the things around you).
This however, is something I can control; to sit myself down in front of a keyboard and start typing, this is something I should be able to push myself to do.
Okay, what’s next?
Part of the things I lost control over is my career, no matter how successful -and now that I think about it, ephemeral- it is. For a decade now I have been making a living by solving problems. And the best way to solve a problem is by identifying the root causes before coming up with solutions. For example, when your car is overheating you will be tempted to immediately start thinking the coolant tank needs to be topped up, only this will not help you notice the leak in the radiator. That thinking of solutions before identifying the actual cause of the problem.
So what now?
Thinking back at what I lost, I’m more and more convinced that what is lost is not only my need to be creative but it’s more the want to do things creatively.
Somewhere along the line I simply started to think in terms of ‘good-enough’ rather than ‘this needs to be done in a way that has fingerprints of my individual personality all over it’, which is the way I used to do things. At some point I started cooking the most repetitively generic (safe) recipes instead of adding a wild new ingredient each time just to see what’ll happen, or settling for the first shot of a photo even if it’s the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen in a while, not caring about lighting or the quality of the shot. Just settling for the bare minimum is something very foreign to me. It’s scary how something this revolting creeps up on you, and only realizing it when it’s embedded too deep into your norm. When shaking it away will undoubtedly take off a part of you with it.
What caused this? Is it because I got too busy I no longer had time to enjoy doing things my way? Or has the scope of my responsibility increased so much and my list of priorities got too unmanageable that it became a wide net with too many strands that needs attention to the point where “getting them done” was the only objective, regardless of how they’re done. I may be rambling, but I know the answer falls between the long list of external factors that are racing through my mind when I try to rationalize it and another competing array of internal doubts, I’m pretty sure it’s an amalgamation of both that will be too much work to unpack here. The idea of having self-doubt doesn’t sit well with me though.
So what am I doing here? I need to take steps to move forward right? Because the longer I drag this microscope into my self reflection the longer I’ll just get frustrated and the longer it’ll take me to eventually moving forward, and let’s face it I can just spend all day convincing myself where I am today is because of whatever this and that is, and that’s not I want interests me.
I just need to set some basic ground rules first:
- Whatever I end up deciding is not final. I can decide to pack my bags now and go climb a mountain for the thrill, and the next day I decide against it, and I accept that.
- Whatever I end up creating will not be perfect, this is a nasty one.
- Whatever I end up becoming can not be at the expense of my loved ones.