Time is not unlimited. It’s the most precious resource on the planet, and it’s so precious that once it’s lost, it is lost forever. Unfortunately for me, I am very aware of this fact. I look around at my life with every passing year and think, “what the hell am I really doing with my life?” Sometimes I’m on track, but most times I’m making progress but just not enough by my standards.
When the clock struck 30, everything changed for me. Suddenly, I’m almost out of time. I feel like I’m approaching the end of the journey, whereas for others, they’ve only just begun. It doesn’t help that I hit 30 in the middle of the pandemic, with life suspended in a weird form of zero-gravity state indefinitely. The pandemic affected everyone, but I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, it hit me in a very different way. And now that we’re slowly being released from lockdowns, I’m imploding.
In 2019, I quit my job and opened my marketing business. There wasn’t really a plan, per say, since it wasn’t opened to scale and make millions; it was simply opened to support my life and lifestyle. I didn’t want a big thing for myself; enough to pay the bills, travel a bit and do what I liked. I’m low maintenance in general (except when I obsess over something Gucci/Versace/Louboutin), so it’s not an impossible task.
The never ending crisis of my life: is the work that I’m doing meaningful?
I’ve always been a spirited, wild thing, that just wanted to help people and change the world. Always full of big ideas and hopes bigger than world domination, as a child and an adult, I wanted to make an impact in the world large enough to reverberate positive change. Social media came about and the whole world changed, but society didn’t become more positive, it became a toxic place to exist, and that toxicity rubbed off in ways I was yet to uncover. It did impact my career, and for five years I worked in an industry I grew to hate on a level so badly that it drove me into depression.
So I quit social, not just personally, but professionally too. I stopped offering the service because I didn’t align with what the platforms grew into and what was allowed to fester and persist. Racism and homophobia were the tip of the iceberg; social media became a cesspool of toxicity and cancel culture. And I wanted out.
Being someone with such lofty ideals and hope for the world is hard. I can see potential in people and then watch them waste away. And in the last two years, I have done exactly that, wasted and squandered the little time I have binge watching Netflix and feeling sorry for myself because my life isn’t what I really want it to be. Many of us can relate to this, but we’re all flawed and sometimes, we will just make small moves to pacify the feeling of progress but not make much progress at all.
Change shifts the dynamics
Part of the problem is how much I’ve changed in the last few years and the distance between who I was and who I am has created a chasm in my focus and drive. If there was anyone who could be considered the most tough on themselves, it has to be me. Nothing I do is good enough for myself; there is always room for improvement and there is always room for more. It’s a toxic drive to eliminate complacency and keep pushing for better. Now this can be a very powerful tool, or it can be incredibly destructive. I got myself into a depressive “I can’t be bothered” rut, just wanting to exist and not do anything. Text book clinical depression right here. While I can say that we have all got a bit of this following a pandemic, there are no excuses for me, because I could have used that pandemic time to write another book, not drown in feels.
Realignment is tough
The hardest question I have had to answer to myself is “what do I want from my life” as it’s become so out of focus that the easy answer is, “I don’t know.” But the thing is, I do know. I’ve always known. But saying the words means that I have to put my head down and work, not just flail my arms about and feign defeat. Realignment is what’s required.
Most people will go through their life and only ask themselves what they are doing once – and that’s the catalyst for a mid-life crisis, where people get to a certain point in their hamster wheel and realise that they have wasted twenty years doing something they hate doing. I’m much more extreme – I do this every year. Some years I don’t achieve my goals because I was genuinely busy, like 2019. 2020, however, was a blur of laziness, lifestyle changes, depression, low energy efforts, internal complaining and unproductivity. 2021 should have been a massive boost of energy, but 2020 and a mix of “what am I doing with my life” seemed to blur the first half, with the second half looking more hopeful. But that does tend to happen because the existential time-slipping crisis happens for my birthday, which is in June.
So, I’ve looked at the list of things that I want to do with my life, what impact I want to have on the world, and how I can possibly make that happen. Sharing my life and my personal stories are one way that I can help others, because I can illustrate from my own experiences how to navigate certain situations and possibly offer a different perspective or solution that you may not have thought of. Writing, painting and networking are the solutions to my existential crisis issue, as they will tick the boxes of productivity and life’s meaning, while ensuring that my life and lifestyle are being maintained.
Now all I need to do is refocus and grind 🙂
See you on the flip side! 🦄
