What is the search of myself about?
We spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we are and what our purpose is on earth. Who am I? What am I supposed to be doing? What’s my life purpose? What does my soul yearn to do? These are all the questions we ask ourselves when we’re in the darkest of places, because as a society we avoid any form of existential internalisation, for fear that we do not have the answers and may never have them. Most people are stuck in society’s hamster wheel and asking these questions provides enough of a deviation from their routine for them to realise the mundane existence they live, so it’s easier to tuck it away, hide it, and never ask it again. We do not like hard questions. But I do.
I’ve spent my whole life, well the short thirty years thus far, asking myself this question. What’s my life purpose? What does my soul yearn for? Who am I? The search for myself is really about exploring these ideas.
Mundane has never been my thing. The idea of going to school, then university to put myself in debt to get a degree, so that I have a job to repay that debt, but then also have to meet someone of the opposite sex who is a decent human being that I might want to subject myself to permanence with, and then go into 30+ years worth of debt with to buy a house that we couldn’t physically afford in that moment, and then procreate with this other person who I’m sharing my lifestyle prison cell with, to add more pressure to the already pressured system (remember university debt and mortgage and car), while also fretting about paint colours, university options for the kids who are all still under 5 years old, and thinking about retirement… but then not retiring until I’m 65+ when I have no more health or energy to enjoy the rest of my life with my cellmate, who I care about but stuck with because divorce is expensive and we’re past that point anyway. This has never made sense to me. Who made these rules? Why are these even rules? Why must I have children? Or get married? I just never understood it.
This book, In Search of Myself, is a chronicle of my life’s navigation for ten years. From 30 through to 40. I don’t have the answers. I might find them. I don’t know. So far this is what I know:
The year is 2020, the year of the coronavirus pandemic, and I’m now 30. I’ve finally settled into a writing career and pouring my entire soul into it; balancing both personal book and blog writing and a writing/design business to ensure lights stay on. I am introverted, but not shy. I drink a lot of coffee and 40-me will not be happy with 30-me, but tough shit. I am at that point of trying to figure out how to navigate the world, while not becoming totally jaded with the whole thing and running away to a wood cabin in the Scottish highlands where no one lives and internet is a distant memory.
My first 20 years left me scarred with trauma and PTSD that lead me down a weird path in my 20’s, but it was not interesting enough to write about, since it was mainly work and illness. Sorry, my 20’s wasn’t filled with stories involving sex, drugs and rock and roll. Just a whole lot of responsible adult things while trying to shove my childhood trauma into the darkest corner of Pandora’s box. Being a business focused introvert helped to keep me on the right path in my 20’s, for which my liver is very grateful for.
30 is interesting for me. When I was 26, I migrated back to the UK and spent the next few years struggling to get on my feet, which I talk about in my book, Native Immigrant. But when I was 28, I had a car crash and met someone in the same week, two events that literally changed my life, and in the following months, I quit my job, started my creative agency and became a full time writer, working remotely and allowing my bank account to have less panic attacks. It was the start of a new chapter, and I watched my old life flake away like dead skin, revealing new skin that said 30’s.
It’s really weird how the whole thing happened, as though it was meant to happen when I started a new decade, with my career settling into writing, so that I can sit here and type this all out for the next ten years. Future me will think that past me wrote like a spastic, which is why it’s so awesome to have a blog that is feeding into a book, because in ten years, while I edit this specific page, it might not read exactly the same, but this blog is eternal. But yes, the whole thing is weird, so weird that I’ve decided to document the decade in a book. Gods help us this is going to be a long book.
