When I was a younger, let’s say 18 years old and about to uproot my life and move to Boulder for college, I never felt the risk. There was no lump in my throat or butterflies in my stomach. At least, I have no memory of feeling scared to fail, get lost, make friends, lose them, kiss a girl. I was still a virgin, so that was on my mind for sure. But now at 34, after school, trying to start some interesting companies, finding my Jesus moment in video games and play-psychology, falling in love twice, getting fired once, being unemployed for a year, and the list goes on, I find the option of taking risks so immediate and profoundly difficult from my younger days that habit and mediocrity is easier. Meaning, I’m quite paralyzed most of the time. Now, what the hell is going on with that sensation? Why now? I’m older, more mature, look at all my experiences I listed above. I should have more of my shit together. Yet somehow, I don’t. Do you? Is it just me? How normal am I? God, I hope this is normal.
I wonder, now, if more experience actually manifests this new road block. As with children, the world is open, they feel everything, their experiences move right through them and affects them openly, yet they keep going without knowing a damn thing. Now I “know a bunch” and that makes me cautious? What a fucking gyp.
Well, obviously reacting to such a realization is a normal adult thing to do. Actually, that’s quite the childlike thing to do if I think about it. Is that it? Is it that children and my younger self could just react to things without having to think so damn much, but as adults, me, you, us, we have to think and then respond? Now, our parents voices come into our heads (at least mine do). Mentors, teachers, other tiny voices of advices and caution creep in from the peanut gallery.
So whether I see hard work on the horizon or even something good coming along with it, there seems to be a risk that pauses the hustle.
I’m working myself backwards through The Great Discontent magazines. FYI they are amazing. *plug* Issue 2 is about “the hustle”. And of course you’ll read of the artsy-fartsy types, the folks rising up from nothing, the metamorphosis that turns on a different light bulb. And at moments I’m inspired — hence me writing this little personal thought experiment. And at other moments I’m disenchanted because, “why the fuck can I not do this, this thing they do, jump, leap, change?”
So, I had an idea. Let me know if you’ve done this — or found another solutions. I’m taking baby steps. I’m literally performing What About Bob’s therapy around my life. I try to make a plan first. Such as, weekend mornings: go walk, take your reading and writing things, sit for as long as you want (you is me in this internal monologue) at Lucky’s Bakery, drink your coffee, make a hipster Instagram photo of your progress and learn something. If I want to be a designer of sorts, and teacher of other sorts, then I need to keep learning something if I don’t do the normal risky thing and move to New York or some place all the artsy-fartsy live. At work, I with ask questions and find ways to learn from everyone, even learn the things not to do or the behaviors I don’t like or agree with. I am going to continually immerse myself in something I love so I concentrate on my life and not all the outside shit that truly can takes over most of the time. I am baby stepping around my life now and I already find it rewarding. There’s a confidence to a plan, an integrity to taking your time, and a pride in not judging one’s ideas.