There’s always another goal to chase. For me, this was professional success firstly, where I always had the lingering feeling of not being good enough, needing a promotion, a new challenge, more money, more time, whatnot.
At one given point something curious happened.
I found myself in a job that felt just… right. I had enough time, My tasks seemed easy enough and when I started looking for new challenges, my boss told me to let it go and take things slow.
I noticed that this whole ideal of having time, money and a promotion is not as luxurious as I first imagined it to be.
Let me explain.
When I was chasing my goals, my life was always nice and full. My to do lists were filled in a magical way, almost by some sort of sorcery, without me having to think of a purpose at any given time. It was wonderful. Life was easy and the purpose was clear.
But once this cleared up, once all those external things were reached, instead of happiness what I found was… emptiness. Lingering, daunting, spacious and awkward emptiness. And let me tell you this much: It didn’t feel great.
So I did what most people with feelings of emptiness return to eventually: the age-old question of finding your life purpose. Believe it or not, it is a tricky one. One of the tools that helped me the most in answering it was imagining what I would do on a lonely island, if no one was watching. Imagining that all beaches had been already walked on, all cocktails devoured and all the sun enjoyed. It is a strange scenario to envision, but somehow it didn’t seem that far away from where I felt at that time of my life.
At this point in time, nothing made sense for me. If I didn’t feel the need to perform for money, my promotion or free time anymore then what would I even want to do? If I were the only one having the power to decide what is meaningful then how would I even decide?
The first things that come to mind (at least mine) are usually the fun ones: watch all of the shows (again and again) that you love, read, walk, connect and listen to loud music, watch all of the movies, dress up crazy, do yoga and dance, the list goes on. But then what? If nothing really has a deeper meaning, what is a truly worthwhile endeavor for you?
I realise that for me, it is living out loud, sharing my experiences, sharing my path, being vocal about it. In my day to day, I keep coming back to so many people that I admire and that are brave enough to do so. Influencers of sorts, authors, people of interest. The only difference between them and myself? Is that they’re brave enough to put themselves out there and actually share their experience for others to draw from. Not because it’s “perfect” or they’re “ready” or something, but simply for the joy of sharing.
So I thought, what is the best way for me to share my experiences with others? There are, undoubtedly, a lot of possibilities, from books to blog posts to podcasts and video-essays… In my mind, however, some of these possibilities weren’t as attractive as others, because for me personally writing is one of the most boring and daunting tasks imaginable.
In fact, I hate writing. The boring sitting in front of the laptop, revising and revising only to have something that’s never good enough anyway. Who would even want that? For this reason, I started wondering how I can be creative and sneak my way around writing. I thought of making a podcast or Youtube videos just not to write. But as I started going, and got over the hurdle of filming the first few videos, I realized that there was no way around writing at least some sort of speaking prompts first.
In my mind, there was no way around actually writing things down, thus I was left with two possibilities: Writing or not sharing. As you can see, the latter was never really an option. So I sat down. And started writing. Despite the annoyance, despite the hatred, despite the lack of original ideas. And here we are. Because living out loud, no matter where you’re at, is something I strongly believe in. It’s what we’ve got, it’s who we are and it’s how we develop.
The coolest thing is that I am by no means publishing it because it’s perfect. If you know anything about writing, you will be sure that it’s not. But I’m publishing it as a tiny first step for living out loud. Because it’s fun and it’s what I believe in. It’s definitely the start of the journey and not its end. And who knows – it may very well be a YouTube channel in the end after all.