5.18.21

I'll be first to tell you that I get overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed a lot. I focus too hard on a problem and begin to succumb to that problem without even facing it.

I look at that problem and it just feels like a behemoth of an entity staring you down with no place to escape. It's just an overwhelming energy that you know you have to take on eventually, but it just feels like you're only given a stick to fend it off.

Today I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. We have these weekly conversations in order to just keep ourselves in check. We talk about what we did the week prior, where we we're at mentally, and what we want to do moving ahead.

We were talking about a lot of different things and then I just talked about this huge pressure I have right now to find a job. For over the past year, I have moved back home and have been resetting. I felt very lost in what I wanted to do career wise and just needed to some time to take a step back, reset, and assess where I want to go forward. Luckily, my parents have worked hard enough to allow me this resetting period. But now, I'm 26 and need to figure out a source of income and job. Mainly for health insurance purposes.

This might all be super first world problems, and honestly it is. But, this is the situation I am in. I'm grateful to be able to be in this situation, but it is a situation nonetheless.

The thing about the move back is that I wanted to make sure when I get back to working it'd be working towards something I truly want to do. I really didn't have to move back. I was able to find regular work at a restaurant and was working as a photographer part time in order to pay off my rent and food. I was living paycheck to paycheck. Wasn't living comfortably by any means, but I was able to sustain myself. My savings was hardly ever able to truly build up and decided it was time to move back home. It was time to take the time to understand my wants and where I truly wanted to go professionally.

I first decided that I wanted to be a screenwriter. I worked on many sets beforehand and always wanted to write and direct my own screenplays, still do, but it's not something I want to spend my developmental time doing. After, I decided that I wanted to go into content production for artists and bands, but I didn't have the skillset for that at the time. Still don't and need to work on that. Then I decided I wanted to switch to a completely different career path and work on the business end and decided to get my Product Management Certificate.

Now, I have that certificate and have been looking towards getting a job. I'm on linkedin and indeed looking for jobs and man barely any of them spark any sort of inspiration or feel like jobs that I want to do. They just feel like jobs where I'd just be doing things where I don't learn many translatable skills.

I got my Product Management Certificate because I want to be a Product Manager for a record label and work with artist branding and strategy. I want to find creative ways for artists to be able to connect and build their communities that align with their personality and aesthetic. But, luckily for most jobs you need like 2 years of music marketing to get that position. Which I don't feel like I have over 2 years to do.

The reason why I feel like this is mainly because I see myself quitting whatever job I'm doing after a year or so once this platform develops further. I see myself spending most of my future working on this platform. Every time I talk about this platform with someone. Every time I go deeper into understanding the potential this platform has, this is all I want to do. This is all I want to work on. Anything else where I have to start at the bottom and do grunt work to actually get to the things that I can translate to this platform just doesn't fit the timeline.

So why don't I do this full time? It's because I need the money. The team I'm working with right now are doing it on a volunteer basis. I want to be able to pay them for their work. I don't like asking people to do things for free. I also don't want to monetize these posts or ask for money from you if we haven't developed anything yet. Who wants to spend their money on something that hasn't delivered anything yet? Who wants to pay a subscription for something they don't even know about yet? We'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot for doing that. I want to keep this accessible and want you to want to support this later down the line. The things that will bring in money in the future needs for this platform to be developed first. In say a year or so, money will start coming in. It just isn't right now.

So that's what we discussed. Everything that I just stated, I didn't understand until I said it out loud. "Getting a job" just felt like this overbearing energy towering over me to where I just felt like I was cowering to it for some unknown reason. It wasn't like it's anything too big, but to me it felt like it.

Like I want to spend most of my energy working on this platform. I want to be working on the content. I want to be working on building community. I want to be working on our messaging. I want to work on color palettes. I want to work on potential collaborations. I want to work on future infrastructure. I just want to work on this.

The last thing I want is to be spending my time on something that won't be translatable to this platform. Or working on something else that takes up too much of my mental capacity to where I'm too exhausted to even work on this.

A lot of things that are first world problems. But, this is my life and I get to make these decisions and have to make these decisions. My parents and grandparents did what they had to in order to allow me all these privileges they never had. I want to take advantage of it and create something I'm proud of and something they can be proud of.

This has honestly just turned into a whole spiel about me not wanting a job and to work on this. But, I do need to get money. You can see how I can easily get overwhelmed lmaoo. Shit's not as complicated as I think it is. I overthink a lot. Overthinking can be good, but it can also stagnate you. It can help flesh out ideas if you're using it positively, but can also paralyze you if you allow it. And boy have I allowed it to paralyze me.

What I'm going to do is just find a side hustle in order to bring in money and have some sort of cash flow. Take on small projects that I know I can do well on. Learn through those projects and translate them to what I want to do with this. Not focus on finding a "career" or "job" yet and just get a source of income. If one comes around that feels right and aligns with what I'm trying to do, I'll apply and hope for the best, but just getting some projects to work on seems like the best route right now.

This is what me and my friend talked about this past couple of hours and felt really good to unpack it and understand where my anxiety was coming and why I was overwhelming myself. It may seem like a small problem from the outside and may be a small problem in 5 years. But that's just all a part of my growing process. That's part of my journey. It is what it is. Clown me for it. Do whatever. I don't care. I'm going to be doing great things in the future and there's a reason why you're reading this. If I get people coming back to this and reading this that's a win in itself. That just means I'm doing something right.

We all have different journeys. What's a big problem to one, may be small to another. Doesn't mean one is more meaningful or more important than another. We all deal with shit. This is what I'm going through right now. That's it.

There's value in writing down the things you go through. Whether it's for your future self or someone who finds you later down the line and wants to understand your journey that much more. Everything feels big in the moment. Whether it's actually big or not is not decided.

The future is unwritten. Nothing is known. I have no clue what can actually happen. I'm excited for the possibilities and what this could be. I'm just a 26-year-old, trying to figure life out. I know nothing. I just have a lot of hunches and think a lot.