Category: Personal Development

A Mid-life Crisis on my 30th Birthday

Turning thirty meant a lot to me. I didn’t know it until it actually happened. 

Birthdays aren’t something I usually celebrate, so it passed like any other day.

Thirty is a huge landmark in the progression of my life. From here on, every day that passes reduces the time I have left on this Earth.

Death is like a feeling of finality. After that point, everything you could have possibly done and didn’t was a lost opportunity. That everything other people have invested in you was a waste if you didn’t leave anything of value behind. That there’s a limited time to get everything you want out of life, and then it’s over.

It made me wish I could experience my current reality ahead of time instead of just known about it. That sort of foresight  isn’t possible thought. I wished I’d lived my life differently, instead of trying to prove my worth all the damn time. I wished I’d worked on myself a little earlier or known I needed to.

That I would’ve made more friends and had the social skills to do so. I was basically a bully, pushing other people down to feel a little okay about myself. My answer was to keep my mouth shut and basically never talk or instantly regret it the moment that I did. But the question with all this rehashing of the past is what’s the use? The past is done. There isn’t a time machine to go back and fix all of our mistakes. All we can change is the future.

I’m trying to focus on the future, instead of recriminations from the past. What will I regret most on my last day? What can I accept as unfinished? I have a goal to be traditionally published. The best compromise I can think of is switching that to an abundance mindset. I changed my goal to publishing things on my website which I already do. And started thinking of anything more as a bonus on top of that. I can live with that. I always wanted to have friends and staying in contact with them is my new goal. Writing something is another goal.

I may not accomplish everything I set out to do. With the time that I have left, I have to pack in as much happiness as I can into each and every day. And don’t stress too much about it. A stressed out mindset isn’t happy, it’s terrified.

That’s my new outlook. A perfect day for me would be writing, talking to people I know and friends as well, doing meditation, listening to music, and improving myself. Find your perfect day and start living it today.

Finding Meaning, Again.

For so long, I’ve been motivated by two principle fears — fear of failure and the fear of being alone. At various times I’ve said I’m an introvert, but I’m starting to wonder if that wasn’t fear in disguise. If I never tried to be social, I could never fail at it or prove that I’d always be alone. So far that strategy worked. I was alone.

Then, things started to change. I realized that basically every single thing I did was motivated by fear. That making a choice was no longer an option. That was the thing I needed to realize to radically change the way I was.

For awhile after that, I lacked the fear based motivation I’d always had. My writing practice fell apart. I stopped reading novels, reading my emails, and the blog posts I used to read. I started playing this computer game, Eve Online. Important things for my day to day went on like usual. I hoped things would change, and feared they never would.

I started wanting things again for myself though after months just going through the motions. Things I’d never been allowed to want when I was motivated by fear. I started to despair that maybe it was far too late to finally connect with the person I’d buried for so long, me.

Yesterday, something happened. The best thing that happened all day was I figured out something that was puzzling me about the game I was playing, Eve Online. That made me so angry. For a long while, I couldn’t figure out why. That’s when it hit me. Through my lack of motivation, I’d abandoned the things that give my life meaning. Those things are mediation and writing and maybe gaming added in as well. Then my motivation returned. No matter the cost, I’ll do the things that make me happy, now and whenever I look back on it.

Find the thing that makes you happy right now. Do it before it’s too late. And never let anybody or anything stop you. Finding meaning and happiness is the purpose of life.