On Broken Promises

For the past couple of months, I've felt a weird occasional mix of anxiety, lack of motivation, depression, and frustration. In other words, I have felt a bit "off".

So, me being me, I decided to do a little introspection and while I initially thought it might just be due to the seasonal change, the cause hit me out of the blue while I was sitting on the couch a few days ago watching TV and I randomly stumbled across an old blog post...

See, in June of 2022, I went to Hawaii with my lovely wife for a much needed break. While I was there I had definite plans on how I was going to better myself but didn't spend as much time on that as I had planned, which wasn't a big deal in the end; I got more out of the relaxing than expected and feel it was a nice trade off.

But I did think about it a lot upon my return, and subsequently decided to jot down my thoughts in a piece titled Precious Days, which I published on June 14th, 2022. If you scroll all the way down to the end, you'll see this paragraph:

"I’m giving myself one year of my life – which could theoretically be a sizable percentage of my remaining time on earth – to move from feeling like I am losing precious days to feeling like I am embracing every precious day and living it to its fullest."

Looking back, I didn't accomplish that. Simply stated, I made a promise to myself and then I promptly broke it. I don't like breaking promises, and I especially don't like it when I'm breaking promises I've made to myself.

Don't get me wrong, I have a good life. Loving family, great friends, a well paying career with significant autonomy, and I have pretty much everything I need. In general, I have very few real worries in life outside of ongoing health maintenance, and that is well under control.

That said, there is something missing, and I think I know what it is. As I mentioned in the Precious Days post, I've always had high agency. To quickly summarize that last link for you, high agency means taking control of your life by finding solutions and creating opportunities, rather than letting circumstances hold you back. For me, this translates to building things, whether that is a business, or a garden, or a relationship. I need to see progress.

Unfortunately, I haven't been exhibiting that lately as much as I like need to in order to stay a happy and productive member of society. I like to build things, and I haven't really been building anything. For the past couple years, everything I've tried to start as a side business or hobby, I've eventually dropped (sometimes at significant expense) and that's beginning to wear on me as each abandoned idea has felt like a step backward, which has made me question myself, creating a negative feedback loop. Time to move past that, no?

I need to build something in my spare time, plain and simple. In the past couple years I've tried my hand at a few things, but I've been more focused on financial returns than what actually excites me. This can be a winning combination for some folks, but that's just not me anymore evidently. John Muir said "I am degenerating into a machine for making money", and that resonates greatly with me.

So I need to build something that will allow me to find purpose. I have an idea of what it can be. I'm still fleshing it out, but it's the first thing in some time that really excites me, and if successful it will allow me to leverage specific skills that I haven't really had a chance to use in many years. So I'm starting. I'll announce it here when I'm ready for the world to see. This time feels different.