Forging Forward

I feel like I did something pretty bold yesterday. After over 11 years of coasting along in a stable corporate workplace, I’ve taken the plunge into the vast unknown and will now be making my own path to work for myself. Gave my two weeks notice, and woke up today with an uncomfortable mix of emotions. Excitement, anxiety, fear, optimism, self doubt, determination, it’s all blending around into my morning protein shake.

With all the soul searching and deep journaling I’ve been doing lately, I noticed a bit of a pattern in my life that I am now actively trying to alter. While generally being a pretty chill and laid back guy, which isn’t always a bad thing, it also tends to lead to me just going along with someone else’s plan. Get good grades > get a degree > get a 9-5 job > get married > get a house > retire at 65 > and so on. While I’ve certainly branched off in interesting ways at times, things always seem to gravitate back towards this typical path. No big regrets here or anything, everything I’ve done has led me to this very moment and I accept where I’m at. But I can’t just be stuck anymore. I want to see what it’s like to have NO path.

Going through a divorce has certainly opened my eyes that the “safe” way can still crumble out underneath you. I guess now I’m at the breaking point, where I’m going all in on what I want to do and strike out on my own. I should mention this wasn’t a sudden impulsive move here though, this has been building for months. Budgeting, saving, scheming, a lot of brainstorming has been going on behind the scenes here. By my math, barring any major mishaps, I have enough to get by for at least 2 years without any income. I admit I went against a lot of advice that I’ve read and may have kicked this thing off a bit prematurely. Most of the time you probably don’t want to go all in on “side hustles” until you’re matching around the same revenue as what you were making full time before.

But I feel like I can’t be wasting time anymore doing something where my heart isn’t in it. My job wasn’t overly stressful or anything, I was treated well, able to work from home, benefits, autonomy, the “dream” right? But in the end, I think my drive to be more creative is pulling me away. I know for a fact the future of my self-employed lifestyle will probably be a lot more intense, more stressful, more hours. But at least it’s on my own terms. Following my pAsSiOn. It sounds so cliche and unrealistic sometimes but I am at that point where I have to try. It’s honestly something I have wanted for years, but never had the courage to actually follow through on it.

The risk of living a meaningless empty life and being creatively unfulfilled has finally outweighed the risk of financial instability. But I think a tough part coming up for me is coming to terms with going hard on monetizing myself. Almost every creative project I have ever released has essentially been free. Music, streams, games, all of them at no cost. Of course I have always humbly appreciated when people have supported optionally through twitch subs or bandcamp or whatever else, but the financial side was always just a nice little offset to help pay for equipment needed for those hobbies, never an attempt at profit or breaking even on cost of living.

A big thing I’ll have to get over is a general feeling of “scumminess” I get whenever I am trying to market myself. Self promotion has never been my favorite part of creative work, I’ve never considered myself much of a salesman. But I understand it’s neccessity, and it certainly can produce results. But I really want to stay as genuine as I can and not feel like I’m manipulating people into anything they don’t truly want to do. And I’m certainly not trying to get rich, I just wanna be able to pay my bills and keep my cats fed. I guess I’m just saying to not be surprised if you hear me start to “advertise” stuff more than before, and I may be experimenting with a variety of products as I attempt build different income streams and see what actually works. I have a lot of ideas, and soon enough will have an abundance of time to start digging in. And I really do hope that whatever I’m going to be producing brings some joy to your day or helps solve a problem for someone.

Not sure what else to say on this one for now, this was a bit more of a raw stream-of-consciousness kind of post today riding off the fresh feelings from dropping that two weeks notice bomb. I do want to say I really appreciate your attention and support over the years, and I’m looking forward to the adventures ahead.

I don’t really have any new content to share this time since I was out last weekend at an amazing gathering with some friends on Lake Michigan (much love to the Crow’s Fest crew), and the previous week was the slow boil of quitting my job. I do want to share a quote I read this week that really resonated with me in my current headspace.

“The one who wonders not only does not know, he is intimately sure that he does not know, and he understands himself as being in a position of not knowing. But this un-knowing is not the kind that brings resignation. The one who wonders is one who sets out on a journey, and this journey goes along with the wonder: not only that he stops short for a moment, and is silent, but also that he persists in searching.”

- Joseph Pieper

I plan to be back on a weekly routine with another post next week. Hopefully one chock full of annoying banner ads, online courses to purchase, and affiliate links ;) I’d love to hear stories from anyone also blazing their own trails or thinking of taking the self employed leap as well. And thanks as always for reading!