I am not focused today.
The last 4 months were a very long grind with a lot of stress. I spent a lot of time, money and energy pushing my dreams forward only to end up trying to recoup now. I’ve been stressing over something for months, which has forced me to grind harder, and finally the blow was nothing compared to what my mind built up.
All of a sudden I went from way behind to being on pace for my goals and I didn’t even change anything.
I was simply acting on bad information.
The benefit of this situation is my current ethic is to hustle hard, and the more I do this, the more doors open in my life. I had faith things would work out, and they actually did.
I went from negative stressed emotions to this overwhelming feeling of happiness, that’s so intense I feel anxious over it.
This is what I call #HappyPeopleProblems and I’m so happy to be back here again.
It took most of 2023 to find my footing again
In December 2022, I parted ways with the company I’d spent over 12 of my life working at.
My entire identity was linked to being an employee there.
For most of my adult life, those people were the mainstays. Sure there was music and other things I was up to, but I spent so much time in the office working on those products, with those people. I grew up there.
Then all of a sudden I was on my own. I needed to make a CV for realsies for the first time in over a decade. ChatGPT came in and started messing up the status quo and I had no idea where to go.
I did have some money and I lived off that for a while floating around aimlessly for months.
In hindsight I should have started working harder then. Only I couldn’t. I needed a break.
I remember even discussing taking a sabbatical at one point but I never had the savings for it.
If you never take time off, one day that will come back to haunt you.
I worked so long and hard I lost sight of everything that mattered
When I started working at that company, back in the call center we were blessed to receive paid overtime.
As I moved up and my responsibilities grew, justified actual overtime. It taught me to work beyond the 40 hours for the things that need to be done. I now realize that was a big blessing, one I didn’t appreciate back then.
Around 2012 I started my music life. While I dilly dallied for a while, by 2016 I was full steam ahead. I started podcasting at the end of that year and it created this new pace.
It wasn’t that I was lazy during those 4 years. I worked a lot, wrote songs, performed a solid 30-40 times and put the work into building a foundation that people would respect 10 years later.
The key thing is I stayed working. Once the podcasting kicked in, most I started getting dumb about vacations and time off. I’d dedicate the time away from work to hustling the content.
The problem was the results didn’t come. My ego got in the way of optimization and as a result I worked so long and hard for very little. Except for experience working stupid long hours, I can do that no problem.
That turned out to be very helpful.
My new freelance/contractor life has kicked in
I became a contractor for an Instagram page and Uber around the same time.
This shifted a lot of things from the comfort zone of normal employment. It’s on me to generate results in both gigs and there is very little supervision. It’s on me to hustle it and make it happen.
The thing is I make less per hour now than I have made in years. In order to maintain my lifestyle I’ve had to work a lot more hours.
This new world has me spending more money on business related things and less time on funner activities. Even my weed spending is down because I’m spending so much time driving people around.
I don’t drive people around high.
Trust, ain’t no time to get high in the Uber game, it’s easy to go three hours straight with no break.
The end result is I am generating more revenue than ever, with cooler gigs starting to appear in my face.
I am by no means where I need to be, but I am pretty sure I can clear my credit card debt this year.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel and it has me so happy I can barely focus on anything today.
Now that the blog is done, time to stumble through the next thing.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone