What am I chasing now?
How I'm structuring my thoughts around this unstructured time
August 4th, 2023: I am currently at a Starbucks in San Francisco, my home of the last 2 years, drinking a chai latte (basic I know, but also a classic). It has been a busy, but fun week with a lot of variation. I woke up at 7 am (ish) to do a cold plunge one day and caught the 10 pm show of Mission Impossible the next. I also played pickleball at sunset and met a friend for lunch at 3 pm. I think all this variation has been exciting, but also helped me a key in on a routine I want to keep more consistent: wake up at 8 am, run, breakfast, shower, work, nap, do stuff, read, plan the next day, and repeat. Overall, getting used to not going into an office 3 days a week and spending a lot more time alone, but still enjoying it so far.
When I started my full-time job, I knew what success looked like: getting promoted. But over time I realized that I had begun to fear success more than desire it. I could see that getting promoted would just mean doing less of the work I enjoyed and working more hours in general, and I began to question how sure I was that this was the path for me.
When I started this newsletter, I was not sure what the chances were that anyone would find my writing interesting or useful. The path to a promotion seemed much clearer and even more likely than finding success starting a newsletter. But I knew that I would have an absolute blast writing it and that if someone did find this writing helpful then that success would be really meaningful. I realized that even taking a path where success seems less likely is better than taking one where even if you do make it, you do not end up where you want to be anyway.
So I had gotten an idea of what I may not want to do and the idea for a project that I did want to try. But what about everything else? How was I going to figure out what I did want to do? How do I want to live my life differently? How will I know if I am figuring out what I’m supposed to be figuring out as opposed to just being as lost at the end of this journey as I was at the beginning of it?
The truth is I’m not sure. But for now I’m adopting the idiom strong opinions, loosely held. I want to try new ways of thinking and live them out to the fullest until it becomes clear that this is something that works for me, or something that ends poorly and that is probably not for me. I want to have at least some starting ideas of what I want from my time off. So, here it is. After all of the people I have met, everything I have read, and every opportunity I have seen, here is the comprehensive list of ideas for what I want with my time off the traditional path:
Self
To build a better relationship with myself
I want to be more comfortable being alone and figuring out what I want, not just how to follow where I am taken since I don’t know myself.
To understand and develop what I believe
Am I best suited to forever answer “Spiritual, but not religious” in voting polls or is some other belief about life something I’m better suited for? What do I believe philosophically & religiously? What does it mean to live a good life?
To improve my habits
It’s true what they say, first you define your habits, then your habits define you. I want to experiment and build new habits around what I eat, exercise, reading, meditation, whatever little fixtures in my routine feel like they are making a big difference in my life.
To improve my information diet
I want to take a serious look at what I read. How do I keep up with what is happening in world and what is most relevant to me. How can I build infrastructure around keeping me inspired by new ideas as well as well-informed.
To explore my creative interests
I want to be able to fully explore my creative interests whether through just this newsletter, dance, art, or any other form that may be conducive to this.
Work
I do not want the sole focus of my time off to be around what work I want to do. I want to take time completely off of work to see what becoming a full person without work looks like. I want to be able to say I know what time completely away from work really feels like.
To figure out how work fits around the life-style I want
I want to understand how I want to spend my days, what I want from that time and where is the best place to get it. For example if I want community or friendship, is work the best place to get it? What about a sense of meaning or impact?
To understand how I can do my best work
What environment is most conducive for deep and meaningful work for me? Is it working remote or in person? How can I find my optimal working conditions and grow the skills I want to: data science, writing, product, piano, community, culture building, etc.
The World
To experience the world
How do other people think and behave? What religions and ways of living do they experience? What’s constant across cultures in what works and doesn’t work? What is the world like?
To understand where I may want to build a 2nd or 3rd home
Does the ideal life mean just living in one place for years, then another or is it an international life with multiple homes at different times, each with its own sense of familiarity and community?
Make friends around the world
I want to understand how to use self selection to build community in a new place. Having strong relationships in different places has already helped the world seem less scary and unknown and instead more inviting.
Learn what makes people happy
What makes a place welcoming, a community vibrant, and a people happy. It would be really cool to see how different places approach this big societal puzzle and to learn a little more about what works and what does not work.
I know that figuring all of this out is going to be a lifelong journey and you will still never completely figure it out by the end, the world is too big and mysterious for that. My hope with this list is just that having a lot of ideas can help me understand what I am hoping to gain from opportunities that may come up and recognize how I am changing through how what I want to understand changes.