tossing myself into the abyss

Anyone who makes it a frequent mission for themselves to try new things, collect more experiences & really figure out what they enjoy or absolutely do not enjoy is in my point of view tossing themselves into the abyss

but not a big, scary, black hole type of abyss, but rather an abyss of evolution.

The evolution of figuring out:

What you actually want out of lifeHow you may go about getting what you want& What obstacles are already in your mind that may be stopping you.

Today I want to dive into the benefits one may find going into such an abyss by telling you about what I’m experimenting with lately.

An Abysmall lack of progress

A common theme in making progress at anything in life is that we must be moving, taking steps, putting in reps, & iterating to maintain progress.

The thing is with progress: it won’t always feel like progress.

& often times what feels like progress may actually be quite the opposite.

A counteraction to a lack of progress may be to adopt new perspectives by throwing yourself into the abyss of doing something new (something you wouldn’t normally do)

A new way of working, a new location to work in, a new gym, a new backwards approach to working out in your same gym, going for a day without food (24 hour fast), trying some alternate method of when you eat, etc, etc, the list goes on.

Throwing yourself into the experimental abyss allows you to gain more data to extrapolate from & figure out new definitions for progress:

Example 1: Doing a 24-hour fast experiment lets you see a new perspective to how your body functions now you see how fasting affects your mind and body, you add this to your progress book of optimizing your diet. (or save the data for later)

Example 2: You try working from a laptop away from home, you learn how important your routines may be, you find out how much of your work can be done away from home, and you see new balances to when you do work & when you spend time with loved ones, you add this data to your progress book for finding a balance of life to meaningful work balance.

Example 3: You usually lift weights at the gym 5 days a week, instead you try a new approach to only going 2 days per week and saving your energy, so you can eat less food and still remain high functioning: You find out you dont need to go every day to bring in results & you add an alternative lifestyle of working out to your progress book on lifestyle optimization.

All of these examples are taken from my own abysmal experiments. I encourage you to test everything for yourself so you too can have more data to extrapolate & move forward with.

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Light the way for yourself

A large part of my recent compendium of thoughts has been in line with the 2nd example I mentioned above & really figuring out how to accomplish a few main goals around work by tossing myself into new working conditions & concepts of work.

The main goals being:
- make a living doing “good work” (self-determined)
- working less overall
- working for myself
- exploring curiosities

My most recent way of thinking about work has changed quite dramatically, from thinking that I need to be working my ass off into the darkness of the night to realizing there's a better approach, & there is actually not just one better approach at all, there are infinite possible paths available to take.

This is because I’ve realized I can create my own path, bit by bit, based on what I learn that works for me & what doesn’t.

It may seem idealistic to many people that one should be able to do work they thoroughly enjoy, on their own time, & make a living from it. This new idea of life & way of work is becoming much more popular now though.

Remote work allowed many to see how important time spent not working & rather with loved ones really is — this was especially noticed when the option of working remotely went away.

But at the crossroads of working from home & spending your precious time stuck in traffic to & from work each day, there is a clear message being given.

There is not just one path. & If remote work was discovered as part of an alternate path, what other possibilities lay out there unknown for a more suitable, personally tailored, optimal lifestyle?

Most of these new paths however are dark & not well-lit until you bear the torch to travel on them.

In other words: you kind of have to toss yourself into the abyss & figure shit out as you go.

Family ties

Often times we don’t follow a new path because of what others might think, or more notably what our family & loved ones might think.

Recently At a family gathering my aunt was asking deeper questions about what I do for a living; my family all knows I make my money from the internet, but they don’t often ask much further.

After I answered many questions about how I’m writing a bunch now, doing freelance work, etc, etc, she said something along the lines of “You are really working in a new way from the norm” & then she mentioned, “it seems more and more people are doing this sort of work from online & for themselves”.

Her response caught me off guard, she had acknowledged my way of working as viable & I realized at this time that there is certainly a growing amount of people who are fed up with the norm of work, heck my Aunt is probably one of them.

Although it does take some self-direction to work for yourself, it’s becoming easier & easier with all the tools & abundant information out there.

I think my Aunt sees how many people are taking an alternative path, & she also sees how even without health benefits or a pension plan, I’m enjoying my life and doing work that matters to me.

At first in my family I would get weird looks or questioning faces when I told them I has sunsetted college to work for myself online, most people were doubtful, how could you be with how engrained the 9-5 status quo is for many.

But in the end, following my own path, I found that your family will love you either way, & the worries I’ve had about my family not loving me or thinking less of me for working for myself dissipated over time to no longer exist.

Work-life

What I’ve been focusing on a lot lately is the abyss of work vs life & the balance between the two.

It seems you can’t have one without the other, & you probably would be tiresome of life if you never had work to do, or if you only had work to do.

The main problem I’ve come across is that the phrase work-life balance puts work first.

Work to me is important, but not just any work, I want to partake in work that helps me live, derive meaning from & that grants me more freedom.

Though even I’ve noted what I want from work, this is not all my life is to be. I know life certainly will need to be structured with work inside of it, but this dilemma of balancing work with life is backward.

I would much rather focus on life first & then fit in work to it. That’s the goal.

Here are some things I’ve found interesting through testing new ways of life & work myself:

For the past week I’ve been working for about 1-2 hours a day, sometimes less. I’ve been spending the majority of my time soaking up the summer & spending important time celebrating milestone events with family.

During this time I have been away from home, working from my phone or laptop the entire time. I’m learning the importance I place on certain things in the absence of them, for example: having a proper desk & chair or general work space.

I didn’t make all that much money in this time, but I’ve discovered possible branches of my path for life & work that I hadn’t yet discovered.

Pretty much all my income this month came from the acquisition of a crypto business I made over the last 2 years. — this made me realize long-term games are worthwhile ones & that there is definitely treasure in another’s trash (I was going to let the business run a natural non-profitable death)

What things have you tried or discovered lately that have had a positive effect on your life? Reply to this & let me know

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that’s all for today, thank you so much for reading.

sincerely,
your friend,
jack ♠️