Dan AE (After Employment) Journal - Day 90: What If Nothing Works?
Today is very much of day where everything I’m doing sucks and has no hope of ever becoming anything worthwhile ,or ever being capable of providing any kind of value whatsoever to anyone, let alone a means of reliable income. I’ve talked a lot about the idealized life after employment, finding a means to make ends meat by working on things that excite and fulfill you, but of course reality looks very different when reality checks in and creditors come knocking on your door. The ideals naive utopia you’ve made of being able to go through your days willy nilly not worrying about where you next paycheque comes from starts to look more glib as time goes on . To be clear, we’re not at that stage quite yet, but the longer things go without gaining any real traction or momentum on projects I’m working on, I start to wonder what my head space will be in another 3-6 months?
As I contemplate weekly about fun project I’ve always wanted o work on or new things to learn that could feasibly someday be grown into some king of income generator, I periodically hit road blocks. The highs of a day spent making something work that didn’t work before are offset by the next day of logistical challenges, well funded competitors or dwindling markets. Since everyone and their dog are finding themselves with a shortage of work these days and starting to turn their attention to online e-commerce type business, My endeavours are moving ahead amidst a new onslaught of competition. How can I be sure my approach or offering can is better and can survive amount the others.
A lifelong fantasy of mine has always been to be able to sustain myself financially from nothing more than my imagination, be it a new invention or product I made that changes the world, to making new and exciting music, or some kind of writing, etc. Something that gets birthed from my brain solves a problem or provides value to people and I can go on perpetually like this forever, not having to ever rely on outside sources of income ever again. This fantasy is also offset by my greatest fear, which is a fear of failure and wasting a large chunk of my life building something that is worthless, meaning that I have a very long list of false starts and abandoned projects that I have deemed to be not worth my time and not feasible to pursue. If I’m going to continue down this path, I need to find some method to push past these barriers, defeat these inner demons and get out of my own way. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, and others have been in this position and managed to persevere. If you are one of these people, I would love to hear your story.