500 Words a Week - You’re doing fine.
One of the misconceptions we get told is that life is short, as a result we are rushing through it wondering if we have made the right decisions, worrying that we aren’t progressing as fast as our peers, fearful that we don’t have our next step forward lined up. Life is long, we have the time available to try new things and fail, we have the time available to look a fool and recover, to start over and catch up. Despite life being long, time is still one of the most precious commodities that when we spend it, we can’t get it back. The only thing that matters is that you enjoy how you spend it. One person might enjoy spending their time binge watching programmes, another might enjoy going for a walk every day, another might enjoy writing 500 words a week that no one reads.
So what you aren’t sure what you are currently doing will be what you will always do, so what you feel you have arrived to a new profession late in your career, so what you want to spend a year living in the woods. Life gives us these affordances. Just like a book has many chapters so too does our life. Details can be learned, experiences must be lived, and I would argue that experiences transfer better across different fields than specific details.
Like so many have experienced through this pandemic, I’ve struggled with the feeling of uncertainty. Was the uncertainty just masked before and due to the pandemic slowing everything down and people having to spend more time pondering their thoughts, it has unveiled itself. I think there is an element to this, but the current situation has definitely caused more uncertainty than in the past. A key thing from this is that we shouldn’t feel bad for finding it hard to cope with uncertainty. Things are already hard enough at the moment, without the addition of you beating yourself up.
“The bad news is your falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.” – Chogyam Trungoa
Pandemic or not, life is uncertain, and that’s ok. We must learn to accept this, and not worry because of it.
Please do not think I believe I have this figured out, I write this piece for the hope that I will also remember it’s message as much as it will resonate with someone else.
On a side note, I would encourage you to read “The Alamanack of Naval Ravikant” by Eric Jorgenson. This was released as a free ebook, so you’ve no excuse to not give it a look. Link below.
https://www.navalmanack.com/
