“Why am I here?”
Meh. The more I ask myself this question, the more I realize, that not only is there no concrete, objective answer, but even if there were, I wouldn’t really care.
The real question: “Given that I am here, what the heck am I supposed to do?”
Over the last couple weeks, a truth has slowly dawned on me: I am slowly and steadily losing touch with everything that I am passionate about. I find myself succumbing to boredom and procrastination because I feel like there’s nothing that I’m really excited about. Now don’t be alarmed–This is no call for help.
The truth is that I am terrified. I realize that my life is pointed directly towards a trap that could be disastrous. A trap that has been undoubtedly the cause for millions of mid-life crises. The trap? A comfortable and successful, yet less than satisfactory life.
I’ve had the privilege of coming from a strong upbringing and being taught a strong work ethic. After a combination of 18 years of hard work, luck, kissing ass, and reaping the benefits of being a phenomenal momma’s boy, I landed a spot at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. My continued success at this point is pretty much guaranteed. It’s in my nature.
So here’s my problem. Success and comfort isn’t enough. Not satisfied. I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m slowly slipping into autopilot, just doing whatever is required of me. In short, I’m losing my passion.
People’s passions generally entail getting really good at something that they care about (an instrument, martial arts, etc) The learning process itself satisfies our desire to grow. Malcom Gladwell says that to be an expert at something takes about 10,000 hours of practice. That’s a year and 2 months of 24-hour practice! So if I were a perfect learning machine, at my age of 20 years and 6 months (180,000 hours) I would be an expert at 18 things! But I’m not an expert at anything… Now that sucks.
Like most people, I’m passionate about learning new things that interest me and getting better at old things that interest me. So I’m going to lay out a plan and use my time to do that. I will make a point of always having several projects to continue my interest, motivation, and growth.
And as you may have guessed by now if you’ve read any of my other posts, I’m going to go back to the uberman sleep cycle so that I’ll have more time to do all of these things. And it will double as another interesting project.
I’ve heard people say that they do things that they dislike 60% of the time so that they can do what they love 40% of the time. No thanks. I will live my life loving 95% of the things that I do.