This year was hard. Really hard. I wrote a different version
of this post originally, but it came off too shallow. I wrote of
numbers, of data and statistics, but the human version of my story
throughout 2023 was conspicuously missing.
Consider this to be that human version. Though I’ll include some data,
the numbers only tell part of the tale. Instead, I want to focus on what
I achieved this year, and what I learned that I can take forward into
the new year.
My year was about perseverance and the value of making small,
incremental improvements over time. It was also about
exploring my purpose, my “life’s work,” so to speak, and how the
trials I endured this year led me closer than ever to finding it.
Though this is a review of my own personal experience this year,
I hope you'll find some helpful tidbits you can apply to your own life!
Setting
Intentions
As 2023 began, I wasn’t in a great mental space. I was in an unhealthy
spot in my relationship, was beginning to think I’d never get to own
the business I’d poured myself into for six years, and had a complete
and staggering lack of purpose.
Faced with a future of uncertainty, one where I wasn’t sure if I’d
continue to have my partner, my house, or even my job, I had to start
figuring things out. I knew I could stay at my job, but I didn’t know
if it was the right choice.
The same went for my relationship, and other lingering elements of my
life I hadn’t come to terms with yet, but desperately needed to face.
I started by trying to find my purpose.
The truth is, I had no idea how to face those decisions at the time,
let alone how to make the right choices. I didn’t know where I was
trying to go. I would get so stuck each time, paralyzed by the fear
of what could go wrong, that I’d forget to look at the potential upside.
So, when I was setting goals for the year, that’s exactly what my
focus was: I wanted to figure out my purpose, and who I wanted to
become.
I’m turning 30 next year, which I'm honestly kind of excited about,
but it got me thinking nonetheless.
I knew that I loved being a dad, and that supporting our family was
important to me. He was the light of my life, in addition of course to
his mom and our cat. Really, I think becoming a dad irrevocably
changed my life.
See, before I became a dad I didn’t have much direction or care. I was
depressed and kind of drifting, even when I liked my life and the
things in it. I didn’t think much of the future and kept kicking the
can down the road about where I was going and what my purpose would be.
When I became a dad, it made me consider the future in a new way.
I wasn’t just looking out for myself anymore; people depended on me.
That ended up being a really healthy thing for me.
So for 2023, I figured I should get it all sorted out. I was watching
my son start to find his opinions—his preferences—and live
according to his own interests, and it inspired me.
I still wanted to own Total Escape Games, but after waiting for years
to become an owner as we hit roadblock after roadblock, I’d begun to
realize it might not happen and that I needed to start considering
alternatives. I'd been preparing to move into the tech industry
already since 2020, and decided to lean further into that.
So I started learning web development to support the Fill and
Fire team better and assume more responsibility. I’d been learning
Python already but was struggling to find practical applications for
it besides data science and ML, which wasn’t so much my interest.
Web development was full of applications—the ability to create a
website on my own was exciting.
For the year, I set a single rule. “Figure out where I’m going
in life,” I told myself. This was the year of decisions. I was going
to start building momentum and roll myself out of the rut I’d worn in
over the years of struggling against outside influences.
Embarking on a
Journey
Finding my purpose was no easy task. I tried (and consumed) a great
deal of ideas, read an enormous amount of content, and packed my days
unreasonably busy in hopes that the things I valued would stick out.
I only started taking notes on every article and video I consumed late
into the year to begin building my knowledge base (great advice I got from reading
Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s articles),
but even with it starting in October I have notes for over 75 sources.
To figure out my personal life, and the tasks I value, I settled on
trying to draw more, write more, read more, study (and code) every
day, find a stretching routine that actually worked, and spend lots
of time in meditation. I wasn’t sure if all of it would stick, but
I figured trying each thing for a few weeks would quickly tell me if
I enjoyed it and was willing to make time for it.
I added one activity at a time, giving it room to become a part of my
routine (or fall off the planet) before adding the next task. As of
writing this, I’m up to 8 activities I do every day and 2-3 more I do
a few times a week.
By building good (and healthy) routines, I started to feel better.
I paired the above goals with eating healthier, quitting energy
drinks, and sleeping more, which helped enormously in having the
energy and ability to, you know, actually follow through on that huge
list of activities I set for myself.
Over the year I paid attention to which activities invigorated me
versus the ones that felt stressful, hard, or unpleasant. It was okay
for an activity to feel hard or stressful (coding gets that way
sometimes for sure, and don’t even get me started on learning to draw),
but something that felt unpleasant was a big warning sign.
Once I’d really gotten underway trying new things and adding to my
routine, I felt more productive and confident. I was learning a lot
and was getting to see myself improve in small increments each week.
I strongly believe setting that foundation helped me to make the
grueling decisions ahead of me for the rest of the year.
Choosing to leave my relationship and break apart the family was
an immensely difficult decision, and I'll leave it at that. But it was
a decision I had to commit to, one way or the other, and it feels good
to at least know I've made it to the other side.
In the end, I realized it was time to move on. It was the
hardest decision I’ve ever made, and maybe ever will make. I think
I'll always be grateful we resolved things peacefully, and that I
still get to visit regularly, see my son (and cat), and even spend
fun, happy times with my ex-partner.
I don’t think navigating the end of our relationship is a transferable
skill, nor would I like to repeat the process of separating. But in
the end, it did push me to figure out what I truly valued in life and
carve out time/effort for those things, and it especially forced me to
be willing to make other difficult decisions in my life because, by
comparison, they were easy.
Recapping the
Year
In the end, I (mostly) came through! I have a stronger sense of
purpose, and have begun to notice which parts of my life make me
happy and which ones make me crazy.
In particular, I did a great job cultivating new habits. I followed
my own advice from my
first-ever blog post about building habits
and finished the year feeling confident in my new routine(s).
Throughout the year, I:
Meditated every day
Stretched every day except Sundays (I take one day off each week)
Read something on 330 days
Drew or designed something on 334 days
Wrote/edited code on 342 days
I discovered a new love for web development. I was infatuated
with the tech industry overall and had been loving the challenges
we’d been working to overcome with Fill and Fire. But that was UX and
Product Design. Getting to actually code and implement the interfaces,
the designs, the animations, and the user experience improvements
myself was mesmerizing.
I spent a lot of time exploring my drawing habits. What I discovered
is I don’t like feeling like I have to draw for some kind of
deadline, but that having specific prompts helps force me to improve. Doing
Inktober
was an amazing exercise, and while it was pretty stressful, I loved the results of what I was able to create.
Finally making the time to read books was amazing. I love it a lot.
Like way more than I like reading articles, and especially more than I
like reading newsletters. The latter is because I realized after subscribing
to tons of different ones all year that I dislike newsletters on average.
I found a couple of great newsletters which I still read daily.
The Maker Mind Newsletter
from Anne-Laure Le Cunff is an excellent resource for getting to know
ourselves better and setting our lives up for success.
Every
is a beautifully crafted daily newsletter that never fails to surprise
and delight me (not to mention teach me new ideas).
But I probably cut 10-12 others from my routine throughout the year.
The pressure of having an inbox full of reading every morning was
awful, stressful, and bad. I started each day feeling behind. So that
got cut pretty quickly.
Ignoring digital content, I also read 8 full books this year. I
thoroughly enjoyed 6 of them (including
Star Trek: The Classic Episodes),
felt okay about one, and hated another. I learned that I enjoy
nonfiction in moderation, but that not all nonfiction writing is
equal, and I have no patience for books packed with filler.
Finally, after many years, I managed to get into the groove with daily
meditations and stretching, and am happy to say I can comfortably
touch my toes for the first time since I was in high school and
actively involved in martial arts.
Finding
Purpose
It turns out, there’s more to me than being a dad. It also turns out
that being a dad is really damn important to me. Go figure.
My son is still my number one priority, and I'm excited to watch him
continue to grow, learn, and develop as a person. His happiness is
infinitely linked to my own, and even in the most challenging of times,
having him in my life helps push me forward and encourages me to be
the best version of myself.
It's been hard balancing my ambitions against being in his life often
enough for him to feel secure, but it's a balancing act I must learn
to master. Though I've discovered a strong passion for business and
entrepreneurship this year, I refuse to be an absentee parent, and
am keeping that top-of-mind as I continue to progress in my career.
At the same time, as this post is published, I am officially one of three
owners of Total Escape Games, joined by two long-time business
partners and dear friends of mine! It feels like a new chapter of my
life has just begun, like this is a moment I’ll remember deep into my
later years.
I feel a great sense of purpose and accomplishment in the work I’ve
done for the store, both in building a great experience for customers
and in learning to become a good, ethical manager who takes care of
his team. Getting to finally own the business is a huge breath of
fresh air, and has revitalized my excitement to keep running the store.
With that in mind, another piece of my purpose-puzzle is building
community and creating great experiences. I deeply enjoy
achieving big goals through my business prowess and growing industry
knowledge.
I reconnected with my Psychology degree throughout this year, finding
new parallels between what I learned in school and UX, business
leadership, marketing, and effective website design.
Tying all those pieces together helped me realize I do love
Psychology, just not in the clinical sense. I value practical
Psychology, easily applied to life’s problems and goals, rather than
the overly cerebral conceptual Psychology of higher education.
By combining all of the different disciplines I explored this year, I
came out of the crucible with a new understanding of how all my
seemingly-divergent interests interweave. This funneled into a single
idea: experience.
What I truly value, and what gets me more excited
than anything else, is creating things that elicit a certain reaction
from others. This applies to building websites, designing good UX,
revising procedures and workflows, and writing.
Really, as long as I can create things, and those things make other
people feel, I’m happy.
Looking
Ahead
For 2024, I want to focus on community outreach, business growth, and
creativity.
Since I’m officially an owner of Total Escape Games, it feels
appropriate to spend the year focusing on business growth. I want to
see TEG modernize, both in branding (it’s 15 years old and due for a
facelift) and in operations. I think we’re already in a good spot,
but I want to become truly excellent.
By focusing on business, I’m starting to build my life’s work.
Outside of work, I want to connect with the local small business
community in Broomfield, Colorado. I want to join the local chamber of
commerce, spend more time partnering up with business owners in the
area, and help grow the community with my expertise.
I’m also excited to learn from the incredible business owners in the
area.
By engaging with the community, getting to know other professionals in
the area, and providing valuable services to the people around me, I
can also contribute to my budding life’s work.
Finally, I want to expand my creative outlets. I’m already working to
become proficient at using Adobe Illustrator, and have been using
InDesign a lot more, which means I get to create more graphics and
design elements for work and my other projects. I also want to create
some cool personal pieces of art, and have already queued up a 30-day
drawing exercise for next year.
Drawing
Conclusions
At the beginning of 2023, I thought the world was more black and
white. I felt like things were either good or bad, and decisions were
either right or wrong. I agonized over making the “right” decisions
and choosing the “good” things.
What I’ve realized, however, is that often things exist more on a
spectrum than a binary scale. Decisions tend to be neither right nor
wrong, and either choice has consequences.
Being able to realize this truth has helped me get unstuck and start
moving forward again. I made some difficult choices this year, and
those decisions freed me up to explore my future.
That freedom helped me make incremental changes to my life, explore my
own history and mind, and find a deep passion for the human experience.
I’ve begun to walk the path ahead of me towards my life’s work.
If I had to leave you with one takeaway from this year, one piece of
advice if you’re experiencing any of the struggles I’ve felt, it’s this:
just make a decision.
The agony leading up to the decision is usually far worse than the
consequences and clean-up of the decision itself. And you can’t move
forward, and find what you love in life, if you’re not willing to make
hard choices.
So start making decisions. Try a new food. Explore a new hobby. Visit
a new place. Then, if you love it, lean in. If you don’t, make the
decision to stop.
Just, whatever you do, try to make the choice yourself. Because if
you don’t, I've discovered the people and circumstances around you
tend to eventually make them for you.
Remember: life is what you make of it, and it’s your story to tell.
Happy New Year, and may we all find success in 2024!