Lifestyle Design

*brushes the dust off of the page*

Hello again.

A lot has changed for me in the time since my last post.

I stopped posting when I found that I simply didn’t have enough hours in the week for everything I wanted to pack in.  Job, relationship, blogging, gaming with friends, non-work-related programming projects…  it was just too much.  So I dropped the blogging and the non-work programming, and what was left fit into the time allotted.

But it still didn’t feel right.  The crux of the problem was the job.  It was the single largest demand on my time, and simultaneously the one that brought me the least satisfaction and joy.  It brought me a paycheck and paid for my basic needs, but I didn’t really enjoy the work itself, and I very much resented the phenomenal drain on my time and energy.

Then, last July, I hit a very rough patch.  In the space of six weeks, I was broken up with, hospitalized, operated on, hit by a bus, and fired.

Yeah.

It was two and a half months from my hospitalization to the time I was well enough to return to work, and upon my recovery, my former employer welcomed me back immediately.  Apparently they fired me during my disability simply so they would not have to pay for my benefits in the mean time.  I worked for a couple of months, and then in December had a follow-up surgery, from which I am still recovering.

When my disability expired last week, I contacted my employer to inform them I would not be returning.  I’m cutting loose and doing my own thing for a while.  So here’s what’s on the agenda:

1. Savings.  I have savings enough to see me through about ten months if nothing unexpected and expensive happens.  So realistically, let’s call it six months.  In this time I’ll be practicing my writing, programming, and web design skills and working on my own projects.  There are a lot of them!  Working on this blog will be part of this phase, so expect to see more content soon!  There will also likely be some volunteer projects in these fields.
2. Freelancing.  I will be looking for short-term paid projects, primarily in programming and web design, but I’d love to try freelance writing as well.  That would be a nice bonus.  Any income from this phase would, I’m guessing, not be enough to live off of, but every penny counts — it would certainly extend the lifespan of my savings.
3. Full-on self-employment.  Ultimately, the goal is to create a business that will support me indefinitely without the need for a job.  Presently I’m thinking of either selling my own software (most likely games), or creating a retail website with a friend of mine to sell games and comics online.

Beyond that, I have no idea.  I think it would be silly to try to plan anything beyond that point, as my life will look so different after these three phases that I can’t imagine I’d have the same priorities I have today, nor can I imagine what options will have opened to me that I simply cannot see right now.

As I work this plan, I will be posting here more often, but the focus of the blog may shift a bit.  I want to try some new things and see where they take me, so get ready for more content, some changes, and possibly more variety.

That’s what’s in store for the next few months — and if you’re looking for a freelance programmer, web designer, or writer, drop me a line!

So I have undertaken this quest to uplift myself, and invited you to follow along with me and take any inspiration or ideas that you can from my experiences. Let’s begin by examining the process I’m using for self-uplift. The first step is to take stock of your life and figure out where you are right now. Then you figure out where you want to be — what you want for your life, what kind of a future you want to have. With those two points in mind, you can begin to figure out what actions you need to take to move in the direction of that future. Once you know what your first actions are, it’s time to act on them! You may find, as I did, that once you’ve started acting, your progress changes how you think about your goals — or even changes your goals altogether! If that’s the case, the process starts over again (though likely in abbreviated form — after all, you’ve already done most of the planning, so whatever comes next will likely be smaller adjustments). In the next few posts, I’ll be giving an overview of how to go about doing this.

We’ll start with the personal inventory — figuring out what your life is like now and how you feel about that, what you like and what you don’t. Don’t worry too much about your goals yet — that comes later. It’s even okay if you don’t have any goals (or don’t know what they are). For a long time, I struggled with a lack of goals, a sense of directionlessness that made it difficult to achieve anything because I didn’t know what I was working toward or why. It’s okay for now if that’s where you are. What’s important right now is simply to look objectively at the circumstances of your life and evaluate them from a perspective of figuring out what you’re happy with and what could use improvement.

This personal inventory can be as simple or complex as you want, but in keeping with the model of happiness I described in my first post, I suggest examining at least three aspects of your life:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships

Consider what you like about your life in each category, as well as what you don’t like. I highly recommend that you write these things down, because often I find that my conscious thoughts only scratch the surface of what’s really going on in my mind, and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard releases a lot of pent-up thoughts that I didn’t realize were lurking under the surface.

If things are bad, don’t let this depress you. Keep in mind that taking an honest look at where you stand now is a crucial first step to fixing the things that you don’t like about your life and figuring out how to get to where you want to be. A map to the Promised Land will do you no good if you don’t know where you are on that map right now. The purpose of this exercise is simply to get your bearings, to understand your life as it is today so that later on, once you’ve determined the destination, you have a way of figuring out how far away that destination is and in which direction. If there are some things that you are unhappy about, acknowledge that, own it, and remind yourself that what you’re doing right now is taking the first step on the road to changing those things.

Conversely, if there are things that you are satisfied with, happy about, that bring you joy, be sure to write those down too! Appreciating the positive can be just as good a motivation as a desire to change the negative, so don’t ignore either side of the equation. Look for the good in each situation, even if the good is simply that it isn’t worse than it is! It’s important to identify and acknowledge the things that are good about your life — both because these things will help see you through any rough spots along the way, and because if you’re going to go through a process of change, you should know what you DON’T want to change, too!

With your personal inventory done, you’ll have a more-or-less accurate picture of what your life looks like now. Do something to reward yourself for having done some hard, honest, self-examination, and take a break to decompress before moving on to the next step. You don’t want to get burnt out before you start seeing results from this process!

In my next post, I’ll examine the next step in the process: figuring out what kind of a life you really want!

Meanwhile, talk back! If you have any questions or comments, please share them in a comment below. I’d especially like to hear anything you have to say about your results if you performed this exercise. Tell me what you think!