A Day Before Chrismas
24th, I still feel the heaviness of taking the path of doing the things that I have an incling towards for business — to make money.
The uncertainities are so uncomfortable, it makes me want to just quit the path and seek a 9–5, but I seek encouragement both from me and external sources when it happens, sometimes I do nothing or just go through the emotions of it till they quiete down.
Till March this year I was holding down a job that paid me just below middle class level salary in the city — Nairobi. Despite the usefulness of the income there was a lot of stress, anxiety, fear of job loss, no career advancement, and half heartedness towards the jobs since I had no intrinsic motivation to do it etc. With time these factors became unberable — then the job ended.
I have been in the fitness industry as a coach for 9 months now, since I have focussed more on education — getting qualification paperwork I haven’t been able to monitize it in a big way. This will be my biggest aim for 2024. Build business — products and systems that will ensure I earn while benefiting clients in a sustainable and scalable way. I have experimented abit and I have a feel on how to go about it abit.
I have about 4 months worth of savings to sustain me comfortbly at my level of living in the city assuming no emergencies, I will aim to increase my income from January to postpone this period and ease pressure on myself.
I have been living main off savings the past year, investing a lot in education and some ventures that some saw failure and some success, it has felt like it has hit the failure side than success mostly.
My story is the typical one of someone who had no passion in what they did in campus, hence just completed and got a barchelors that is now just gathering dust and opted to venture into areas of natural interest.
The upside has been that my anxiety and inner conflict and such type negative emotions have reduced greatly, I find myself going 2–3 days with almost no such feeling, that’s a big personal achievement for me since all the time I worked for someone I had this looming anxiety that completely messed up the quality of my life. The downside is that I have not yet made enough cashflow from it. I tell myself that I would accept abit less money and keep my peace and have more control over my time. That’s what is happening right now.
The biggest challenge has been to devote myself 110% to this pursuit that it colors everything I do. I still find that I spend time in things that are not directly related to it, online media consumption is at the top of the list. But everyday I live I win myself over abit to this craft — the parts of myself that are hung up on ideas such as; ‘may be I should just get a job and have this fitness thing as a hobby’, ‘may be it’s not a lucrate path for career’, ‘may be it is a lesser or low-level job’, etc. I remind myself of the reasons why I decided to embark on this path — which was mainly to attain freedom, I deeply believed that I could be free working for someone else, I figure this after working for 4 years. I desire to be free, deeply free.
What I actually desire is to move freely — this means that I am at peace with where I am now, and the next step etc. I have come to lose belief in the idea that freedom and peace come eventually. I tend to believe that if I do not have them now. I won’t have them later. Or if I have work for them now and have it later — work for it in a struggle, anxiety, inner conflicted way, etc — it won’t be a worthy price to pay. I might end up losing a limb on the way. I want to arrive whole.
The things I need to work on are planning, products, pricing and market for my breakthough to happen. I will figure it out.
This is me on the eve of Chrismas.
Merry Christmas and A Happiness New Year! Let’s Meet on the Otherside….
