When I sleep alone I fall asleep with my phone laptop kindle vape pencil pen dog AirPods and water bottle strewn around me on the bed like some kind of ancient pharaoh buried with all his most prized possessions
Not only will I show up and send emails and do the thing, but I'll do so with a version of myself that's excited and optimistic and ultimately, more attractive.
People love people who visibly love the game. The secret sauce is fun.
Looking for a diff job was daunting. So much unknown, so much effort, tension, upheaval, uncertainty. Hard when I can't even imagine what for. Defeatist mindset.
The prospect of "same job, but it feels like this other thing" is enticing enough to defeat the threshold.
Bit sad to imagine what the last decade could have been, but it's cool. Things are going better now.
It's a lot easier to make peace with a painful past when you're excited about the immediate future.
But it all only happened because I showed up and worked with the garage door open. I've been doing all kinds of maker bullshit etc for years, at home by myself, in a way that guaranteed none of those doors would ever open.
In the right place, just doing you on autopilot seems to always work out. Even mistakes go over soft. The words for apology come easy, and land with no love lost.
All the shame and avoidance thresholds are low enough that they can be gotten through.
Earnestness feels like a cheat code for this. There are places where my flavor of thought, language, etc does not feel aligned, is clearly not a vibe fit. That's okay.
I only found this because I gave myself permission to just do the bullshit work/play I couldn't stop thinking about. And permission to show up as me, instead of costumemaxxing or vying for cred/status.
I did not expect the side groupchats to be a neuroatypical mens club of people who all instantly "get it", share the same struggles, help carry or shrug away the heavy stones.
Lately I've found some hobby stuff that is so deeply rewarding, but kinda niche. And I signed up and just sorta started tentatively doin me in public. And wow, the results were so unexpected.