I feel fear while I write these words.

If you asked me yesterday what I was doing awake at 5 a.m. every day, I would have answered studying X or Y. It was software development with the goal of upskilling, or Japanese with the goal of taking the N1. Or electronics. Or maths for electronics. There’s always something new to learn, and there’s no better time than those few hours in the morning while everybody is still sleeping to engage your brain at its fullest. No distractions, some white noise in your ears, and go. It’s pleasant, overall. Frustrating when you’re trying to pack 13 years of mathematics into a few months, but also rewarding when you can turn off the book and see it “completed”. There’s an undeniable rush that comes from completing tasks and solving problems; it’s one of the reasons humanity never settles for the status quo, and learning from a book or course offers a clear, visible progression.

I wrote a post a few years ago on one of my countless, abandoned blogs, called My Rules for Life - Rule 1: Have a Journey for a Goal. The goal was to write several posts about the rules I live by. I wrote two and abandoned it, which is, I guess, emblematic of making the point of this post. In that post, I described my struggle with a constant sense of loss, where I would ask myself “what now?”, dreading each milestone because of the necessity it created to find a new one. My conclusion was not to focus on arriving anywhere, but on the journey. Learning to appreciate every day, not seeing life as a collection of steps but a continuum of moments. It’s something I still struggle with, living day by day, but undeniably coping much better after having found some stability in a relationship and more or less in a career. But those moments still happen where I find myself lost, empty, unable to see a road ahead and afraid I might be stuck in a situation that, as nice as it is, still clashes with my ambition and dreams. I do try to tell myself “if it were to stay like this forever, it would not be that bad” but I work differently, needing change and excitement and things to look forward to. There’s a lot to dig into when it comes to why I am the way I am, but I learned overanalysing is pointless and going nowhere and, sir, I have a point to make.

King of Loss

As a quick recap, the first time I remember this strong sense of loss was after high school and before going to university. I was constantly worrying about the future and had no idea what to do or where to go. I spent four years trying to figure out what to do. Hopping between jobs that wouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks and then spending my time at home, doing very little. I was the opposite of ambitious and “hungry”. I was comfortable in the life my parents had built for us, but I wasn’t happy. I was lost and had no guidance. Not going to rehash too much, but in the end, my choice was to take a risk and hit the books, going to university to challenge myself. I thought I was smart, hell, people accused me of thinking of being smarter than everybody else, but I had no achievements to show off and, when challenged, I would retreat. I was terrified of getting out and being recognised as a fraud. I wish I recognised this pattern instead.

The hunger eventually emerged. When I had my first job that paid well, at least for my age and for where I was, it was a rush of adrenaline. I didn’t hate waking up and facing the day; it was fun, it was rewarding, and, for the first time in my life, I was independent. I went from an entire life of dependence on my parents to never, not even once, having to ask for money and help. It was a subtle yet monumental shift, not only of my monetary conditions but of my mindset. And yet, that feeling of “is this enough? Is this what I want?” emerged again. While most of the people around me seemed content with that bare minimum, I had something pushing me to go forward and try new things. There’s a long line from there to this very moment. A long string of successes and some failures, for a career that was not going to work because I was job hopping, changing careers too much, and looked unstable, being the nail that sticks out. If I were to jump all the way back in time to meet myself at the start of the line to have a chat about the future, I probably wouldn’t believe me.

— You will do X, make Y, deal with Z, buy W, but here’s the catch, you’ll always be afraid. That fear is never going away. Learn to recognise it and embrace it. Also, get checked for that itchiness in your butt. — Wow, I will… wait, what?

I have been called brave and a risk-taker, as a compliment. From the outside, I understand why some people would think that, but the truth is different. Risk-taker has a negative connotation, bringing to mind either recklessness or gullibility. But I’m not the kind of person who jumps off cliffs and/or gambles all his money (or even a small part of it) on the get-rich-quickly scheme that is popular in his surroundings that week. My risks have been changing countries, leaving a stable job, leaving a girlfriend I could have built a life with, and so on. I think it’s natural for people to cling to what they have instead of letting go. My guts, though, often disagree with that common sense. I didn’t leave my home country, family, and friends to jump into the unknown because I was ambitious or was looking for a better life. It wasn’t courage but desperation that made me take those risks. I was full of uncertainty and self-doubt, again thinking I wouldn’t make it because so many things could go wrong. My head was stormed by these feelings, but my guts were pointing that way, and I had to go. Is that courage? I felt a gun to my head. Courage, in a way, would have been sticking to the status quo.

Creative tendencies and where to find them

Let’s jump back to today. I discussed my feeling periodically lost and my guts pointing in a specific direction. What I have purposefully omitted so far is my coping strategy for all these years: learning. Learning has become some kind of an addiction. My life was saved by university; I went from being hopeless to believing in myself. From afraid to ambitious. My career was shaped by those long hours spent to become a software engineer. My move from junior to mid to senior to lead to principal has happened, in large part, because of my desire to upskill. But it’s also become a crutch that is holding back another side of me.

I’ve always been creative, but I’ve always lacked truly dedicating myself to one thing. I have always been able to sing in tune and reach high notes, so I have sung in a few bands, have tried a few musical instruments, but never really gotten amazing at them. Okay, at best. Because becoming really good at something requires a ton of effort. You soon hit the point of diminishing returns and think “ugh, that’s hard” and stop. I don’t know if it’s normal, but it has been for me. That’s been another constant all my life. I have picked up a thousand different things I got good at as long as it was easy, to then abandon them the moment I realised proper effort was necessary. I think I developed some kind of aversion to difficulties, at least in the creative sphere, but I still have not lost the motivation. I have in the back of my head that someday I’ll write my own songs, you know, when I’m good enough at X and Y. As if that was the way things get done. As if, magically, I will reach the point where I’m good enough at that things I need and I can finally start getting things done. I wish that was all, because I could have just dismissed it as “you simply don’t want it enough, or you’d make it happen”. Magic thinking. It’s happened with so many things. It’s happened with software development, electronics, 3D printing, 3D modelling, 3D graphics (lots of 3Ds, I know), machine learning, cooking, content creation, being filmed, editing, etc. It’s been painful because, as the number of things I wanted to do kept piling up, I felt more and more like I was accomplishing nothing. And I’m speaking in past tense, where this has been more or less where I was 3 days ago.

Why did it take so long to see this pattern and how does it relate to the rest? We go back to my love for learning. It’s not that I have been just thinking about the things above while spending my day browsing Instagram (though I spend an unhealthy amount of time browsing X) and watching Love Island, because I’m not. I’ve been hoarding courses and tutorials on the things I need to learn before I can actually build. I’m probably a few thousand in with all the shit I’ve bought and mostly left there. Buying tutorials gives you the illusion of acquiring knowledge. So now, before being able to do X, I have to take N1 courses, read N2 books and work on N3 mock projects. While life goes on, you get old and some doors will eventually close forever. It’s been slowly killing me, while I, consciously, kept doing it to myself. But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And my hammer is my track record, where learning brought me here so, goes without saying, learning must be the path forward. And I don’t want to dissuade anyone from doing that, absolutely, I’m a big advocate for it, but for god’s sake, my first reaction to anything CANNOT be “I will take a 15-hour course on it”. It’s unsustainable and it needs to stop.

This wouldn’t be an issue if it also hadn’t affected another pattern, which I found while reading Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals: The fact is I reason in “things I have to do”, which have priority over the things I want to do. But, in my twisted head, the things I have to do never end, so the things I want to do never come. Is it self-sabotage? Am I doing it to myself? I don’t care and it’s irrelevant. It’s just another destructive pattern one can masquerade with stoicism: After all, I do the important things first, no? The issue is, I’m unhappy because my brain is a creative machine with stupid ideas that never get realised because other things are in the way. And I put them all there, perfectly lining them in a creative way that keeps me busy and prevents me from the greatest of all sins: failure.

The Human Condition and The Illusion of Control

Why would you not create, if you think you were made to create? It makes no sense and yet I lived so many years with that contradiction. And it makes sense because, analysing it, I realised the issue would clearly be that, well, anything I make would just suck. And I don’t like being bad at things, I guess. My fear is that any creative outcome would not be up to my imaginary, probably impossibly high standards, and therefore I can’t expose my ideas at my current skill level, because I would burn them on subpar projects so… nothing happens, got to be good at being good first…?

I tend to complain (one of the few things I’m actually REALLY good at) a lot about people playing it too safe, thinking they should realise life IS uncertainty. Death is always lurking around, people around us come and go, we change constantly. That is probably what propels me forward. I can’t stand still, can’t just accept a few months or years of wait. It’s a strong itch throughout my entire body, that only gets better once I do what I (feel I) need to. I remember being a child and being puzzled by other children wanting something and saying “I’ll ask it for my birthday” or “I’ll get it at Christmas”. That’s… nine months away, kid. It felt like an eternity… and it was. This has obviously not translated into energy to achieve any of the aforementioned goals. In a twisted way, it’s like all the energy and creativity has been channeled on a plan that keeps me entertained, with the promise of a creative outlet at the end of the road. But, after decades of walking down that path, I’m just realising there is no end in sight. I have to make a turn and go a different way.

But, here’s the kick. At least it felt like there was a road to walk down to. It did, in a way, feel like progressing. Planning, setting things up, entertaining myself to distract me from those things I’m powerless against. The illusion of control that comes from making small turns skiing down a ravine, ignoring the chance of an avalanche putting an end to your run.

I’ve been extremely metaphorical in my explanation so far, so I’ll try to write it down clearly and not sound like a complete lunatic (partial is fine). My long planning phases of having to learn X and Y to do Z have been my way to control things, knowing that once I have achieved that satisfactory level of expertise and knowledge, I can finally try without failing. Something that makes no sense, but sitting down and reading a book, following the natural progression from 1 to 10 is much easier than a blank page. Only the latter is a true judgement of yourself and your character. Where on top of the challenge (which might be potentially higher in a book), you have to also provide structure and goals. It is terrifying, because any creative endeavour ends up being a mirror and there is very little you can do once it’s laid out in front of you. This is, at least, my situation. It’s not something I think works in absolute, I expect that for many others a blank page is the easier choice than linear algebra. Technical stuff IS hard, but at least it’s clear to me what’s on the next page and the effort can be focused on the few steps between there and now.

Breaking the Status Quo and the Art of Letting Go

What prompted all of this and what am I doing differently this time? Well, as crazy as it sounds, AI had a part in it. After months of prompting ways to be productive and achieve my goals, models smart enough are able to see that I’ve been using it as a form of extreme procrastination. After prompting how to do this, how to do that and explaining all the projects I was (thinking about) working on, the large language model gave it to me rough, by showing what I was doing every single time and how pointless my questions had become. No, I did not suddenly tune an LLM to be mean and roast me, I simply asked: ‘You “know” me a bit now, you know what my skills are, what I’m able to do, and what I suck at. I would like some feedback on how be better at the things I’m not so good at’. It gave me a proper plan, that involved stopping everything, EVERYTHING else I was doing in my anti-productive frenzy and just focusing on a few things. It gave me tight deadlines and helped me remove bloat. Step one is writing this. That’s the goal for an entire week, since I have to still include time to work and, you know, live my life. The goal is to focus on delivery, with the point of accepting that things will not be good enough just by wishing them to be. To train those shipping muscles, starting one little step at a time.

I can’t say this plan will work in its current iteration, I’m feeling again that sense of loss after deciding to let go of so much, but it also feels like a new beginning. One where I don’t spend time creating myself a path forward but just walk in the direction my guts tell me to walk towards. No overthinking, no insecurity, just do. In the first three days I’ve already accomplished a lot. The truth is, I know what I want. I’ve known it for a long time, but I don’t know how to get there and I cannot possibly know without taking a few steps forwards. I need, once again, to jump into the unknown.

I feel a bit less fear while I re-read this post, but I’m still frightful because of what I’m doing. I kept telling myself every good thing I have came from sitting down and learning. But the truth is different. That has undeniably helped, but my life has been a countless number of leaps of faith. I thrived by throwing myself into the unknown. I was scared shit of not being good enough. I still am. But for some karma-adjacent mystery, life seems to reward the boldness of jumping into the cold river and swimming against the tide. In my room in late 2016, on the verge of turning 30, it wasn’t learning to code that kickstarted my career. It was quitting my job and starting looking for any opportunity. It wasn’t learning in 2008 that made me decide to quit an awful job and get a university degree or die trying. It was challenging myself while not being sure I could even do it. It wasn’t a book on relationships and dating that made me take a chance and move fast with my girlfriend, it was another head-first dive into the abyss. I felt that same fear every single time I had to put myself out of the comfort zone, when I realised the lifelong dream of moving to Japan, when I left a well-established life there to move to London. When I quit a good job to chase something better. When I said yes to things I didn’t think I was qualified for. And I look back at each one of those terrifying moments as life-defining and thank the stars I listened to that voice that, among the uncertainty, through the fear, kept whispering “keep going”.