Back about ten-ish years ago, my frustrations used to feel a lot more like bitterness and petty jealousy than they do now. And it was because I saw people all around me doing and accomplishing the shit I knew damn good and well that I should've been doing myself.
And the cognitive dissonance caused me a lot of stress and anxiety for way too long.
I've been thinking about that lately because these days, I'm still a little frustrated, but it feels a little different now.
Back during what I call my waking coma years in my memoir, I was in a place where I was just kind of going nowhere with my life. I was just kind of existing, and that was about it. At some point, after a couple years of that, I made a decision to go to nursing school. To this day, I'm still not sure what made me decide to do it, but I think I just wasn't done yet. I knew I wasn't done growing and becoming something more than what I had become. Which, at the time, I didn't feel like was very much.
Nowadays, I'm just out here trying to create something that'll help me earn a living outside of my daily 9-to-5. Something that'll give my wife and me a little more time and financial freedom.
And so nowadays, my frustration is more about a sense of urgency, with maybe a little bit of sadness and regret thrown in because I didn't start sooner. I know I have less time to do what I need to do now, and I feel that.
But I'm glad that I'm not bitter and angry anymore. I've started to take action and do some of the things I've always wanted to try.
And as I've written about before, that action is helping to create confidence that I lacked because now my brain has evidence that I really can do and stick to hard things.
But yeah, no doubt…I'd still like things to happen a lot faster, and I do sure wish I would have started sooner.
From the Workbench
My morning content routine is up and running. The system I mentioned last week now gets all my social posts and video scripts ready for me every morning automatically. The best part, though, is that it uses all my own writing and other material that it finds. I still go through all the drafts and do the editing, even though I wrote them to begin with and some still need some changes because it isn't all evergreen content, but the routine that preps and gathers everything without me having to do it every day is freekin great.
Hank's working across more of my tools. Hank is the AI assistant I've been building to help keep my projects and knowledge base organized. This week I got Codex and Claude using the same project instructions and specialist workflows. I love it because each model has its own pros and cons, and having the ability to work inside of one and then have the other one pick right up where I left off is super valuable.
Trail Marker
What's something you've started doing that's given you more confidence in yourself? Hit reply and tell me.