A random thought will pop in my head seemingly out of nowhere. It’s important to start writing when this happens. Here’s the result of one such thought.
2021. A year into being a first time parent. A year into COVID. I was not doing well.
I needed to improve my personal life. I promised my wife if she quit her job to focus on being a mom then I would make sure she felt safe financially. We both felt like we were failing at our jobs, failing at being parents, failing at being spouses, and failing at everything else.
But for me to improve my life I needed to become someone I had never been before. It was very uncomfortable. I was a “people-pleaser”. I was raised to be nice to others, but I would lose myself in serving everyone around me, to the point where there was nothing left of me.
May 9th, 2021:
I just want to be myself and I have a hard time doing this. I like thinking and being isolated. But I am always feeling like I am not doing enough for people around me. And that gets in the way of me being content with being myself.
May 21st, 2021:
I don't know who I am anymore.
Once I got the Amazon job, I thought my problems would be solved. I thought I had “made it”. But the personal issues remained. They bled into my job, and my impostor syndrome and frustration at work bled into my personal life.
Thoughts and feelings will keep recurring until you do something about them. Life will keep presenting you the same challenges until you address the root. There’s the cliche “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Change yourself to change your world.
When I look back at my time at Amazon, it’s not what I did at my job that I’m most proud of. I’m more proud of the work I did on myself, while still accomplishing my responsibilities at work.
I set boundaries, and refused to be walked over by my first two managers.
I blocked time out on my calendar for myself.
I took mental health days off when I needed them.
I got into art therapy.
I got into EMDR therapy.
I journaled.
I built my own journaling app.
I made music.
I moved my body more.
I got myself a life coach.
I supported my wife and daughter as they experienced life in Peru for 6 months.
I survived the return-to-office mandate for 7 months while living between Peru and the US, delivered a challenging work project, all while feeling undervalued by my employer.
A lot of time was spent feeling overwhelmed, and it was not easy for my wife to see me that way. The environment at Amazon is not one I can thrive in. I interviewed at other companies after I found out about RTO but I was not having luck. I knew something was different about this job market. And my heart just wasn’t in it. I was burnt out from Amazon I didn’t want to have to start all over at a new company just to get laid off.
So what’s the point?
You can only grow so much while living out of alignment with who you truly are. You can climb the corporate ladder and keep pursuing that which you know deep down is not who you really are, but it's what you feel like you should be doing. And yeah, you can succeed in doing that, but in doing so, you need to live a life that is a lie. A lie which will ultimately harm you. Burn you out. Make you sick. And your internal battle, your internal lack of peace, will extend outward into your life in the real world.
Why do you want to learn to code?
Why do you want a new job?
Why do you want more money?
What is important to you?
Your health?
Your relationships?
Your financial stability?
What do you truly want in life?
What are your goals?
What are your dreams?
Do your goals align with your dreams?
Focus on who you are and let that guide you. Learn to be still, learn to be quiet, learn to simply observe. See how you feel as you go through your daily life, notice certain things that make you feel certain ways. That's when you can begin to tweak the parts of your life that make you feel that way. And if that happens to change your career path, then that's what will happen.