Reflections and lessons after three months of blogging

Make no mistake, I still have no clue what I’m doing. But after three months of displaying something resembling discipline, here are the lessons I’ve learned from committing myself to posting at least one article per week.

1. Time is like money

I’m not talking about how business people like to say ‘time is money’ even though I believe it to be true as well.

When I say time is like money, I mean that having too much time on your hands can overwhelm you.

Most people would agree that life would be so much better if only they had more time and more money to spend. I’m not here to argue otherwise. What I’m saying is if you’ve never had the experience of handling huge amounts of time or money in your life, suddenly getting a lot of them can knock the wind out of you and mess up your life.

Look at people who win lottery jackpots for example. Lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy within three to five years than the average American. And in fact about 70 percent of people who win a lottery or get a big windfall actually end up broke in a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education. This is just looking at it from the financial aspect. If you read through those two articles I’ve linked above, you will see that the costs extend to friendship, familial ties, mental health and sometimes even lives.

The same goes for time. If you know of anyone at the verge of taking a long unpaid leave (typically six months to a year), ask them what their plans are. Chances are, they’re excited about a thousand and one possibilities and have probably started doing some of them.

Maybe they want to travel, learn a new skill and spend more time with family. Maybe they want to take time to reflect and find their passion and purpose, start a business and perhaps not even return to corporate life.

It’s not uncommon to find people returning from a long leave saying, “I don’t know where all that time went. I didn’t get to do much of what I wanted at all.” And they come back because they’re all out of time and all out of money and they need to work to refill their tanks for their next big adventure. It’s not right and it’s not wrong. It just is. And it’s a position I don’t want to be in.

To outsiders, it can be deeply puzzling. How on earth can you screw away a million dollars? How in the world can you not do much in six months? How stupid can you be? If I were the one with a million dollars and six months of freedom in my hands, I would do so many great things. I wouldn’t waste a moment of it.

The thing about humans is, we are creatures of gradual change. If anything in our lives changes drastically, we freak out and lose our sense of balance and reality. This is how celebrities who shot to fame overnight start having mental health issues, how lottery winners lose their friends and families and how retirees suddenly discover that lounging around all day long doing nothing is actually a pretty miserable way to spend the rest of their lives.

Look at people who work 9-5 for instance. Most of us look forward to weekends, but have you ever gotten that feeling, “Great, it’s Saturday morning. What the heck am I supposed to do?”

You start going over your options. You could  catch up on all those chores you’ve been ignoring for the past three months. Or you could catch up with any number of friends you have or actually visit your parents. Or you could check out that new event in town. Or you could catch up on sleep. Or you could spend some me time or take a stab at that new course you’ve always wanted to do.

Sometimes the options are so numerous, you can feel paralysed at the all the opportunity costs associated with choosing to do one thing on your perfect, beautiful Saturday morning.

When it gets overwhelming, you go back to bed and wake up at 3pm and decide to vegetate in front of the TV.

If you grew up along similar lines as I did, you would have gone to kindergarten, primary school, tuition, secondary school, national service, college, internship, part-time work, university and finally working life.

In each of the above, time has always been heavily regimented and controlled. Free time never lasted more than a few hours at a time on weekdays. We were raised to be used to living within the confines of schedules and timetables. Be in school by 7:00am. Assembly starts at 7:15am. Work from 8:30am to 1:00pm. Lunch exactly for one hour, then back to your desk by 2:00pm through 6:00pm before braving the traffic for 45 minutes to get home (best case scenario).

Now imagine what happens when all those confines get taken away. Perhaps you might imagine yourself running on a white sandy beach while doing a twirl as a gentle wave caresses your feet, its foam lovingly curled around your toes as you watch the magnificent sunset paint the sky in stunning orange and purple.

That’s called a vacation. Now imagine you’re done with your vacation. You have no work, no obligation, no responsibility and realistically speaking no money for another vacation. What do you do with yourself?

This is the point when people scramble to get another job. It’s not just the money. People don’t know what to do with too much time on their hands. They get afraid even though they rarely know why.

For me, it was terrifying and it took me a while to make the connection between time and money. Thankfully, money is a subject that I am comfortable with and I know that if I were to win a lottery, I wouldn’t change much at all about my standard of living. I would still drive my old Perodua Kelisa, I would probably get myself a small apartment big enough for a single person and then invest the rest of my money in any kinds of funds that can either grow or at least preserve my wealth.

Similarly, I started thinking about time the same way. Just because I have 24 hours a day every day since quitting my job, doesn’t mean I get to spend my time however I wanted. I shouldn’t change the way I spend my day. In fact I should be improving my time management skills. I don’t sleep in if I can help it, I take deliberate rest and if I feel like spending time not doing work, I make sure it’s well-deserved and that it contributes to my general well-being.

That’s why this whole sticking to a writing schedule thing is godsend for me. With a schedule to keep on, my old friends focus and discipline came back and stayed.

I regained my sense of balance. If before I felt like I was lost on a map of infinite time, doing something has grounded me to a spot where I start charting my own map on my terms. I am no longer afraid of being outside the regiment. I create my own regiment.

TLDR: If a person who has never had a lot of money wins a lottery, there’s a 70% chance this person will go bankrupt within 3-5 years. My theory for time is similar. If you’ve never had a lot of time on your hands, suddenly having 24/7 all to yourself can drive you crazy. The lessons is, do as you’ve always done. Just because you now have a hundred million dollars doesn’t mean you have to increase your cost of living. And just because you have all the time in the world doesn’t mean you can waste time doing nothing. Find a ‘job’ to occupy you. That’s why it’s called an occupation.

2. Money is like love

I’ll be 31 years old next year and I’m still single, so I’m hardly an expert on love. But I do believe that love will come when you’re not going on a guerrilla hunt for it. You can be open to it, but you’re not supposed to force it.

Similarly, while I was still stuck in a limbo in the first year of unemployment, I thought of so many things I should be doing to start making money. I kept going back and forth between doing what my heart told me to do and what I thought would make money. I tried so many paths, finding problems that people need solving, I considered learning something completely new and I even considered driving Uber or Grab.

I’m not saying driving Uber and Grab is a bad thing. I think it’s great that so many people are doing it to supplement their income. It’s just that it’s not the most ideal occupation for a female, unfortunately. The reality is there are a lot of creeps out there, and even just walking to my local haunts I can get harassed quite a lot. Imagine the horror that can happen if several creepy psycho passenger were to ask me to drive to some secluded location.

The point I’m trying to make is my asset is intellectual (or so I would like to believe). Just because I can drive doesn’t mean I should. I simply need to find away to turn whatever is in my head into a form that is useful and can be digested by people that I want to help. Spending time doing anything else will be a waste of time for me.

The problem was, as I was busy picking my brains on the best way to make money, I lost track of my own sense of self. I forgot to consider the kind of person I am, what drives me and what excites me. For a while, I was literally turning myself into something I tried so hard to leave in the first place. I made money my first priority.

But no one in their right minds would turn to writing to be rich. It’s a lot of work, a lot of headache with small payback. So only when I shed the focus on money did I finally manage to shed all forms of pretense I had about myself. I stopped lying to myself about what I was willing to do and what I was not.

When people find out you have time, they approach you with a lot of propositions. I was offered different positions in other companies, I was offered to be a graphic designer, a marketing position, a content writer and even a manager at a small business.

But after I shifted my focus from ‘making money’ to ‘doing something I actually care about’, I started this website.

But if you’ve read some earlier posts, you will know that it didn’t start immediately as a self-improvement blog. It started as… nothing. Then it became a pseudo-travel and food blog before somehow turning into whatever it is nowadays.

And now as I approach the end of three months, I am ready for more change. They could be improvements or they could be failures, but honestly? I am all for trial and error right now. They don’t scare me anymore.

So when I stopped focusing on how to make money and start focusing on what I can do best, ideas on how to actually make money slip into my consciousness with ease, like liquid seeping into a container. They come slowly and gently, and I take my cue from there.

I will not yet reveal what plans I have because I don’t want to jinx it, but once I am more sure of my own progress, I will definitely write about it because even though I’m not sure what kind of animal I’ve created with this website, I do know that I want a lot of people to learn from my journey.

I don’t want to hide my failures and my screw ups and only show the smooth sailing side to the public because finding your own way is messy business. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. That is the truth.

Much like love, you cannot force money to come to you. You must focus on what you do best, and from there, ideas will come in the most unexpected ways on how you can capitalise on what you’re already doing. Opportunities come and go all the time. Just because it comes knocking on your doorstep doesn’t mean that that opportunity belongs to you. You create your own opportunity.

Don’t expect money to come before you’ve even started anything. Opportunities to make money will come in the middle of it. This way, you won’t be forcing yourself to do what you dislike just to make money. How’s that any different from working for a huge company? The point of doing what you like first and waiting for the money to come later is you barely have to work for the money to come because you’ve been doing what you love without the money anyway. Money is a bonus.

TLDR: Don’t force yourself to come up with an idea to make money. It’s not sustainable and even if it works, it’ll wear you down. Start with what you believe in, and work your way from there. Money will find its way to you once you start solving problems for people. The best thing? It comes naturally to you.

3. Your assets need to be protected and strengthened

When I started my writing journey, there were many times when I felt like my articles were stupid and that I was going nowhere and doing nothing. Sometimes an odd message or email from random people telling me how much my articles are helping them would help me get by, but I soon learned that I cannot depend on something so irregular and unreliable to fuel my commitment.

I sat and thought about it and discovered with much gratitude that on the glass half-full, half-empty spectrum, I am on the positive, idealistic side of things.

But as with spectrums, if I don’t learn to defend my position, I can easily slide along the lines to join the cynics and the jaded.

I thought about all the things that contributed to my positivity and my general happy, laid-back attitude to life. I inspected the way I work, my habits and how I felt before and after doing certain things.

After a while, what I found out was quite simple. I am only human and I am deeply affected by very human things. If I don’t have enough sleep, my diet is crap and I haven’t exercised, I am more prone to feeling negative. If I let myself hang around skeptics, I will doubt myself more. If I let negative voices fill my space, I will be negative.

It’s common sense, but the horrible thing about common sense is they are so common they become invisible. We know hanging out with people who have a certain bile in the way they converse is not good for our general well-being. But we tolerate it, thinking, “It’s not like we’re close friends. And it’s just five minutes of my time and after this I’ll go and have lunch with my friends and things will be lovely.”

We think we are tough and can weather a lot of bullshit and still remain an awesome person. But the truth is, we are deeply susceptible to external influences. People you see who remain awesome, humble, kind and positive are that way because they refuse to accept negative nonsense. They understand that human personality is a dynamic thing and if they treasure a certain characteristic like enthusiasm or positivity, it is a trait that needs to be protected by building a perimeter to prevent miserable people from crossing.

So if you are an idealistic person raring to make a change in the world, leave the cynics behind. Cynics love to comment on how things will not work without lifting a finger themselves. When something does work, they will say, “Congrats, you solved one problem out of a million.”

It’s a losing battle. There’s no point standing there and talking to them because they will affect you more than you can affect them. If they do manage to break you and turn you into a cynic, it’s not like there are wonderful perks for being a member of the club. They’re like freaking devils in the form of crabs in a bucket, trying to pull everyone into the hellhole that is their miserable dirty plastic yellow bucket so everyone can be as miserable as they are.

If someone tells you you’re making a mistake, tell them it’s your mistake to make, not theirs. If they say it’s going to fail, tell them their past experiences do not translate into a freaking magical crystal ball. You might be wrong and they might be right, but it’s better to be wrong than to be a tired, cynical person who does nothing to better the world because deep down, they are afraid of disappointing themselves.

If you’re young and idealistic, rejoice in your idealism. They wish they could get it back. If the whole world is made of cynics, we’d all still be living in a cave. Or we’d all be extinct.

I guard my positivity and enthusiasm like a jealous person guards his/her spouse. How do I guard it?

I make sure that I get at least eight hours of sleep every day. I exercise for one hour every single day, sometimes two hours. I try to eat healthy. I have great relationship with my family and friends. I forgive myself for my blunders because dwelling on my mistakes will only make me miserable. I don’t hang out with negative people. I don’t watch or read tabloid news because it’s full of bile and lies. I avoid people who sound angry or miserable like the plague. When the computer screen is too bright for my eyes, I go outside and stare at trees and plants and appreciate the occasional breeze. When my brain is too tired, I go to the garden and do some manual labour. I pull out weeds and get soil under my fingernails. When I start feeling jaded, I watch movies and eat chocolate. When I need some alone time, I play my guitar or take our my watercolour set. I let go of old hurt and pain and I try to see the best in people. If I can’t see the best in a particular someone, I erase them from existing in my brains.

So when I do all this, my general well-being is strong enough to support myself on days that I doubt myself. I do everything in my power to keep my emotional reserve full and ever-ready to be topped up from multiple sources.

Take care of your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Take care of the people who love you unconditionally and remove the negative ones from your life, even if they happen to be a family member. When I say remove or erase, I don’t mean eradicate the bridge that ties you to that person. I just mean don’t include them in your inner circle. When they are ready to be pleasant to you, you can accept them back.

Your state of mind defines you. Don’t think that you can take on the weight of all the problems in the world just because you think you’re strong. Strength comes from strategically covering all your bases. If you don’t protect the source of your strength, one day you might just find yourself giving up.

TLDR: Our assets are not material things. It’s not money or knowing important people or having a great job. Our asset is our mentality. A person who is emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally strong can be the exact opposite within time if they don’t take all the necessary measures to defend this position. Take care of the things that contribute to your strengths and assets as a person if you want to remain strong and unyielding.

4. Writing should be a result of my main preoccupation

Soon after I committed myself to writing consistently, I noticed that it’s hard to come up with useful articles when I don’t have that much to share. I occupied myself so much with being on schedule and keeping to the time that I neglect my process of learning. I read less books, visited the news websites less, joined less events and met less people.

The negative compounding effect of this is horrible. Not only I felt like I wasn’t knowledgeable enough, I felt like a fraud and it affected my confidence greatly.

What is the point of having writing skills if I have nothing to say?

So far the majority of my articles are based on personal experiences. But if I continue just writing and not living my life, one day I will run out of experiences.

It’s still taking some getting used to because separating myself from this keyboard can sometimes give me anxiety issues. This is why I sometimes find myself carrying around my small laptop just in case I need to write something. But as time goes on, I find it increasingly difficult to fill a blank document. I’ve spent days just staring at an empty Microsoft Word file, wrote about 2,000 words and then chucking the whole thing into the deepest recesses of my highly disorganised filing system, never to be found again.

Warren Buffett famously reads 500, 600, 750, 1,000 pages a day, every day. Charlie Munger, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg are all voracious readers. I read about 50 pages a day before. Since I started writing, it took me more than two weeks to finish a book.

I know, I know, all these rich people have other people to do stuff for them, which is why they have all the time in the world to read. But I believe in the compounding benefits of knowledge. The poorer, more worse off you are, the more you should invest your money and time in knowledge. And especially for someone like me who derives her product from knowledge, how can I possibly write when the raw material that is knowledge is steadily decreasing?

To be fair, I have several articles up my sleeve, I simply didn’t post them because they didn’t really fit with my decision to have monthly themes for my articles. I am so glad that I am reaching the end of the three month period I gave myself at the start of the journey because I can’t wait to switch things up.

While the articles in the monthly series drives traffic when I promote them as a bundle, they severely limit my creativity. A lot of ideas and articles have been sacrificed just because it’s not the right time to post. I don’t know what this new change will bring next month, but I have to try. I find this so exciting and I so look forward to November.

Back to reading, I am making a renewed commitment to read at least one book a week. If it takes five hours a day, so be it. I notice that just from reading one chapter of a book, I can come up with five different ideas for an article. If I read one book a week, I will have to write more often to get all those ideas out. Reading should be my priority, not something I do with the time I have left over.

If I read more, writing more articles will simply be a symptom of my new habit. I will no longer have to struggle on what to write and how to write things. It will come naturally to me.

TLDR: My writing is a simply a tool for me to express my ideas. Sometimes when I read, I feel guilty for not spending all those hours writing instead. But I shouldn’t feel that way. The more I read, the easier it is to write. Rather than spending hours staring at a blank page, wondering what to write, my time is better served reading because every single time after reading, writing always comes effortlessly. In a way, my occupation should be a reader, not a writer.

Conclusion

These are some of the major things I’ve learned throughout the three months I’ve given myself to update my blog consistently on a weekly basis. I’ve written some things I’m proud of while some of them are quite meh.

But the journey has been illuminating. I learned so much about myself in these three months than I would have working another year in a corporation doing the same things over and over again. It has been greatly rewarding, despite the headaches, sleepless nights, self-imposed stress and severe self-doubt and self-criticism. The fact that I have learned to stand stronger on my own is in itself invaluable.

I think the biggest takeaway of all is knowing for sure that I can do this.

Everyone you love can give you as many words of empowerment as they can, but in the end, the only person who can prove that you can do it is you. My only regret is I didn’t start this sooner.

Thank you Mabel for being there with me in the beginning and suggesting I do this in the first place. I owe you big.