These are the types questions I’ve been getting since my last blog post. “What are you doing now?” “How’s the job hunt?” “Are you okay?” And to be honest, I don’t know how to answer any of them. I sometimes wonder if I even made the right decision or if I should have waited longer. I mean, I think I’m happy. I’m definitely a lot less stressed than I was a few weeks ago and I haven’t experienced that shaky anxiety feeling that I used to get every morning I walked into the office. So in a way, that’s progress and I should be happy about that. Yet, I still feel like I’m mentally recovering and I’m trying to convince myself otherwise.

What’s worse is that I haven’t really made progress in any of the things I needed to work on and it’s been over two months. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything; it’s just.. you know when you have so much to do that all feel equally important so you work a little bit on each one and end up getting nowhere? That’s what it’s been like. I know the right way to do this would be to focus on each task one-by-one until completion but something is holding me back from doing so and I can’t pinpoint what. Maybe if I list them out again, I can somehow overcome this mental challenge I created for myself and maybe, just maybe I’ll have a plan of attack.

My living situation
My second room is still empty and I’ve narrowed it down to two options: I can either rent it out through Airbnb (which is what my heart is telling me) or I can find a roommate (which is what my mind is telling me). There are pros and cons to both.

One of the reasons why I want to just rent it out on Airbnb is so that I can use it as a guest bedroom whenever I have friends/family over and use the closet for storage (I’ve already put all my outdoor gear in there and it’s pretty awesome). What I’m worried about is Mika (my dog; because she is kind of fiesty), financial inconsistencies and weirdos. With a roommate, I have a guarantee that half of the rent will be covered but in result, I lose the closet, guest bedroom, daily privacy and what if I end up not liking them?

Clearly, I’m leaning more towards the Airbnb option because I already started decorating and I have a bed for it (thanks mom and dad). Which is all super cool except I kind of used the decorations from my living room for that bedroom (I was getting sick of it and wanted to start fresh) and now I have to redecorate my main space - which I don’t have money for! But if I’m going to re-furnish, I might as well do it ASAP so that I can rent the room out already. It’s an investment... right?

It sounds like this is an easy thing to work on (and it kind of is) but every time I start working on it, I remember the other things I need to work on then have this mental battle of whether I should be focusing on this or not. It’s probably because this next one actually stems out to a bunch of other things and I don’t even know where to begin.
My career
Apologies if I’m kind of all over the place. This is the hardest topic for me to talk about right now because I don’t really know what I want to do, or I have some ideas but I don’t know which direction I should go or how I should go about doing them. Do I work on MLC full-time? What about my personal brand? I also started studying NASM (to be a certified personal trainer part-time) so why not put time to finish that course, right now? What if I freelance on social media managing or be a VA (virtual assistant) so I can work from wherever I want and have a flexible schedule? If I do that, I’d also have time to work on that new podcast (more on this later) but... I won’t be making a lot of money. So how about full-time as People Ops in a tech startup while I side-hustle the rest? Oh yeah - there aren’t a lot of companies looking for People Ops so I’d have to cold call and pitch them, which takes quite a lot of time.

I must admit that it’s super, super nice to just be able to do whatever the hell I want on my own schedule like I am right now but I’m not making much money at all, if any and I know I can’t live like this for much longer. So I need to figure out something quick - even if it’s just enough to come by. I’ve been reading Gary V’s book “Crushing It” and it’s been a good wake up call that I haven’t actually been putting in the work that I could be putting in (at least the past few weeks) so I guess I need to actually make sure that every waking hour is productive AF then see where that takes me.

I also realize that a weakness of mine is that I want to do everything in the world rather than focus on one specific thing. I like to organize, plan events, write blog posts, engage social media, take photos, edit videos, start a podcast, decorate, work out, teach.. it’s endless. I’ve known this for a while but it wasn’t until last night, when I learned a friend of mine got an amazing opportunity (even though I thought his previous workplace was already too good to be true) because he spends all his free-time reading and mastering this one specific field. Maybe if I just focused on one damn thing, I could be really freakin amazing at it rather than trying to figure out which direction to go or what to focus on. But how do you do that if there are so many other things that you enjoy doing!? If you have an answer, I’d love to hear it. You can even leave a comment below.

Anyways, that’s how things are currently. Still a mess and still trying to figure things out. I’m kind of freaking out, but I’m also in this mindset where I just think I’ll be okay (or maybe it’s denial). Kind of like when Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, bought a new house even though he owed $1 million dollars. Okay, not the same thing but if you read his book (← which I've linked, in case you're curious), hopefully you get the picture. Let me at least write down some action steps:

Decorate my living room since I stripped that clean (oops)
List the room on Airbnb and if it doesn’t work out, just find a roommate
Budget to see how much I need to survive (and don’t spend crazy money on food)
Eliminate the items I don’t need to focus on and start actively working on the rest - one by one, starting with freelancing as a VA or a social media manager. It’s crazy but it’s worth a shot and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just look for an actual job.
Keep documenting the journey

Definitely not a route a typical person would recommend (sorry mom and dad) and to some, actually kind of insane but then again, since when have I ever been normal? And what's life without a little risk, right? All I know is that I just want to make a difference and I want to be happy even if it means struggling for a bit to figure that out. I'm scared to shit though so wish me luck and thanks for reading. I know this was a long one.

Xo, C

PS. If you're going to write a negative comment, please keep it to yourself. No need for that here. TY :)

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