Watching NBA basketball is fun for me

Especially the highlights

Watching the finesse, power, and talent, they have going on

It’s easy to then look at college players, G-league players, and basketball social media influencers and be like, “why aren’t they in the NBA?”

I find it easy to get in that mindset

From my point of view it looks like they have similar finesse, power, and talent.

But I guess it’s not enough

I feel like that also exists in other industries

I might have a good day with custom development work (coding things for WordPress) I do and feel like I’m a total pro.

But I’m just some random middle-class participant in the industry

I’m not an all-star or even in the NBA, top class of my profession

Do I really need to be in that class in order to make the impact I want?

Do I really need to be great at what I do to impact the ‘sport’ of software development and storytelling in a meaningful way?

I guess the answer is “no” I just need to be me and not compare my ego to others.

I go to sleep at night feeling good about myself.

And trying to be great is the reason why.

I’m not good enough compared to others today.

I’m the source of my own pain.

No matter how good I do in life, there will always be someone who does better than me.

So I’ll feel like shit in situations where a rational person would feel like a champion

I got out of my small Minnesota town

I got out of the mindset that was attached to to me around hoarding and believing I couldn’t make it in the city.

I’ve been making it okay in cities across the world

I’ve been making friends, relationships, and money

I’ve been doing alright for myself

I look at the areas for improvement and see myself as not enough because I’m not there yet

I don’t see them as opportunities, I instead see them as areas in which I’m not good enough

That if I don’t improve there, I won’t fulfill myself and my dreams

Following those who are not fulfilled within themselves is an opportunity for me to make a change to find that fulfillment within myself

I go to sleep at night not feeling good about what I do, no matter how great others say it is.

Or how great I thought it would be when I got there.

Is taking a shower enough?

I’ve dated a bunch of people who don’t brush their teeth and that grosses me the fuck out

Like I’m all into smelling my underwear and others too I’ve bought from pornstars online

And that’s ‘gross’ but I feel like it has a pheromone aspect

But something about teeth being caked with plaque is fucking nasty

I’m sorry to say that because I feel like it’s mean

The people who struggle to brush their teeth are often going through some real shit

Real depression and hard times

In life I want to move to big things like problems around why I obsess, why I don’t feel fulfilled, why I hold onto the past.

I mastered brushing my teeth when I was like 5

I don’t want that to be a problem I’m working on in my 20s

But there’s no better time to work on the problems you currently have than the present moment

Maybe in my career I’m just trying to brush my teeth

Just trying to get myself into a habit of being clean and organized on a routine basis

I’m not yet at the level in my career where I am worried about big issues like tax savings

Or worried about issues where I’m worried about investments long term

Or worried about scaling

I’m worried about cleaning my inbox

I’m worried about just getting through the day

I’m at the end of the month now struggling to have any money after paying rent and credit cards.

This is the first time I’ve been in this feeling in the last 5 years

I haven’t felt this kind of scarcity for a while

I do have some client pipeline I can work on

Like $2000 of projects I could be working on right now

But I’m working on writing this blog post right now

I’ll do those things later today after I take a shower, brush my teeth, and have a client meeting

I’m trying to compare myself to being great in my industry, but I’m just trying to get by day-to-day

That’s not what people who are great in this industry do

People who are great have some long-term plans.

When I make long-term plans, I don’t stick to them.

I always fall off my habits at some point and then I don’t love myself in that surrender

I think the truth there is knowing how to resist the evil and desire the good

I desire the evil and I resist the good right now in my life

I desire to overspend

I resist plans and goals

As long as those are present in my life, it doens’t matter how much money I make, I’ll always be just a few pay checks away from out of money.

It’s been that way for years even with making 6 figures, I found ways to spend all of it.

I think I perceive this to be a problem that’s new for me in January of this year after leaving my full time executive job.

But it’s a problem that’s been around since I went to Atlanta in 2022 and probably before that

It’s a problem that exists when I have temptation for things, people, and experiences that are outside of me

But there’s no way I would have grown in life if I hadn’t leaned into those external obsessive feelings that made me feel like my life was going no where and was meaningless

I wrote yesterday about feeling fearless today and I think so far I’m doing alright with that.

I do have fear with money, low key

But I think it will be okay

I feel motivated to work on my long-term plans with that

I could probably produce 1 course a week if I tried

If I produced 1 course per week and just tried to start telling stories as a part of my business to make it more engaging for me, I think I could do okay in the long-term

With setting myself up some recurring income sources

If I had no fear, I’d work on it today

But in the process not get lost in the need for rest and stuff

I need to rest because I’m just a little bear who doesn’t usually rest

I just burn out all the time

I like the idea of courses, I’ll work on that now