Satisfaction

There is a certain satisfaction that comes from completing something with your own hands. Building a home, writing a novel, programming a game, whatever your personal project is, there is immense satisfaction in accomplishing your goal. It doesn't matter if it's something personal for yourself, or part of a job, or something to show off. Isn't it amazing what we can create if we put our minds to it?

I used to be like that. I went to school for computer graphics and I would create all kinds of things. We learned to program games, edit videos, photoshop images. It was amazing. I had a job that fit with my education, so I did projects for work and projects for myself. Outside of that, I had so many different hobbies. I painted, I wargamed, I collected board games. I used to joke that my hobby was collecting hobbies.

Then at some point, I realized that the more I tried to do, the less I accomplished. The more projects I took on, the less quality the finished projects had. I began to doubt myself and no longer took pride in the projects I was completing. I realized I had taken on too many things and I was drowning under the weight of uncompleted goals. So I downsized. I threw out non-essential goals, set personal projects on the backburner.

Life helped out too. I barely completed school with a passing grade. I lost my job because the boss's boss overspent and cut the newest divisions first. Then life didn't help. Life became consumed with taking care of my family and trying to find a job to support. We learned to live on one income and I became a stay at home dad. I'm not knocking the stay at home, don't get me wrong. I love the time I get to spend with my kids and the impact I can have on them.

At the same time, I feel guilt because my wife supports us alone, and with each of our successive kids, we've been under immense stress to come up with end's meat for a time because she is off of work. We have house projects that I am supposed to be doing, old projects that I am still required to finish that I have committed too and people have paid for, job searches so that I can help support and ease our financial burden, and so much more. It feels like the more I accomplish the more that is piled up waiting for me to do.

This last year with Covid has been a roller coaster. Thankfully, my wife is a nurse so she has had job security. What little work I had been doing, had dried up. We bought a house. Our car died. We bought a nicer van that will hopefully last. My wife got a less stressful job. We got two stimulus checks and used those and her job to really knock out some of our debt. We have a third baby on the way. There are a lot of stresses with the pregnancy and how the next couple of months will look, but honestly we are setting better than we have in years.

I know I should be happy and satisfied with it. Taking care of our kids and the house is what made it possible for her to work and make the effort to eliminate our debt. At the end of the day though, it is still her accomplishment, not mine. I still feel the drive to accomplish something with my own hands, something that I can be proud of.

So this year is a new year. I need to kill that cycle of stress and overwhelmed-ness that has purveyed throughout my day to day. This year I will stop being a consumer and become a creator again. Now, while I am not working, I will strive for three hours a day: one hour of job hunting and applications, one for catching up on past due obligations, and one hour on personal projects and development. If I could juggle everything in college, I can relearn to juggle it now. No more feeling sorry for myself. The time to make myself better is now. No one else is responsible for my actions and where I end up. I get to decide what I want to do.