Some things I've learned about myself over the past year

(or so)

There are two competing theories on why a year seems to go by more quickly as we age.

One is based on how much of our lives a year represents and how that value gets lower each year. When we’re a kid, each year represents a significant portion of our lives. But as an adult, a year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our overall lifetime, making it feel shorter.

Another is based on novelty. New experiences create more detailed memories, and since our childhood is filled with lots of first-time events, time feels fuller, and years feel longer. As we age and our routines become more repetitive, fewer new memories are created, leading to the feeling that time is passing more quickly.

Maybe they’re both contributing factors. I don’t know. What I do know is that as we age we forget how much can happen in a year. How much we can change in a year. How much we can improve in a year.

Here are some things I’ve learned about myself over the past year (or so).

1.

For much of my working life, especially over the last 15-ish years, I’ve thought of myself as entrepreneurial. I’ve since learned that I’m most definitely not.

Sure, I’ve been involved in early-stage startups. But I didn’t start any of them myself.

I did start lots of fledgling projects that were mostly ideas in my head that didn’t come to fruition in real life.

There are, embarrassingly, a lot of examples.

• A monthly subscription box for golfers called Gimme Club (I still like that name and own the domain) that really was only an Instagram account that never had a cardboard box in sight.

• A healthy snack brand called Actually Good For You (I like that name and own that domain too) where I never made any food at all and simply brainstormed ideas and took an online course about starting a food company.

• A music project under the moniker Audyle (that domain is actually still live here!) where I uploaded a grand total of one track to Soundcloud and have lots of unfinished tracks that I’ll still fiddle around with on my computer from time to time.

I’ll spare you the rest.

Over the past year (or so), I’ve learned that I’m a dreamer. Or a 9-wing-1 for any of you Enneagram fans out there.

If there were a Chief Brainstorming Officer role, I’d be a great fit.

It’s not like I’m incapable of getting any work done. It’s more that I’m not great at fully committing to whatever it is I’m excited about and really going for it if there aren’t any other people involved in the project.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about different careers and the different lives I could’ve lived if things had panned out differently. My old band not making it big, despite being signed to a major label and doing an album and video and all that, is a core wound, of sorts, for me. Perhaps some part of me is afraid of going all the way and facing failure again, even if it’s due to something entirely outside of my control—like 9/11 was for my band.

This type of daydreaming has been habitual for me. It’s like I’m simultaneously living in the past and future. But lately, I’ve been catching myself and bringing myself back to the present moment. And now I’m feeling more suspicious when I get excited about something.

2.

I’m at my best when playing a supportive role.

This is obviously tied to point number one above.

This also goes all the way back to when I played in my band. I was the bassist, which is typically more of a background instrument—one that most people don’t always notice, but they most certainly notice when it’s missing. The bassist, along with the drummer, helps hold down the rhythm section, which is the essential groove and foundation of the song. A great bassist plays deep in the pocket, mere milliseconds behind the drums, creating space within the sonic landscape to allow the other musicians to shine and share their gifts.

Yes, I played on stage, sometimes in front of thousands of people, but I wasn’t the frontman.

Similarly, in my later career, I’ve been most successful and felt most comfortable working within a team.

You might consider this writing project to be a counterexample for both of these points. After all, it is something I alone conceived of, launched, and have followed through on (relatively) consistently for years. But I look at it more as a creative outlet, rather than an entrepreneurial endeavor, although I do appreciate the patrons who have generously forked over some of their hard-earned cash to become a paid subscriber.

3.

I still consider myself a writer, even though I haven’t published here all that much recently, and my memoir book project has been stalled out for over a year.

Last November, I decided to stop publishing every week after doing it for over three years straight (I wrote about the decision here if you’re curious). I’ve only published 11 pieces since then, one of which was a repost. For those counting, that’s a pace of barely over one piece per month.

And yet, I write every single day.

I write for Foster where I work. I have a 1,581-day journaling streak that’s still going strong. I write random ideas and notes for posts regularly.

Outside of work, I’ve been spending more of my time and energy on family, friends, and, y’know, all the other things that adulting requires.

But I’m still a writer.

4.

I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was experiencing until I experienced the opposite within the past few months.

As I wrote in my last post, I was recently diagnosed with adult inattentive ADHD. At publishing time, I was only two days into starting on Adderral after first trying a different med that didn’t seem to do anything at all. And let me tell you, wow, it has made a massive difference in my day-to-day life. Nearly two months later, as I described in the post, it still feels “like the clouds billowing up in my brain for decades have lifted and I can think more clearly.”

What I didn’t expect was how much it would ease my anxiety.

The med isn’t solely responsible for the change, though. It’s also true that I’ve done a lot of self-development and relational work over the past year (or so). Being able to actually feel my emotions and somatic sensations made it possible to get to the point where I could know anything was amiss and not chalk it all up to poor sleep or lack of exercise or whatever.

For years, I’ve put too much pressure on myself and felt stuck and unsure about how to proceed, which pushed me to the verge of burnout too often and ultimately caused more issues. It eroded my confidence and caused me to frequently second guess myself.

I’ve been running on fumes and not enough sleep or exercise for far too long in my life. My pattern has been to dive headfirst into startups and projects, leaving other things like my health to be dealt with at some indeterminate point in the future (i.e. never). Work then becomes my main priority, and is closely tied to my identity, and I feel like I need to be “on” all the time.

The hilarious thing about this mindset is that I wasn’t always very effective at work. I’d spend a lot of time flitting from thing to thing, which felt like I was doing stuff, but ultimately I was avoiding making decisions and executing on them until they came to a head and needed to be done ASAP. On the surface, it might’ve looked like procrastination, and it was sometimes, but most of the time it was a coping mechanism around my anxiety.

My historically toxic orientation to work has softened considerably over the past year (or so). The self-development and relational work I’ve done has helped me reorient my priorities and gain more awareness of my tendencies. Working out regularly has helped me feel stronger and more energetic. And the med has helped give me the capacity to get out of my own way and tap into that awareness more readily.

I feel more confident, more reliable, more able to manage my time, more easeful, more happy, more connected, and more loved.

I feel more like myself.

5.

I have two new pet peeves¹!

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1. When people use minimizing or hedging words and phrases, especially when they’re speaking. Think of the difference between saying, “I kind of think I want Chipotle for dinner,” vs “I want Chipotle for dinner.” I hear these all the time in podcast interviews. I also use them a lot when speaking so consider this a developmental edge pet peeve for me.

When people say “you” when they really should use “I” statements. I was listening to a podcast with a pro golfer and he said something like, “You’re coming down the stretch and you’re in contention to win the tournament and it’s hard for you to stay in the present moment.” Uhh, no, I have zero experience with that. He does.

What I’m getting at is these are podcast pet peeves.