I finished this blog entry about two months late, but that's alright. I really needed time to calm down and compose my thoughts together and write this when I wasn't in the middle of all of what was going on, the heat of the moment if you will.
My blogging has been a bit sporadic the past half a year or so and I'll get into the why in a moment, but for the past two months or so I've been trying to try out a new life plan that works for me.
The Past:
The past year (2014) I've seen myself trying to live to others' expectations for me all the while denying my expectations for myself. It caused me to feel very apathetic, somewhat cold to others, and a bit resentful. I'm hoping to change that and go towards living a life to where I see myself not only being a productive and contributing member to society, but also live one to where I am fulfilled. There are two recent life scenarios to what made me really think about this:
At the very end of 2014, a good friend of the family and business friend of my dad's passed away in Japan of a freak accident. He was taken away far far too soon. In the time he lived, however, he did what he set out to do. He set goals for himself, which he achieved and much more.
Last year, I took a promising full-time position for a QA tech company. There were a lot of small factors that ate up my happiness and desire to work there. What was a 40-hour a week position on paper (I was estimating 50 hours due to what was perceived as a 1 hour commute) turned into a 60+ hour a week job that was slowly tearing me apart and causing me to get really upset about life. It came to a head in January where I was offered a promotion, but was on the other side of town. (The commute becomes exponentially higher in the city.) I initially accepted it, but dealing with all of the incoming changes that would have required caused me to burn out and break down, I left in the middle of January.
By the last week of my job there and also working on my start-up company, I was pushing 71-72 hours a week working over a five month period. Before my job at this tech company, I was working 24 hours a week for the family business and 24 hours a week working on my own business.
The Present:
To cope after my breakdown, I accompanied my dad to Japan to attend the memorial for our family friend, and came back with a renewed sense in self-worth so to say. I set out a new life-plan (for now) that accomplishes my needs and wants. In the job that I left above, one co-worker was telling me that I "need" this job and didn't "need" my alternate business. I had a different opinion in that I didn't need either position. These are considered wants to me. I wanted to clarify my view on wants/needs:
Needs (Equal Preference):
- Food
- Water
- Shelter
- A mechanism that can provide for the above three (Any Paying Job/Career/etc)
- Sleep/Rest
- A good Support System (Family and Friends)
Wants (In my order of preference):
- Personal fulfillment (My start-up business)
- A desirable job
- Entertainment
- Time-Off/Benefits
- Romantic Companionship
- Eventual family (in the distant future)
If I'm not personally fulfilled with my life, I'm not happy, which will not cause me to get a desirable job, which means I'm not entertained, most desirable jobs contain time-off and benefits to where I'd have time to pursue happy relationships with people.
To support my needs and wants, I split an arbitrary number (40 hours/week. Equivalent to standard work week) - 25 hours goes towards fulfilling my needs. 15 hours goes to fulfilling my wants in the order of preference.
So for the foreseeable future, 25 hours a week is devoted to doing something that gets money to support my needs. 15 hours a week is devoted to my personal projects and studio. 8 hours on Saturday, 5 hours on Friday, and 2 hours separated over the rest of the week in order to keep current.
The leeway on this plan is that it does not exceed 50 hours a week. Otherwise I can go into the same problem that I had while I was employed with the long commute. Once I finish my ambitious project later this year, I'd like to ideally change this 25-15 plan to a 30-10 plan. I would like for the game to make money on the side for us while I do other jobs that make money to fulfill my needs.
We'll see how it goes. Life is what happens when you're making these plans. This isn't set in stone. This is what I'd like to do.
The Future:
Luckily I am in a position where I can freely make these decisions. I feel my biggest regret in life will not be giving my start-up business a chance if I continued where I was going in my past life direction with where I was working. I felt like I didn't give myself a chance to let my projects grow last year when I jumped at this job opportunity without realizing how much time it was going to take away in the commute between the business there and my game development company two hours away.
If this plan does not work, then at least I can say I gave it an honest chance.
Thanks for reading.
