I’m sitting by myself in my room in Phuket. I’m in the process of figuring out how I’m going to make money over the next few months. You can call it a return to a career, or the panic button being hit, or the ongoing draining of my measly funds. I now realize this moment is something I’ve avoided for the last seven months. The fear of “what next” has finally arrived.
What do I really want to do? I want to achieve a happy life. I want to learn to be happy, no matter what life throws at me, whatever the problem, whatever the complexity. This incredible journey in Thailand has taught me more than I can ever explain - but what I’ve learned more than anything is that unless I keep an eye on my mind, my thoughts will run themselves, and my automatic knee-jerk, go-to reaction, despite my “progress”, can often be negative.
What do I really want to do? I want to achieve a happy life. I want to learn to be happy, no matter what life throws at me, whatever the problem, whatever the complexity. This incredible journey in Thailand has taught me more than I can ever explain - but what I’ve learned more than anything is that unless I keep an eye on my mind, my thoughts will run themselves, and my automatic knee-jerk, go-to reaction, despite my “progress”, can often be negative.
I have lost 70 pounds and lived an unusual, colourful life in a beautiful country. Sounds great, right? It absolutely is. On the outside, I look like a success story; a brave inspiration, someone who left it all to chance it at a different life. I’ve spoken with confidence about my choices, my belief that I would find a way to support myself outside the traditional system of work while I blazed forward with a new physique and sense of vigour. I thought that I now knew how to deal with my vices that led to my unhealthy choices previously. Anxiety, emotional turmoil - all in check.
The funny thing is, my convenient exterior is a mask. Truthfully, the last few days have been a wake up call. I’ve come to realize so much of what I thought I had improved has awoken from the deep. It’s almost like the past seven months never happened. My exact habits of before have creeped in, surprisingly easily; first, here and there, every other week, and steadily, with the increase of my stress and fears, on a daily basis.
What habits you may ask? Procrastinating on workouts; procrastinating with Youtube/Facebook; and worst of all, binge eating as a form of escape. Yes, after all of my so-called success and progress, the last week has been a non-stop orgy of food escapism. And with that, all of my familiar but much detested habits - withdrawing from the world, failing to follow through on commitments, neglecting and avoiding friends and people because it is easier to stay hidden. It’s like I went from being sober to falling off the wagon all over again. My room was littered with “Take It” packages (a knock-off of Kit Kats) and popcorn bags this week, sad reminders of my avoidance mechanisms. After all my hard work, it’s been a struggle not to feel horrible and turn anger inwards, knowing that these habits are my ticket back to the person I don’t want to be, to a physical and emotional sense of self I don’t want to feel again.
So what changed? The past two weeks, I’ve worked to remove distractions from my life in order to get focused on what my next moves will be. The product of this change, however, has been more difficult than I anticipated. It has forced me to face the one thing I’ve avoided for months and created so much fear around - my financial situation and, particularly, how the hell I’m going to make a living without doing something that I absolutely hate. I’ll be honest, that is how I feel - although I realize this doesn’t sound very positive. I suppose it is because I’ve never done a job I really enjoyed, or one that I could imagine devoting years of my life to. It doesn’t help that the consistent message from many is that work isn’t supposed to be enjoyable, and that you will probably hate what you spend most of your day doing.
I’m afraid. I’ll just say it. Despite all my soul-searching, my idea-making, and everything in between, I have no clue, and no better sense, of what kind of work will make me excited, or at least not take away from my well-being. Yes, I’m willing to keep my expectations that low. I like the idea of owning and directing something myself, that will bring some worth into the world, and allow me to work on my terms. But I’ll admit that, as much as I’ve told myself I’m willing take the risk of entrepreneurism, I have no idea where to start, no concept to develop, and I’m too worried about money to be comfortable taking the jump at this point. That being said, I do have a better sense generally of what makes me happy and excited in life - and how these elements might show up in a role existing out there.
So it’s back to a traditional job search, something I told myself wouldn’t have to go back to. And I guess some of my escapism the last week has been from this fact - that after all of my talk and ideas, I feel like I am returning to square one at some level. I realize that perhaps, this time it will be different; maybe, by focusing on roles that excite me, it will be more of an experiment of trial and error of what works and what doesn’t more than anything. And life isn’t black and white - I can still work on something entrepreneurial while I work towards financial stability (or at least a bit more stability than I have now) in a “traditional” job.
I have a whole new respect now for entrepreneurs and those who are struggling to make ends meet. I stayed in the safety of my family home for a long time, where I knew I always had a place to sleep, eat, and have my needs covered for as long as I required. I’m grateful for that, and know I can always go back - but I want to stand on my own two feet, and I truly respect and understand now, a bit more, the frightening prospects of what it would be like making it in this world without even that safety net and without a steady income.
So hence the return of my familiar coping habits; my desire to escape remains, when I face something that feels too overwhelming and fear-creating to handle. For most of my time in Thailand, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve been doing, and escapism hasn’t reared its head because I’ve wanted to be where I am. It is the pain of feeling like I’ve failed, the desire to do anything to prevent returning to a job I will hate, and the overwhelming fear that I’ve screwed myself financially that drove me to seek an outlet to pretend it all wasn’t happening. The last few days have taught me just how much I sought to escape the last few years of my life, and how the last few months have shown me that I can have a life that is still with challenge but that I am excited to be in. And so really, that is my goal - whatever I do, whatever I feel, and whatever Iife throws at me, create a mindset that embraces these challenges and an environment that motivates me to return to the present moment.
The process of dealing with turmoil is slowly changing. Yes, I’ve still turned to food the last few days; but I’ve also had moments of progress, where I’ve meditated, or journaled/written out my fears, or turned to a friend and sought connection - the antidote to addiction, most will say. And most importantly, self-compassion is becoming easier. Being kind to myself has been a struggle the last few years; the perfectionism I demanded of myself, and assumed others expected of me, drove me to self-destruction. I am working on being courageous, and courage for me is willingness to be imperfect, make mistakes, be compassionate with myself and others, and be vulnerable. And being vulnerable means accepting the uncertainty in my life, realizing that the things I fear are really not as bad as I have created in my mind, and that whatever is thrown at me, I am resilient enough to handle it. It is being willing to feel fear and face it; to feel it and take action in the face of it, rather than seek to escape it. All of this is a bit of lip service for now, but I’ll get to a point of truly believing and internalizing this.
I suppose my act of courage today is being vulnerable now and being compassionate with myself, reminding myself I am allowed to feel and I don’t have to be perfect. While it is easy to focus on the so-called “failures” of my day, which I am used to doing, I’ll congratulate myself for the steps I made that were successes and contributed to my well-being. Something like writing, or the work I did on applications or a job search, or being more considerate to others; or being kind to myself when I don’t eat in a way that is healthy for me, realizing I can and will improve. And gratitude for the many, many wonderful parts of my life and the incredible people in my life who are beautiful and awe-inspiring in the here and now, creating a moment I couldn’t possibly want to escape from. Every day I am working towards creating this new approach to life. And every day that I do is an accomplishment, a goal worth striving towards, and the creation of a life with purpose, meaning and happiness.
