I'm building the world I want to live in
There's a song from my late teens that still bounces around my skull occasionally, four days from 40.
Oh no. I'm further away from that point now than when I was born. Goodness.
Anyway, the lyrics:
"Responsibility? What's that?
Responsibility? not quite yet
Responsibility? What's that?
I don't want to think about it; we'd be better off without it."
If you're also hearing it in your head after reading that, sorry (sort of; it was a really fun era of music). If you don't recognise it, I won't impose angsty 2000s punk rock on you right now by embedding the video or any other such silliness.
Suffice to say, that refrain has gone from being a mantra, to being an irritation, to being an interesting yardstick of how much I've changed.
Responsibility is about as unsexy as concepts get. It smells like homework and sounds like exhausted shuffling around cleaning up after a party. But it's also the only vehicle I know that can take me where I want to go, whether that's having a healthy marriage or kids I don't despise most of the time or doing work I actually enjoy.
I've realised over the years that responsibility boils down to a pretty simple formula:
- knowing what you want,
- figuring out what you must do to get from where you are to where you want to be,
- and just doing it.
It's really not much more than that.
If I want to be healthy, I can't just want to be healthy. I have to exercise or get enough sleep or drink okra water or whatever other panacea the internet is yapping about at the time.
Of course, some of those things will be more effective than others (hint, probably not the okra water), but even just walking more and taking a chance with bovine colostrum will be better than doing nothing.
Some things will work. Others won't. Some will be fun and easy, some will start hard and get better over time, and some will remain a bloody headache until I can figure out how to eliminate, delegate or automate them.
A phrase that came to me earlier this year while I was figuring out how to transition my business from permanently exhausted hard-capped freelancing into something sustainable that could help me realise the life I want was this.
"I'm building the world I want to live in."
That world has surplus. It has holidays. It has playing drums and ultimate frisbee and cooking and creating things that bring people joy. It has space for me to be properly present for the people I love most in the world without a constantly gnawing anxiety that I'm missing something urgent at work.
But I'll never be able to live in that world if I don't change the stuff that isn't working now and build a path that gets me there.
So that's what I'm doing.
Taking responsibility.
Figuring out what I need to do.
And just doing it.