It’s about twelve now and everyone is going crazy outside. I just woke up, reasonably well rested and ready to tackle a new year. Well, I haven’t quite had my eight hours yet, but I’ll grab another six after the happy-new-year ruckus has subsided.

After the numerous cluster fucks in multiple areas of my life I’ve been playing a different game for the last two weeks of the year (whenever you notice something that needs to change proto, you don’t wait to make it a new-years-resolution it becomes effective immediately) and I’m planning to keep that up. The clusterfucks were some of the most valuable lessons in my life to date but they did hurt like hell. Some of them still hurt a bit. Growing pains, I choose to call them :wink: and I woudn’t know what I would have been without them.

I’m set for another lesson-filled journey, but this time a bit less painful hopefully :stuck_out_tongue:. The wonderful part of it all is that the last three years helped my bury some of the naive notions I vehemently believed in. I’m getting much better at observing the world in a manner more reminiscent of its true nature. And honestly my new view of the world is not in any way more grim then the image I had as a child. With my realization of some hard truths also came the awareness of some colorful principles.

To be precise, I discovered that in business, people primarily protect their interests. Obviously a wise call but the ever-trustful me, who believed in a world where everyone was noble (actually naive) enough to think of the other party first, often neglected its own interests, thinking that the other party would warn me whenever I would be stepping of that fucking-myself cliff… Well, I have news for you, buddy. He usually doesn’t warn you. But not always because the other party wants to exploit a great opportunity, but because they are not fully aware of your situation and could not possibly assess the risk adequately for another party without the necessary information.

I often acted in a manner that violated my interests, something I will not be doing again. I may now come of a bit harsher in business deals because I won’t allow me to violate myself, but the plusside is that it results to better deals for my clients. I will be better taken care of, which grants me the luxury of performing signaficantly better at the task at hand as I have less troubles to distract my mind. Furthermore I’m being more honest and I’m finally valuing myself properly which is not only fair to myself, but also to my clients who may use me as a reference for whatever else they may encounter there. Heard it a million times but sometimes you need to hit your head agains a wall to learn why people may warn one for something that seems harmless.

The last month I felt as if I was stepping out of a phase of my life, that discovery phase after college, to venture into that phase that will help me build that business. I have already started to restructure a lot of things, I’m changing my M.O. I know the skill is here (I’m pretty fucking good at what I do), but business-wise I saw room to improve a few things, which I did and will continue (it is an ongoing process)!

One of my mentors said something interesting a few months ago. We should be careful how we define success. A tree is successful when it bears fruit, regardless of the amount of fruit it bears. Bearing fruit means that it is fulfilling its purpose. I believe I have fulfilled my purpose last year. Heck, I’m pretty sure I milked it in terms of discovering and experimenting with different technologies, building experiences and engineering functional solutions. I’m about improving the fruit count and the quality of the fruit I produce while maintaining what I already had reasonably well under control.

It will be a good year! :stars:

So future me, remember where you’ve ventured from but for the love of God don’t spend much energy on it. Draw your lessons and move on. You have the tendency to overthink :shit:, for now just stick to the code and obey your gut a bit more often. I also discovered that darn thing was right at least 80% of the time.

Overthinking suffocates. Underthinking starves. Find that balance.

Execute, measure, calibrate!