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Chaos and Confusion Mid 20´s

2 posts in this topic

I feel so trapped in this sticky web of thoughts, doubts, and uncertainties that a little outside perspective would be of great help. So I´ll try to make it as brief and concise as possible.

 

Background 

I am just now graduating college with a business degree. Never had a job (except working for my parents) and have been raised in an overprotective, overly comfortable environment. This is something I´m thankful for but that I feel is significantly hindering my growth as an independent human being. For reasons that would be too lengthy to explain in this post, I didn´t end up studying what I´m actually passionate about, namely, philosophy. I have pursued this passion as a hobby for many years, to the point which I´d say I have significant  value and knowledge to offer to the world in this domain, potentially making it my life purpose. I´ve tried doing this (with some small amount of success) through Youtube, but there are many skills I still need to master (video and audio editing, animation, presentation, storytelling, etc.) and the road to success is long and tortuous. It´ll be a long time till I make a living out of it (if I ever do). I intend to master these skills regardless of whether or not I end up becoming succesful, because I believe they are intrinsically valuable, they truly fire my soul up.

The Problem

The only obstacle to this is that coupled with this dream, I have a pressing personal  concern to become financially independent. I feel my life is going by and I want to live it to its fullest. Being raised in a somewhat controlling environment, I feel like the next step for growth for me is moving out (either merely out of my parents´ or also to a different country). In the Spiral Dynamics lingo, I would say that I want to fully live out stage orange and everything in it. Although I love meditation, spirituality, and non-duality, I still feel I have a lingering shadow of materialism, money, monetary ambition, etc. Part of me wishes to live out the "RSD PUA lifestyle" and corroborate first person that its not going to make me happy, before proceeding to aggressively achieve enlightenment. 

So in an effort to acquire this financial freedom, I struck out to learn a few skills (mostly front end programming and copywriting) and over the past few months have attempted to "make it" as a freelancer. I partrially branched off from my philosophical pursuits because I believed that taking this path (freelancing) would lead me to independence way faster. To my disappointment, I´ve only landed a few gigs here and there, and have had limited success at best. I´ve been really disciplined in developing the skills I need but they have thus far not borne much fruit. 

When I finally receive my B.A. diploma in few weeks, the pressure to cave in to the horrible 9-5 job life will be ever so greater, and I have on idea how to avoid it.

 

In summary I am trying to reconcile the following facts about my life:

On the one hand I have:

- A deep desire to pursue a life purpose in philosophy

- Another deep longing for financial and mental freedom (get some breath outside of my environment)

And on the other hand I have:

-An immense pressure to hop into the 9-5 rat race

-Uncertainty about a potentially succesful path to freedom through freelancing

 

Any insight would be of great help. I am being consumed by desperation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I would try to find a good paying job with the business degree, then pursue your passion fully. But that is just my opinion on it. I think that by spending a ton of time going through the hops of learning coding is not going to be of much value if you plan to just drop it all together. I can see what you would want to do it though because it can pay well. I just cannot imagine sticking out something that you don't like doing and trying to become that proficient with it. 

If you have it that comfortable there I would find yourself a job and max out the amount of money you are saving. All while pursuing your passion on the side. I would say the longer you go away from your passion, then the harder and harder it is going to be to pursue it over time. I mean if you are already deep enough the freelancing, then go ahead and do it and use it to make yourself stable income wise. I am sure that would feel a lot more pleasing than most 9-5 jobs. You could use the coding skills to make your own stuff later too if you wanted. It all just really depends. But how I see it with the degree and stuff I imagine you could find a good paying job and if you have little expenses just save and invest the money. 

I do understand the the fact of youtube being a hard one to bring income. Most take a few years to start generating much. But it all just really depends. Some luck is involved, but it requires you to be actively posting and increasing your value there. That is why it is better to start sooner, than later. You could work hard on the side for it and save up a good chunk of cash in a 9-5. I would imagine it could take some years to get the freelancing really of the group depending on where your skill level is. 

I had actually seen a guy getting a bit shy of 2k revenue a month with only 6k subs. But it was because his niche was in gambling games and I assume the ad payout is really high with that type of videos. Same with ones about credit cards and that type of stuff. Usually the lowest conscious stuff pays the most for a platform like that. But you can aim to offer products and services of high value and make up for that. You can monetize earlier, but I think to a degree it could be off putting to newer potential subscribers. 

Also, if you feel the need to go through all of the stage orange stuff, than go right to it. I feel like it can be well needed for most. I have done a lot of it myself. I owned 6 cars at once one time. I am sure I still have some tendencies towards it, but not much at all anymore. I don't really care about that type of stuff much at all now. As you go deep enough in it you will realize how time consuming even having a lot of material goods are. That and just chasing money just to chase it can get old fast. I like the feeling of building a business and skills. All of those things are enjoyable to me. I like the idea of independence. But it really only go so far after that. You can live a really nice life without a ton of money and items. The girls and stuff I could see that. I had sex hundreds of times with my ex and just got bored of most of that. I like to flirt a bit, but really once I am pursuing a purpose and stuff a lot of that is just secondary it seems. 

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