Finding Structure
Roughly 2 years ago, when I was officially unemployed, I came across a government program through which you could pitch your business idea and get support (for 3-6 months) to make your business work.
My “business” was this project, though I had no idea how to shape what I had in mind into a business plan.
I did some research, developed my idea in a vacuum, made the plan, presented it and to my surprise it was approved easily without much discussion. I secretly wanted the push back, someone telling me it can’t be done.
2021 started with me being officially an entrepreneur, although those doubts fed fears that started to creep in.
Lost in the Darkness
During those first few months, nothing worked. Realized there were lots of flaws with the plan. My research was flawed because, for example, what I wanted to do was really broad and when I tried to narrow things down I found conflicts with the industry I wanted to be part of. Then the inevitable writer’s block, lack of creativity generated by isolation and many other factors (life!) seemed to affect my creative process. The only type of content I managed to put in action regularly was streaming, and it was an easy escape to believe I was doing something meaningful for the project (I wasn’t). The momentum given by the government program eventually faded and support stopped. I was caught in between, should I push further or fall back to a job again? If I push, what do I do? And if I get a job, do I go back to what I know or try something new? I did everything, but looking for a job had a priority obviously. Income had to be stabilized, but month after month I only got rejections.
The pressure and frustration I felt during that time was equal to my worst years working in the corporate world. It was different though, as I had no one on the phone yelling how important they were and demanding all their problems are solved yesterday, no boss nudging they need this or that report urgently, no one asking questions, demanding attention, demanding solutions. No one but me, yelling to a wall, in a windowless room, locked in a compartment of my mind labelled ‘worthless’ and drifting into the subconscious, into the darkness. Hidden, ignored.
Released
When your mind works against you, how do you stop sinking into that bottomless pit? I had to go back, ask myself how it all started, put everything in question - do I really want to do this for a living? Or bluntly put, as I’m trying to live? I dug deep as I attempted to rescue myself. Crunched my fear and opened that compartment, listened to the guy yell. I had to get rid of some pressure in order to be able to think better. I lowered the bar and applied to the most basic job - something so basic there wasn’t even an interview process. It was sorted quick and thinking back, it’s silly it didn’t happen sooner.
With that out of the way, it was time to re-evaluate and find a new structure. I sat down with my better half, we came up with a schedule and now the challenge is to stick to it. If I succeed in this, then it means you’ll see more blog posts, more often. It means I’ll get to finally put content out on Youtube (say whaaa-) and other social media. It is time for action, and finding structure seems to be the path that leads to more content (how crazy, right?).
Dynamic Journey
But, why am I sharing all this? Well, I still don’t feel I’m where I want to be to make any project successful, but I want to be better. I want to “do stuff”! I believe there is value in showing what it takes to be better and figure things out. There’s value in trying to make something out of nothing, without knowing much and in finding solutions to my problems maybe other people manage to find their solutions too — maybe we have similar problems. I’m not done finding the structure, a schedule was just the first step, so there will be plenty to discover together.
Currently, I am revisiting a workflow I had in place and wish to improve it to streamline the creative process. There is also a plan for ‘content strategy’ (I guess we may call it that) that needs refining — hopefully content will reflect a better purpose when that happens. And there is a business side that needs a more realistic approach — as much as I hate to do it, I will need to have a better financial goal in place, like the golden carrot I’ll try to chase.
This is just from the top of my head, but there’s probably more but in any case, I don’t want to get caught up too much on structuring or finding ‘the best formula’ for everything. This will be a dynamic process and you will get to see it and judge a bit (cool, huh?). (…)
In any case, this kind of posts will become a series of its own — guess I’ll just call them something cheesy like ‘The Journey’. I’m almost certain it will be mostly about failure, but I hope it inspires people to do something similar, take the leap, embrace the fear for a bit, find your structure, set plans in motion and “do stuff” - maybe do it better.
