Intellectually dissecting oneself into pieces is not what people would consider fun, and I tend to agree. Since the beginning of 2015, intellectual and emotional dissection has become my pastime. It hasn’t been until recently where I have started to notice the effects of my efforts. Both the positive and the negative.
In 2015, I was challenged by two people. The two challenges they posed would change the trajectory of my life. One challenged me to become the strongest version of myself. The other challenged me to find the answers to the existential questions I had. Not knowing the journey I was about to embark on, I gladly accepted both challenges.
If you are well-acquainted with the online fitness realm, this section header might ring a bell. Yes, the first online mentor I stumbled upon was none other than Elliott Hulse. It was his outlook on life that charged me up so much that I decided to get my act together.
As I look back, I must have spent well over 500 hours watching his content on Youtube. His story is so incredible and inspirational that it was the spark that lit my engine. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think that I would have had the courage to take cold showers all that year! Nothing like a cold shower to get you revved up for the day!
On a more serious note, he was the first person I adopted as a mentor for my life. This could be pseudoscience, but after changing my mindset from a victim to a victor, I no longer had any illnesses for two straight years! This is coming from someone who had on average four colds a year.
So I have a sincere thank you for Elliott Hulse for changing my mindset from victim to victor with each video I watched.
In life, we have ups and downs. I like to call the ups mountains and the downs caves. During the middle of the same year (2015), I encountered both in an extremely short amount of time. I graduated university and was unemployed for a year.
The good news was that I had a degree. The bad news was that I was on track to fail in the real world. It was this one year of unemployment that shattered almost everything I knew about everything.
You see, I had failed to understand a few very important details. I graduated in a recession with a degree no one cared about and with no money in the bank and with no fulltime job experience and with no resume and with no interview skills and with no job ready clothes and no backup plan. They say hindsight is 20/20…
On top of this, I neglected so many duties in my life that it made it twice as hard to overcome the aforementioned. Despite the deep cave I was in, I did manage to see a very small speck of light.
The truth was that I knew at the time that my situation at the time was not permanent, but just a major setback. Perhaps this foresight was due to my training earlier in watching Hulse and attending theological lectures. Whatever the case, I decided to face the truth.
I knew that I had no money, but I also knew that I had a lot of time and a lot of energy. Instead of wasting these two valuable assets, I decided to put them to work.
My first act as “Generic Unemployed Arts Graduate” (GUAG) was to learn how money worked. I had no idea how money worked in the real world and so I decided to find out.
Since I’m sort of a completionist, I will list all of the books I read about finance:
So after reading all of these books, I decided to follow up with any other questions I may have with Dave Ramsey. To this day, I still follow his 7 Baby Steps and use his budgeting app EveryDollar. I suggest you do as well!
My second act as “Still a Generic Unemployed Arts Graduate” (SaGUAG) was to figure out the main “why” to my situation. Was it circumstance or something I did/didn’t do? A good friend of mine, my second mentor, suggested I find out. In truth, it was both.
If you recall, I graduated in a recession. From the research I did at the time, it became clear to me that graduating in a recession has long-term negative consequences. No one is hiring and everyone is firing. Who wants a fresh graduate when one can have someone with a decade of experience, and pay them the exact same wage as they would the graduate?
On the same token, I did choose a major with a minute employment rate and seemingly little economic value. On top of this, I had very little work experience to compete in the marketplace. Upon dissecting the situation more I still think that the choices I made at the time were actually quite logical, given my options and thought process.
My quest led me to read more on the topics of management, leadership, and empowerment. Once again, I will relish in my completionist mentality:
After reading these books I became quite confused as the books all provided great information, but I lacked a platform to test them on. It wasn’t until the readings of the latter half of the list that I became employed!
I won’t go into detail of my employment, but suffice it to say that it was a very long and arduous journey to where I am today.
As my first act as “Generic Employed Arts Graduate” (GEAG, sounds better, right?), I adopted a third mentor, Eli the Computer Guy. Thus my worldview has now opened up to the logical, pragmatic, and realist’s point-of-view.
Around the same time as the adoption, I started to figure out my life. I decided to learn how to program computers as a good friend of mine suggested I do. So drudging down the path to logical enlightenment came the ideas I so needed and desired.
Watching hundreds of hours (maybe over 1000 hours…) of Eli’s videos, my past had become very clear to me. My heart was in the right place, but my mind was not. I was ready to venture out into the workforce, but my mind kept me behind.
By this time, I have been doing well in most areas of my life. After a year of coding, I decided that I would like to pursue a career as a software developer. I lined up all my ducks and calculated the risks and rewards. I am still calculating the risks and rewards each day as to ensure that I never enter that cave again!
I currently have over 1000 hours of hardcore studying under my belt and know three programming languages (five if you count HTML and CSS). I have also recently completed the Nanodegree program, Intro to Self Driving Cars, offered by Udacity. I even have coded a video game, 5 audio plugins, and various other miscellaneous projects.
The preparation for the climb has been quite a long process. However, as John Sonmez (another mentor I adopted) says, “Trust The Process.”
Currently, I am studying 1 hour each day and working on my personal goals. I have a decent grasp on who I am and who I want to be as a person. I have been enjoying the problems that arise with each step up the mountain. Challengers appear and it is up to me to find a way through them.
The current mentors I’ve adopted are The Bible, which will always be my guide, and Dr. Jordan Peterson. I have found that both have been extremely challenging but offering great rewards as well.
So if you’ve read this far, you might be wondering what this has to do with the title of this post?
Well, let me explain (AKA here’s your reward for reading this far).
You see, I have come to a conclusion. Perhaps I’m the problem of the world. Perhaps it’s best not to strive for truth and excellence. Perhaps it’s best to be ignorant and blind. Life is much easier when you don’t dissect yourself like I have done and continue to do.
Or put another way: you don’t stir up trouble when you keep your mouth shut.
However, the price you pay for doing so is great.
So it is with this final paragraph that I plead with you to seek out what is true and what is false, as truth will be revealed to those who seek it earnestly. And perhaps one day you can be a problem for the world just like I am.