Well shit.
I had made it.
Sometime in the summer of 2012 Noah and I rented a furnished condo in Manhattan. East Village to be precise. It was three bedrooms, and only two of us. Having an extra bedroom in Manhattan is baller.
I was 29, also had a nice apartment in Austin, TX, could work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, renting a condo in semi-arguably one of the coolest cities in the world, and made something in the neighborhood of $40,000 that month.
Life was going well.
But here’s the part that’s a total mind-fuck:
We sat down at a coffee shop for a sip, and started discussing life. And this….what we were doing in that moment ….THIS was it.
THIS was “the American Dream” we were living.
Working from wherever, making good money, travelling, being young/healthy/ridiculously-good-looking, the world is your oyster! Oddly enough, that realization only brought a slight grin to my face for a few seconds….then faded.
I wanted to get back to work soon.
I wanted to produce something else.
I wanted to work on myself some more.
I wanted to improve/go-further/learn-new-stuff.
STOPPING AND RESTING at this point was a frightening and boring option.
It reminded me of all the times my parents took us to some breathtaking place somewhere in the world. We’d travel long-n-far, make several stops, encounter several obstacles, and when we were finally there, it was pretty neat-o for a second……but as I saw it and took it in for a moment, it was then time to move on.
The journey was fun.
The stories along the way were fun.
The stresses of being with the same people for weeks-on-end was fun.
Working towards some common goal was fun.
The journey of getting to a point is what made you grow. Simply “being there” was relatively insignificant compared to “getting there”.
That was an odd realization.
Goddamn it. I’ll just admit, the old cliche:
“The journey is better than the inn”
…pretty much summed it up long before my dumbass figured this out.
Ok, so what’s the takeaway here? I’ll tell you:
You will always be working hard, so you may as well WANT to….and make it fun for yourself.
I’ve met a ridiculous amount of people who’ve said to me, “I just want to have a business on auto-pilot where I don’t have to do any work, and it spits out a lot of money.”
Those people never go anywhere. I’ve never seen one of them succeed. They’re dweebs who want SOMETHING for NOTHING.
They want the world to give them something, without giving the world something back first.
It never happens that way. So before you ask yourself how to get something you want……maybe reverse the question and ask how YOU can give something to others first.