Caden
lemme clue you in on a little secret:
... i have no idea what the fuck i'm doing here.
not only that, i have no fucking clue where it's leading me, either.
and, if you've been paying attention or following my journey in any way, you probably already know this. 'cause so far in my web3 career i've taken hard turn after hard turn after pivot after abandon ship after hasty rebuild after hard turn after pivot and i'm still very clearly both abandoning ship and rebuilding.
life is a paradox (subscribe for more secrets that are totally actionable and not at all vague).
but over the course of my life, i have, actually, despite all appearances, learned a few things:
you don't have to know shit about fuck.
what you want to do is different from how you want to do it.
and, quite importantly,
success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.
and today, after many months of, um, well let's say failing without fulfillment, i finally put proverbial pen to paper and sat down to have a conversation with my hopes and dreams.
we did some catching up, which was cool (suuuuper nice guy, i gotta say) and got a chance to talk about where we've been, what's working, what's not, and really just shoot the shit overall. he (and/or she!) had some notes for me, but mostly just wanted to make sure i was doing okay, and that i was happy.
unfortunately i had bad news for her (or him!) on that front, so we decided to switch things up.
see, the truth is that i've been living on autopilot for a little while, and have generally been doing whatever i can to survive, and that has not made for a very enjoyable journey around the sun. so, together, we flipped to a fresh sheet of proverbial paper and started a brainstorming session on HOW i want to live (because plotting a destination is—as should be clear from my multiplicity of themed blogs and parody twitter accounts—a futile and stupid gesture).
so, without further ado, allow me to present and then belabor what have become the latest set of...
and how i'm planning to live them. 'cause what good is a thought without an action?
It is important to me that I'm accepted for who I am; so I will be radically authentic.
look, i struggled with this for a loooooong time, and i've still got a lot of automatic habits that make me chameleon-ize, but i've gotta be vulnerable, goddammit! I've gotta be the "me" that i am when i wake up, or when i'm singing in the shower, or when i dance to sad Regina Spektor songs in the kitchen, and i've gotta OWN THAT SHIT because i know that half of you mfers dance to sad Regina Spektor songs too, and maybe, just one day, we can dance to the tune of our tears together, but that'll never happen if i never admit that sad Regina Spektor songs make my body wiggle.
so embarrassment be damned. i'm me and we're all gonna deal with it. especially me.
My relationships are the foundation for a fulfilling life; so I will nurture them by actively seeking ways to be helpful and serve others.
here's another paradox: turns out we don't feel affection for people because they've done stuff for us, but because we've done stuff for them. maybe that means we love our leeches, but more likely it means that love is an action, and all that "i love you" stuff is bullshit unless you prove it.
this goes a little deeper for me though, because i am not good at maintaining relationships. it's not that i stop liking people, it's just that i'm a notorious introvert and i like being alone, but the problem is that i'm still a human person, and at some point i figure out that i've been alone in my house for two weeks and my only human interactions have been with a dog that i put a hat and sunglasses on.
it ain't pretty.
so i'm putting my money where my mouth is, and committing to people. 'cause we all need friends, and service is basically the most effective way to get and keep 'em.
Judgement stops discovery of life's depth and meaning; so I will ask questions about the world in front of me and reject the simple, automatic explanations that I might otherwise instinctively accept.
spoiler alert: i'm a judgemental little asssssshoooollle most of the time, and it is absolutely hashtag not great. the biggest problem with this actually isn't that i think i have immaculate taste (i do) but that i stop investigating other people's taste (and thus stop growing). it also leads to me playing the blame game, and shutting down emotionally when there's conflict. when i make a judgement it's like i'm stopping in the middle of the trail and saying "we're here!" when the lake/mountain/waterfall is definitely further into the wild, wonderful world.
and, tbh, i like to learn more about stuff. being judgy is just me getting in my own way. so, like, stop it.
Comfort zones are where dreams go to die; so I will make the active decision to do the hard thing.
i've done this before and it's a fucking baller move. honestly. absolutely life-changing. it's such an easy mantra, too. just do the hard thing. got a decision? do the hard thing. feeling unmotivated? do the hard thing. and after about a month of actively doing the hard thing, the hard thing becomes the easy thing, and then all the stuff you wanted to do but didn't have the energy for are easy things too, and suddenly your life is fucking cake, bro. you build up an immunity to hard things (like chronic anxiety), and your whole life opens up in front of you. it's rad af.
Life will not provide me with the right answers, I'll have to discover them for myself; so I will hone my sense of awareness so that I can see the world—and myself—more clearly.
this one is my absolute favorite. mindfulness. none of this stuff works if you don't know what's happening around (or within) you. it's dead simple, too. just meditate. five, ten minutes a day, at any point during the day, every day, and before you know it you start noticing stuff like, oh i dunno, your feelings? the weather? the way the steam rises from a coffee cup and dances in the light? GUH. IT'S BEAUTIFUL, MY DUDE. the coolest thing is that it feels like nothing's happening at first. for like, a month, it just feels like you've got a dumb chore you're doing for no reason. and then one day you feel the sun on your skin while you're walking out to your car before work, and you think, like, "wow, i'm..."
"...i'm alive."