Turning My Life Around

ByMike Org

I’m starting this blog to document the journey of turning my life around in my 30s.

Just a bit of background:

After graduating from college with an English degree, I’ve spent the past decade avoiding my main goals.

I knew what I wanted to do… run a business or get into comedy (ideally both).

But there were a couple problems: I have zero work habits and crippling social anxiety.

I was the guy who made it through high school and college without putting in any effort. Which meant that I never learned to take action and get things done.

As you can imagine, this hindered my ability to work on my goals.

And don’t get me started on social anxiety. It turns out that almost everything requires communicating with other people (especially performing comedy). Having an intense fear of talking to people isn’t ideal.

So I spent my 20s bouncing around between things, often unemployed for long stretches. I avoided anything that required hard effort or talking to strangers.

But that slowly started to change when I turned 30. Fuelled by an existential dread, I finally put in the effort to learn a marketable skill. I studied copywriting and landed a job at an agency. 

I had a two-step plan: 

1. Pay my bills with my day job as I build up a freelance business on the side, then… 

2. Pay my bills with my business as I work on comedy on the side.

Unfortunately, my fear of reaching out to potential clients (and especially my fear of sales calls) held me back from getting started.

My day job became an excuse to not pursue freelancing. Why confront my fears when I’m comfortable at my job?

So I recently made a (possibly stupid) decision…I quit my job to finally confront my issues head-on. Now I HAVE to start getting clients within the next couple months if I want to keeping having food and a place to live.

Sink or swim, baby.

My entire focus is now on turning my life around. Step 1 is just getting out of the negative and into neutral.

The 3 problems I’m focused on solving:

  1. Lose weight (Gaining weight definitely contributed to my social anxiety)
  2. Overcome social anxiety
  3. Pay my base expenses with a business

Solving these problems will require me to learn how to take action, so that’s a bonus.

And of course, I’ll be sharing what I learn along the way.