Content Warning

This blog post deviates from the normal tech banter and writings usually found on this blog. One should expect this since this is a personal blog but in case you ended up here by mistake, you have been warned. Thoughts and Feelings are spoken in the post below

As a reflect over 2024, I have come to the conclusion that I let myself be pushed away from trying hard things. This sounds crazy to me because when I look at a particular area of life (my career), it is really to easy to see that I succeed in a lot of hard things last year:

• Organizing a team to be extremely productive without me hand-holding every decision
• Re-writing an integration from scratch with no practical experience in the programming language chosen by the client
• Being seen as a subject matter expert by my peers and the client I am working with I want to honor those wins and be grateful for them. As well, acknowledge the people that went along with me on the journey because I don’t believe anything is possible without others alongside.

Yet.

I didn’t try anything that was hard, even worse, I fooled myself into thinking I tried.

I gave money to charities but I didn’t volunteer anywhere. I didn’t have to see suffering up close in my own community. “I tried” to volunteer but didn’t find the time for it or kept missing signups timeframes.

I kept tabs with my parents and brother but I didn’t really engage with others. I felt myself being taken elsewhere in midst of conversations. “I tried” to be better about calling and reaching out to others but my bad memory got in the way.

Hubris is a funny thing, it can give us the pride to think that others can’t see our ‘spark/creativity/genius’ while fully laying bare to others the stupidity that resides within us.

See the pattern?:

• “I tried” == “I didn’t give my best and I am too busy to do this thing”

So there at the end of 2024, a lot of easy things were done but not a lot of hard things. Kick off the holidays.

Unfortunately for me (maybe fortunate for you), I couldn’t shake the feeling that the year was a bit of a bust, causing me to reflect a bit harder. As I was enjoying my time off, I happen to be catch the following phrase from the spiritual leader at my local gathering:

“I can’t fail if I don’t try”

In that moment, it clicked why the year had been a bit of a bust. I didn’t try truly hard things for me. I stayed in my lane and just checked the box. I didn’t push and wrestle with myself about the things that I said I wanted to do because I am terrified of failure.

My brain will do this at times: “If I don’t do it successfully then that means I am failure. Worst, if I manage to offend/piss off someone, then that’s the absolutely mark of failure because no one will have the grace to see me on the other side of this”. Welcome to terrifying bit of failure.

Throughout my life, I have seen my value through the lens of success/failure instead of the intrinsic worth I bring to the table. While there are many factors to this outlook, I am starting to have the mercy with myself to believe I have intrinsic worth and value.

I need to be daring. I need to be me.

I need to fail in all the beautiful and painful ways that are possible.

So here’s me actually trying by writing it out on a public blog. If you made it this far, I wish you the same courage in this year. If you are future me reading this, then hopefully you chose to be daring.

Be Daring. Fail in beautiful and painful ways so we may be closer to the version of us we love and others cherish.