I Struggle to Enjoy The Process

Even though I do, in fact, enjoy the process. If that makes sense.

“I love replying to customer emails 🤙🏾”

“Nothing like sending out a DocuSign on a Friday night 😎✍🏾”

“Cold outreach is meditative brah 🧘🏾‍♂️”

Any self-aggrandizing LinkedIn slop poet will find many different ways of telling us the same uncomfortable truth: careers, and life, are all about the journey and process. Not the destination.

And it’s true. Dammit, I hate when the LinkedIn bros are right about things. I learned that at my first job out of college. Nice title, nice company. Hated every second of it.

Destination addiction is real. Especially for recovering overachievers like myself. In the years since leaving that job, I’ve made it my life’s mission to ensure I’m spending my time in ways that energize and serve me, first and foremost.

And I Do Enjoy the Process Now 🎥

My new content battle station!

This life of mine that I have now is something I would have killed for 7 years ago.

I live in NYC. I live alone. I (attempt to) make a living creating silly internet videos. I also create longer, less silly, more informative videos. Now I write a little too.

Most days, I wake up and do “regular people” things like replying to emails, and I also do less regular things like untangle cables, set up mics, and drill lots of holes in my walls.

And I love every second of it. I built this shit brick by brick. And I’ve laid a lot of bricks down. One might say that I’m “bricked up”. I am really blessed to call this bricked up existence my reality. 🧱

But I’m Really Bad at Enjoying It 😰

The older I get, I’m starting to realize that there is a key difference between having a routine you enjoy, and being good at enjoying said routine.

I never thought I’d have this problem. Here I am doing things I thoroughly enjoy, yet my brain keeps teetering over to that other place, where it likes to obsess over stupid, shallow things. It starts to look outward. It starts wondering how much money I could make if I ventured into this or that line of business. It wants to stalk people on LinkedIn and hyper-analyze their career trajectories. It makes me want to spruce up my own LinkedIn profile to feel better about my own career trajectory. It remembers that one creator that does that digital product that makes him 10 million dollars per second. It remembers my bank account is indeed very depressing to look at.

Why? Why does my brain keep going there? What is it searching for?

Part of me thinks it’s just because I’m a perfectionist, and I just want everything in my life to look and feel perfect. Fair assessment. But I think there’s something deeper that even a non-perfectionist can relate to.

My Brain Wants Closure ⚰️

I grew up in an environment that placed an unhealthy amount of value on status and achievement. And not even in a cool and flashy way. In a comically sad and depressing way. Between grade school, college, and my early career, it seemed like everyone’s dream was having 10 degrees, 5 promotions, making $300K, and being the CEO of Google before 25.

Forget being happy, fit, well-rested, and fulfilled. Sick LinkedIn profiles by 25 was the dream. That was “making it.”

And I think that’s what my brain is still looking for. A sense of closure. A sense of having “made it.” The feeling of being perceived by others as having “made it.” It tries to convince me to do literally anything to hopefully wake up one day and be able to say, “Ah, nice! All done here! I made it! That’s a wrap.”

Some would argue that day will never come. Actually, I disagree. That day will come. The day you die, of course.

That’s literally the only day you’ll ever feel that.

Needless to say, waiting 80+ years for a sense of closure is a pretty awful way to live your life. And like I said, I am already doing the things in life that I enjoy. I already did the work, and continue to do the work, to invest in myself.

Now how do I actually…enjoy what I enjoy?

How do I make my stupid brain stop veering off into this strange, perpetually unsatisfied place? The immigrant-child sunken place, if you will.

Stop Consuming Brain Junk Food 🍟

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you know the basic steps: stop eating junk, exercise more, and eat healthier foods in a caloric deficit. That first step is always the hardest for me, especially as a lifelong slut for Taco Bell.

Same mindset applies here. You have to very intentionally stop doing things that trick your brain into thinking closure will ever come.

That includes stalking people on LinkedIn. Spending too much time on Instagram. Reading too many Reddit threads for life advice. Looking at Zillow for houses you will never be able to afford. Going to events where people stress you out. Hanging out with people you went to college with that you have nothing in common with anymore besides your similar-sounding job titles, and the fact that you lived two blocks from them and crushed 17 beers every Saturday like 8 years ago.

That shit is junk food for your brain. And what happens when you eat too much junk food? You move slower, you feel more down, and everything’s just a little harder.

So I’ve been making a concerted effort to stop feeding my brain all this junk food over the last year. I don’t consult Reddit for every life scenario anymore. I’ve unfollowed some LinkedIn bros. I stopped going to events that are essentially brain junk food festivals.

And similar to fitness, I’m starting to realize happiness really is a constant work in progress that never ends. And the best “dream body” is not necessarily a super thin one; it’s the one you enjoy laying the groundwork for every single day. Brick by brick.

Your Brain Starts Craving Veggies 🥦

As most successful weight losers (I couldn’t come up with a better term; this sounds so demeaning 😂) will tell you, after a few weeks of consistent healthy eating, your body starts to actually enjoy and crave healthy foods you may have previously thought of as boring or bland. You also start to look forward to workouts more. Clothes fit better. The lifestyle of being fit becomes more enjoyable than what you see in the mirror every day.

Similarly, as your brain stops craving a constant, closure-induced dopamine rush, it starts to enjoy the really small, mundane parts of life and work. It starts to realize that the “place” we need to be is here. Now. The present moment.

This past week, I got a ton of packages from Amazon. All kinds of equipment and wires. Lots of screwing. Drilling. Mounting. Hanging. Instruction manuals. Garbage runs. The sexy stuff. 🛠️

While mounting a mic on my desk, I had a little moment. I smiled. I was happy. Very happy. I hadn’t felt this way in months. Just enjoying the process. Laying down the bricks of my dream life.

Something about putting a brick down that got me even just an inch closer to my dream life felt very satisfying. Furthermore, I realized this actually is the dream life. I’m already doing it. I’m starting to think that maybe the dream was never to have a nice big, bricked-up house made of the finest bricks, but instead to find joy in laying those bricks down every single day. And not just any bricks—bricks I enjoy.

I mean, what’s the joy in building a big brick house if you don’t enjoy laying the bricks down? 🙂

Out with being bricked up, in with the bricking process itself 🧱🫡