This morning I felt like I wanted to get all of the thoughts that have been buzzing around in my head, down on paper. I needed a cathartic brain-dump experience.
So here we are.
And I couldn’t think of a better place than my blog to start. It is a personal blog after all, and an outlet for which I’m grateful has documented many of my life experiences over the years.
In putting pen to paper (or finger to keys, in this case), I started realizing that I’ve been in transition these last few months. And if I’m being perfectly honest, a few months actually translated to nearly half a year here.
Recently I shared a video called hitting the reset button | what’s really been going in my life.
I didn’t really have any expectations per se on how the video would be received — if people would like it, etc. And I didn’t have any expectations on how it would make me feel to create and publish it.
But it felt good. So good.
Kind of like when people tell you to journal your thoughts before bed as a way of recapping, or coming to terms with, what transpired from your day. For me, this video and the few more that followed, were a kind of journaling experience. Where I could just be myself, put what’s been going on in my life out there into one (hopefully concise) video.
I wasn’t a “blogger” or an “influencer” or a “content creator” in those videos. I was Nick. Just plain Nick. And it felt good.
Over the last two months, I’ve just been riding the waves that came my way, and I’ve been many realizations from several facets of my life.
I know this next part is going to seem somewhat meta, but again, this is my personal blog, and my personal journey and experiences that I get to share with you. It’s been really weird (in a good way) and eye-opening.
I feel like in the last 60 days, a new me was born. And I’m only now able to see what I had been like for the past two years. I can now see clearly that I was running like a hamster in a wheel for most of 2018… and 2017… and 2016 & 2015, also to be honest.
Last year, I almost feel like should be a write-off for me. And yet, 2018 had some of the most milestone, life curveballs I never expected. Like leaving my full time job, buying a house in Toronto, and realizing that me and S had been feeling pretty isolated here in the city away from our friends and family. I won’t go too deep into those as I’ve shared them in the past and I share more of this in that youtube video I mentioned about hitting the reset button. But as much as I’m realizing that I’d been operating at 100 for the last few years of my life, I’m struggling with winding down.
Some days I wake up, and I’m bursting with energy, and then other days I wake up completely exhausted. When ultimately, my goal in life right now is really just to find balance.
I’m self aware enough to know that I have a perfectionist personality. I want things to be just right. And I often do things in extremes, i.e., if I commit to something, I’m all in.
And all in to me has meant giving my full ALL, to whatever it may be.
If I want to lose weight, I’ll run for an hour, seven days a week until I hit my goal. If I want to feel cleansed and detoxed, I’ll do a 3 day or 5 day juice cleanse with no solid foods. Or if I start a new job, I live and breathe the work at the office until I forget what time it is.
It’s exhausting. Ex-hausting.
For me, with my blog and everything to do with @inspiredbynick, I left my full-time job to pursue it full time, and I truly hit the ground running last year. Because of my perfectionist personality, when curveballs came my way and interrupted what I had planned and the work I was doing, everything collapsed. The self-doubt kicked in, the taking a step back begun, and one day off from it turned into two, turned into seven, turned into a whole month… Until the point of full discouragement kicked in. It was tough.
I’m working on finding a happy medium with any new thing I take on. A true balance. But it’s work for me. I need to remind myself that rest-days exist for a reason. And if I structure and organize my days well enough, it’s okay to take a two-hour break here and there.
Productivity does not exclusively mean operating at a hundred, 100% of the time.
Some of the other realizations I’d come to in the last few months include:
- You will never truly be happy if you keep wanting more. It’s better to focus your energy into the things that you do have, and be grateful for them.
- Accept the fact that LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Period. And for everyone! That means it with ups and downs at different times for different people, it’s just part of life.
- It’s okay to re-evaluate the things you have going on in your life and admit what once brought you joy, may no longer.
I’m sure one day I’ll be able to look back on this as a time in my life where I was just in transition. An evolution from putting too much emphasis on the things that no longer served me, to finding a healthy balance with the things I’ve got going on. Life can be overwhelming sometimes, for sure, but it’s okay to take a step back and breathe when you need to.
Nick Joly
#begoodtoyourbody
inspiredbynick.com
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