When Life Hands You Lemons, Make A Shitload Of Lemonade - A Personal 24 Hour Challenge To Face The Music (All Encouragement Welcome)
Shortly before my Dad died last Feb 13, he told me that he hated what I did for a living, and that I wasted his college tuition by leaving my secure corporate career to pursue my entrepreneurial passion.
Beside his subtle and not-so-subtle ongoing guilt and shame, I'm approaching 4 full years of flying solo with my home business, fully supporting myself without even a penny of help. When crypto boomed last winter, I had plenty to live comfortably and travel for many years If I sold, but I held it all. I kept grinding with my business and helping my family because I believed in my purpose. Selling my crypto at the time was a shortcut I wanted no part of. At this point, I wish I sold some to reinvest at the bottom, but that's life.
Learning how to sustain yourself independently is the best type of education I feel you can get, and well worth my portion of the tuition I covered.
The Challenge:
The best way I can push through brutal memories is to build right over them. Squash them by proving to anyone watching that I'm capable of living on my terms with genuine passion, hard work, and good decisions.
So, I'm going to royally kick my own ass for the next 24 hours to improve and replace a negative with a positive. I won't have time to think about how he relentlessly (and inexplicably) yelled at me with insults and repeatedly told me he didn't want me as a son with a grin before his final decline, practically the last time we ever spoke.
This post is something I can hold myself accountable to. It's setting the bar high to focus on a goal.
There goals are lofty, but simple:
List 100 new unique listings on eBay from my unprocessed thrifting/upcycling inventory. I'm going to have to part things out, repair some, clean them, etc.. It's a tedious manual process. (This is going to be a BITCH, but life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, unless you do the work. I can't imagine getting any sleep, but "sleep is for those who are broke.")
Two 70 minute gym workouts. (No pain no gain.)
The Finish Line:
I have music studio rehearsal time booked from 9-11 PM tomorrow with a singer and keyboardist, so that's the end point. With any energy left, I'll be able to play music and enjoy some good vibes at my own doing.
Then I'll get some sleep and see what starts selling to really make the effort pay off.
For those who don't know what I do:
I mainly do thrifting & upcycling resale. I've sold thousands of things I've bought on the cheap at thrift stores, and thousands of items I've upcycled from my city's curbs to help the environment. I've also recycled and reused thousands of boxes, and tons of bubble wrap, padded mailers, styrofoam, and other packaging materials. I love doing this and helping the environment and consumers along the way.
If anyone catches this, I may post an update if I'm ahead of schedule. The listings are going to take a ton of time, creativity and hustle, so I may just keep my head down with my favorite music blasting to plow through.
"You will never get to where you want to go by remaining where you are right now." - A very wise person.
Thanks for any encouragement in the comments. It'll mean a lot over the next 24 hours.
Ok, it's 8 PM EST and time to march to gym in the snow to start this mission.
Game on,
Brother you get it, I'm starting the same journey myself and learning how to make things work out has been brutal. I understand the criticism and rejection from family. I got a degree in Mechanical Engineering and have been getting a lot of flack about not working in my field earning loads of money right now. I get down on myself sometimes, and it has really held back my gains. I'm learning that it takes a ton of focus and persistence. Just like you said, you neglect the sleep and tell yourself you can't fail. Lol I believe it's one of life's big lessons if you can figure out how to be an entrepreneur and earn a living with your passions.
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Hope you kick tomorrow's ass. If ya need to vent or blow off some STEEM, drop me a text brother. It'll probably be hard to get through at times but know that you have people that give a shit. Anyway, I will bother you tomorrow actually. Always enjoy our chats.
I will say that you have helped personally motivate me to start moving the stuff that I should have been moving already...but you aren't getting me to go to the gym.
Hope you fare better tomorrow, than I did today...lol
Sleep is for those who are broke... ah, that doesn't sound right to me... have I been wasting a third of my life again? Dagnammit!
Understand that your Dad grew up in a very different time... a time where you trusted the company you worked for, you worked hard, and you retired. My grandfather literally worked his whole life at one company. Times have well and truly changed, and I think there would be literal thousands of people that wish they had the smarts and the bravery to choose the amazing work/life balance that you have.
Also... the world would be a much better and less trashed place if more people followed your lead.
You're a smart dude doing smart things! Including working towards processing the bad memories. You've got this! 100 listings... go!
Wow. Love this. In the next 24 hours, i will try to replace my negativitiy with positivity
Thank you for reading my message and taking some action to better yourself. That's the mission.
3 hour update:
Solid 75 minute gym workout, found a complete Miele vacuum on the curb on my walk home (can list as several parts), 3 small chicken breasts and a half bag of natural popcorn for dinner, shower, now it's WORK TIME.
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Hope you’ve been able to kick some ass the last few days. Sounds like an awesome challenge and a cool way to not let painful memories control your current life - but to take charge of that instead. 💪🏻
How was the time in the music studio? That sounds so fun !
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Did you make it?
I got two workouts in, but fell rather short on the listings. I couldn't stay awake and had to try to regain some energy for the music studio session at night. I also ran into the challenge of the time it took to prep/part out some items to sell, which cost a lot of bandwidth. If I had a neat "ready to list" pile, I could've done it, but I had to process a lot and I underestimated that.
It did get me in a proactive flow I'll keep going. Thanks for following up. Good man over there.
Of course dude... I really appreciate the mental health aspect of this exercise way more than the actual 'number of listings' side... I hope you do a follow up post on where this put your headspace, I'd be super interested to read it, even if there wasn't any change.