I’m okay. I’m grateful, very grateful for everyone in my life and their endless support. But days like these, I am reminded that this road I have chosen is not an easy one. And one thing that is not said much about this path is loneliness. I have spoken about it many times, including the amazing support I am blessed with, and mindset things.
Everyone is incredibly wonderful and my heart is full of love from the endless support I get. But some nights, when the meetings finally draw to a close, when I shut my Zoom, when I cleared my mails, I’m just reminded by the endless mountain of other things to do. When everything is a priority, nothing is.
Real Talk
3 things suck the most.
No one ever understands. Everyone keeps reminded me to remain empathetic with everyone. But who is empathetic about the stress (and sometimes, bullshit) that I have to deal with? I always do my best to communicate and explain, but no one is ever you and will ever understand fully. I am okay with this. I made peace with this at least 10 years ago. Some days suck, not because the day itself sucks, but no one understands. I have the luxury of being able to speak to some people about some small slices of what I deal with on a daily basis, so I’m grateful for those people. I never expect anything from anyone, and I’m just grateful for any level of understanding in any way, shape or form.
My best is never enough. I’m really doing my best. I really really really fucking am. I’m almost always running at max capacity, except for the random lucky periods where I get to slow down for just a little bit. Some days, I get so busy that I forget to eat. Some days I try to survive on 3h sleep. Some days I feel so sick that I puke so my body relaxes and I can sleep. Some weeks, I shut my emotions so I can focus on all the tasks, and deal with them when I have to spin less plates. Again, I don’t ever expect anyone to understand. Some days, it’s better to shut the world out, and just go inside my head and hang out there. It’s fun to hang out in there, thankfully. There, I am enough. The conditional probability of other factors out of my control are not in my head.
It never gets easier. Every day, I remind myself, “tomorrow will be better because I am stronger”. It is hard. It only gets harder. And you get better every day. But to get better, you need to deal with these lessons every single day. And when you are ready to tackle the hard problems, harder problems exist. It never gets easier, you just get better. But the process of getting better sucks sometimes.
Still, despite days like these, despite knowing all of these, despite preparing as much as I can, I wake up every day and still choose this path. The best sword is made by plunging the steel into icy cold water after being red-hot. To emerge the best, you simply need to go through these icy cycles, be shaped by the hitting hammer and do this over and over.
Happy Things
3 things that are the best.
I’m grateful I’ve got me. Yes, it can be lonely some days, but I have all these dimensions to play with. The world can collapse, but I will always have me. She’s got my back. It’s hard to feel too lonely, when you always got your back. At the very least, I will fully understand the stress, the spinning plates, the hard days. I never needed any external validation because I’m proud of what I’ve achieved so far, how far I’ve come and who I’m becoming.
I’m grateful for the immense support. I’m grateful that I can reach out to people easily. I’m grateful for my extremely amazing teams that make things easier. I’m grateful for the needed hugs when some days are hard and no one understands. I’m grateful for the opportunities that allow me to keep pushing forward. I’m grateful for the listening ears. I’m grateful for the crazy amount of support. It’s not possible to be here without the support. Yes, there is me. But I’m so limited by the things I don’t know. And I really don’t know a lot of things. So my heart is always overflowing with fullness that I have 24h timezones to speak with. The hard days get so much more manageable with the constant beautiful and amazing support. I am the luckiest person alive.
I’m grateful to see change. These general stress and struggles are hard because change is hard. Especially when you become the change you want to see, you are just going to be met with resistance, going to be challenged, and some times, you just have to invest a lot of time, resource and energy but there are just little results. But I am grateful that when people think about economics in web3, no one talks about “it’s just game theory” anymore, but they start using the terms like economics, resilience, value creation, economic policy, etc. This took 5 years. Some days, I fantasise about living a normal life. I wonder how simple life would be if I did a 9-5 sort of life. It’s almost ridiculous to fantasise about these simple life. But I get bored of it after 15min. I’m grateful to be the change I want to see. I’m grateful for this hard path. It’s fun cause it’s hard and I get to ace it.
Still, the bottom line is that I am grateful despite these “first world problems” I have.
Tomorrow will be a better day, I promise.
Love,
L