Fill the gaps.
I’m bad with empty space.
I grew up in a family where money was always tight and always an issue, and I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life living paycheck to paycheck. Because of this I have a strong tendency to overcommit to things because I’m always so scared that something is going to drop out and whatever’s left won’t be enough. When you combine this terror of not being able to provide with an absolutely insatiable desire to create and leave a legacy, the results are a bit overwhelming.
A glance at my personal website will catch you up on everything I’m doing right now and to the average, rational human being it’s just absolutely fucking stupid. I’m managing two businesses, handling e-commerce and fulfillment for a third, producing two podcasts, writing semi-regularly, and gearing up to run the 2024 World YoYo Contest. I also have four kids, a wife who is the absolute fucking model of patience, and sometimes I even talk to my friends. (Hi, friends! Been a while!)
The most fucked up part of all this, is that this is pretty normal for me.
Ever since I found my momentum in 1996 I have been obsessed with filling the space. Filling it with the life that I’ve seen firsthand slip away from so many people, and nearly saw slip away from me. And for me that means building things I can leave behind. It means filling my time with activity.
There are some people who build so that they can spend their life standing on top of monuments to themselves. People like Bezos and Musk who want the whole world to know their name, want to scoop up as much of that world for themselves as they can, and give no fucks about who or what they break on the way to doing this. These people aren’t builders, they’re parasites. It’s easy to confused them for builders, because they do technically make things, but they make things that are designed to extract from everyone. I’m the other kind of builder.
I only care about the success of my work in the context of what it will open up for everyone who comes after me. I don’t want to build monuments, I want to build platforms. I want to build scaffolding.
I want to build empty, glorious boxes for other people to fill and to stand on.
And I don’t have much time. I’m absolutely the guy who hits the pillow and night and thinks “that’s one less day I have”. That is super fucked up, right? I know. I know it is. My wife is fond of pointing out that I need therapy. I’m fond of pointing out that’s why I have a blog. I suspect that, as per usual, she’s the one on the right track here.
Looking at all this, I can’t tell if my usual clear-eyed sense of self is failing me or if the answer is just too simple for me to accept. There has to be more, there has to be some other reason that I’m like this. I can’t be as simple as “scared of being poor again” or “scared of being homeless again”. I’m a long way away from those things. I’ve moved past those simple motivations, right? Or am I the emotional equivalent of those stories people tell about their grandparents who lived through the Great Depression dying, and when they clean out their house they find money, $1s and $5s, tucked into every book, every coat pocket, every single nook and cranny of the house, squirreled away by people who were just too terrified it could happen again to ever stop prepping for it.
I’m getting better at blowing off steam, but I’m still pretty bad at saying “no” to anything. But I’ve also found myself in an incredibly privileged position: while they definitely aren’t making me rich, all these things I’m doing either support my family or make me happy or both. I love every single bit of the work I’m doing. It’s probably all just a little too much at once but it’s all good stuff that I enjoy.
I have never been a good gauge of my own health, mental or physical. Haven’t been super great at taking care of those things, either. I could definitely be doing less, but would I be happy? How long until I got the itch again? Where is my happy medium?
Who fuckin’ knows, right?