> *I wrote this essay as part of [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.com/), a cohort-based course for online writers I took part in October 2023. I published 4 essays over 5 weeks and learned a ton on the writing craft.*

Think about something that [comes naturally to you](http://testing/); a skill, hobby or maybe a particular way of being.

Now, if someone were to ask you: “How do you do that so well?” What would you say?

Be honest.

If you’re like most people, you may be tempted to give a short, neat explanation. Something that fits on a bumper sticker. You try to compress months, years, or perhaps a lifetime, of understanding in that domain. And most of what you say might be true! Certain actions, events or rituals may have legitimately helped you develop in your craft.

Still, the truthful answer would be: “I have no idea”.

That’s how I feel about drumming, which I’ve been doing since I was 13 years old. Put me in a studio with anyone from John Mayer to James Hetfield from Metallica, and I’ll crank out a groovy drum beat, no problem. Ask me how I do it, and I couldn’t tell you.

Learning to play the drums has always been, at the macro level, a complete blur. Pure ignorance even. In the moment, I had no clue I was improving. At the micro level, it was all-out war. An agonizing tussle between chaos and order, with persistent hand blisters, bottomless laundry baskets of sweaty tees, and too many broken sticks to count.

At each stage of the journey, I was alone, trying to chart a path through the murky jungle. It was only after years had passed that I found myself arriving at a small peak in The Drumalayas, overlooking a foggy field of lush, green trees, where I had been previously flailing about.

It was never as straightforward as putting the mythical ‘10,000 hours’ in. And it’s not because my best friend Alex, the guitar wizard, and I jammed in our high school’s music studio day in and day out. Or because I never learned how to read drum sheet music, and only played by ear. Or because I felt challenged by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy's blazing-fast drum fills. Or because I never pursued any formal lessons since I enjoyed learning my own way.

It’s actually all of those things, and none at the same time. These events, patterns and facts reveal themselves only when I look back and connect the dots. They are the byproduct of intrinsic motivation. Where that motivation comes from, I don’t know, but it manifested itself in my unique exploratory journey around drumming.

When we see others achieve something we want, we try to follow their footsteps in formulaic fashion, instead of seeking to understand what conditions led to those results in the first place. Even when we pinpoint those conditions, we try to replicate them, which doesn’t end up producing the result we seek anyway!

For example, if I had to learn the drums from scratch again, and I followed my approach like a recipe e.g. by only learning to play Dream Theater songs or going self-taught, then I’d be a lesser drummer than the version of me that pursued it naturally and wasn’t consciously trying to control how the process unfolded.

This can apply to every other pursuit in our lives. We ask people “How?” because what we’re really looking for is a prescription; an excuse to avoid being in that jungle, all alone, forced to figure things out for ourselves. And it’s understandable! The jungle is a scary place to be. It’s littered with bear traps, poisonous snakes, and dead ends, and there’s no guarantee we’ll make it to the peaks.

So what should we do instead? I have no idea, and I’m not going to give you a prescription or tell you what you should do. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m getting in that jungle.

Get in the jungle

> *I wrote this essay as part of [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.com/), a cohort-based course for online writers I took part in October 2023. I published 4 essays over 5 weeks and learned a ton on the writing craft.*

---

> *Yes, this road runs right through failure; yes, your heart will sometimes break—but you’ll be your own worst jailer if you chase a prize that’s fake.*
>
> *Ellen Fishbein, [Spacefaring: A Contribution to Earth’s Archives](https://t.co/bSqGdzBwjq)*

You can’t change who you are.

Let me be even more specific. You can’t change your interests, curiosities, and fascinations. You can try your damn hardest to suppress them. But they’re always going to be there, lurking in the shadows, begging to be expressed.

The forces that determine what we’re drawn to exist in a realm beyond human comprehension. To deny them is an exercise in futility, but I understand why you may have felt compelled to do that throughout your life. It’s not your fault.

As adults, we are all victims of the invisible scripts that run our lives. These scripts are shaped by our parents, teachers, peers, and the list goes on. Wherever they come from, their strategy is the same: Use fear, criticism, and other intimidation tactics to convince you to give up on your dreams, abandon your sense of individuality, and lose your creative spirit. They lead us to take jobs we hate, stay in relationships that no longer serve us, and consume instead of creating things.

There is a grave cost to bear if you succumb to these scripts:

> ***The gradual decaying of your soul, and the ensuing loss of your sense of wonderment in life, as you abandon and exile your inner child into the abyss.***

Wouldn’t it be a shame if that were the story of your life?

The good news is this: even an exiled inner child can still be heard. Yes, their cries for attention might sound like whispers at first, but if you train yourself to listen closely, they’ll eventually mature into confident declarations of their existence.

How? Simple. Surrender to your nature.

Accept the things that make your eyes light up when you talk about them, or make you feel like time doesn’t exist when you’re immersed in them. They are gifts to be cherished and nurtured!

If you don’t have a sense of what these things are, that’s okay. You’ll just need to experiment a bit. That means playing like a child would, and exploring your curiosity, without any of the adults in your psyche interfering in the process. Create without a care for the outcome; play for play’s sake. Just write, draw, design, compose, capture, record, produce - whatever you feel compelled to do.

I’m on this exact journey, right now. I quit my tech job at a high-growth startup last year because I was on a one-way ticket to burnout city. It was long overdue. I had been pursuing a career in tech for the last decade that looked good on paper, mostly so I could impress my Father.

It sounds silly when I say it out loud, but it’s the truth.

Growing up, I considered my Father the ultimate model of a successful man. He had fiery ambition, a powerful entrepreneurial spirit, and a ruthless approach to doing business that helped him build what he would proudly proclaim as his “personal empire”.

As a teen, my obsession with design grew, but my dreams of pursuing it in a meaningful way were met with either criticism or indifference. Over time, I learned to let go of those dreams. But by denying my identity as a designer, I had allowed my Father’s critical, disapproving voice to become my invisible script. I’ve worked really hard since then to undo the powerful grasp it’s had on my life.

It’s taken a lot of inner work for me to arrive at these conclusions, and I’m in the middle of a radical experiment to seriously venture into the design world (while dragging my kicking and screaming scripts along with me, of course).

In this new world, I feel like a child: starry-eyed at the endless possibilities that await me as I continue to develop my craft, but also overwhelmed at the vast, murky terrain that lies ahead.

When I sit in front of my computer to do anything design-related, I have about a 5-second head start before I’m ambushed by an army of scripts trying to pry my fingers away from my keyboard. And they’re willing to die for their cause!

Luckily, I’ve discovered an effective defense against their onslaught: a delicious Americano (gotta love that dopamine kick), and a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones to blast progressive metal into my ears as a distraction.

All this to say: I have no idea what these revelations around design mean for my career, but that doesn’t matter. For now, my goal is to keep designing. The journey ahead looks like it’ll be as challenging as it may feel fulfilling, but at the end of the day: I am a designer. I’m surrendering to my nature. If you can relate to my story, I hope you find the courage to surrender to yours too.

Surrender to your nature

> *I wrote this essay as part of [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.com/), a cohort-based course for online writers I took part in October 2023. I published 4 essays over 5 weeks and learned a ton on the writing craft.*

---

I’m a recovering workaholic.

For the longest time in my 20’s, I equated being productive with working at high-speed and with a caffeine-induced vigor and intensity.

Here’s what a typical day looked like for me 5 years ago:

I’d wake up at 5:00am, snoozing 1 of 6 iPhone alarm clocks spaced apart by a minute each, and zombie-walk to the kitchen to prepare myself a glass of water with a pink scoop of GAT Nitraflex Preworkout.

After hacking together a quick breakfast of oats and honey, I’d head to the gym for 2 hours of heavy compound lifts like benching and squatting, and with terrible injury-inducing form, of course. I’d rush to finish my workouts just so I could be at a coffee shop by 7:30am to start work, not for any practical reasons, but more so to feel a sense of accomplishment and superiority.

At this point, my central nervous system is firing on all cylinders, and my day is just getting started. I’d spend the next 12 hours sitting in the corner of a jam-packed downtown Starbucks grinding through my to-do list, and of course, fueled by at least 2-3 coffees for that extra dopamine rush I craved.

Sometime around 8pm, I’d take the public transit line and head home, with my eyes glued to my phone. Once home, it’s burgers and fries for dinner, TV for a couple of hours then scrolling myself to sleep on social media, only to do it all again the next day.

I felt like shit all the time. After suffering through never-ending bouts of burnout, insomnia, anxiety and depression, I began seeing a psychotherapist, and also a health coach. Working with these professionals changed my life in ways that are difficult to convey in a short essay, but one of the biggest realizations I had was that I could still be productive, and create things of value, even if I moved slowly.

Over time, I stopped relying on caffeine, preworkout, and other stimulants to blitz through time and deplete my energy meters. Instead, I moved slower and with more intention. I began cooking my own meals 3x a day, prioritizing 8-9 hours of sleep, going on frequent walks (even during the harsh Canadian winters), and reconnecting with my hobbies.

Don’t get me wrong. I have my off days, and it’s a constant battle; I still hear the voice of my inner Drill Sergeant berating me at the top of his lungs to stop wasting time and get to work. Sometimes he has a point, but he has a toxic method of delivering that message which I’ve been developing defenses against.

Our fast-paced world condemns slow, intentional work and celebrates, even rewards, speed. Pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or TikTok, and you’ll find a never ending stream of 20-somethings rambling about how many hours they work, with their rented yellow Lamborghinis in the backdrop.

Instead of hustling 24/7, pace yourself. I’m not advocating against working hard, but grinding yourself down to the bone is going to make you miserable, and completely destroy your productive capacity. You think the caffeine overload is helping you but it’s really just a debt you’ve taken on sleep and restfulness that you’ll need to pay off later. Eventually, all the pushing and forcing will kill your drive and the luster in your life.

If you’ve read this far, here’s my challenge to you: Try a [Dopamine Fast](https://medium.com/swlh/dopamine-fasting-2-0-the-hot-silicon-valley-trend-7c4dc3ba2213) this weekend. Don’t use your phone, laptop or any piece of technology for a full day. Stay in the present moment when with friends and family, or while doing something you love for it’s own sake. The point of this exercise is to normalize your brain’s dopamine levels, and train yourself to unplug from our fast-paced digital world by doing things that relax and energize you instead.

Doing a dopamine fast will give you a taste of what moving slowly feels like. It felt foreign to me at first, but as a former adrenaline junkie, I now see its merit. What’s more important is recognizing that we get to choose when to move fast vs. slow—and that each of us has to find our own balance, regardless of what the hustle-porn content creators have to say.

Moving slowly

> *I wrote this essay as part of [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.com/), a cohort-based course for online writers I took part in October 2023. I published 4 essays over 5 weeks and learned a ton on the writing craft.*

---

I should give up. I’m not meant to be a writer.

That’s how I felt writing this essay for [Write of Passage](https://writeofpassage.school/). My original plan to publish on ‘First Draft Fridays’ was derailed because I got roped into a boxing match with my Impostor Syndrome (or Tyson as I like to call him).

What started as a light, technical spar with Tyson quickly escalated to biting down on my mouthpiece and throwing haymakers to survive. I thought I’d be able to predict his go-to weapon: the dependable jab-jab-cross, but I was dead wrong. He’s finally figured out how to throw it from multiple angles, and by the time I see it coming, I’m already asleep on the canvas.

Tyson is also coached by the best in the mental boxing biz: Mr. Not Good Enough, a trillion-time International World Champion of crushing hopes and dreams. Together, these guys are tough. I’ll give them that. I’ve spent more time procrastinating this week, doubting myself and deleting multiple drafts than ever. Not to mention, resisting the urge to bash my head into my keyboard!

I’ll admit, I chuckle at the thought of my Macbook Pro’s bloody keys ricocheting off the cramped walls of a hipster coffee shop, while accompanied by the feel-good tunes from a trending Spotify jazz playlist. Maybe I just need more coffee?

I’m supposed to come up with a Call To Action for this essay: something profound to make you pause, reflect and change your life. Like actually doing those 3 exercises your physiotherapist told you to do 1,000 times, and you’ve convinced yourself you’ll get to after your spaghetti dinner.

I don’t have a message of hope for you. Instead, in the spirit of sticking to the earlier themes around combat sports, I’d like to draw your attention to one of my favourite pro mixed martial artists, Dustin Poirier, and what he had to say about resilience when confronting danger.

> *I know going in there that it's a fight. And bad things are probably going to happen...I trust myself to find a way to persevere, find an opening, and just stay in there. I don't know. I just trust myself.\
> —[Dustin Poirier on BMF Title, Legacy & More | UFC 291](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNPYvBc4CKA&t=138s)*

That’s real. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like giving up this week, but I kept coming back to that quote. Hell, I even bought a corkboard from Amazon for $35.99 just so I could pin a sticky note on it that says: Do you trust yourself?

That is the fundamental question, isn’t it? Do you trust yourself? And I don’t mean that in some ‘The Secret’-esque, Kumbaya kind of way. It’s more like: Do you trust yourself enough to get out of your own damn way? To just ‘do the thing’ without having Bill Lumbergh from Office Space micromanage you and chime in with a “Yeah…if you could just do a better job, that would be great”.

Honestly, based on how the past week has unfolded, I’d say it’s mostly a No for me. I don’t trust myself, but I’m learning to, gradually. I wrote this essay in about 2 hours, and if you’re reading it, then I’ve finally published it online. Yes, I’m battered and bruised (and maybe slightly concussed), but I trust myself to continue writing, even if my corner wants to throw in the towel.

Everyone has their own Tyson. Maybe you’ve been through too many brawls to count with yours, but you’re still here. Aren’t you? I guess Rocky Balboa was right, it’s not about how hard you get hit, it's about how you can get hit and keep moving forward. So that’s what you’ll do: Keep moving forward, and you’ll trust yourself each time you step into that ring.

Trusting yourself

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