The Only Constant is Change, or How I Learned to Start Over (and Over)
A lot can change in a year...
On November 15th, 2023, I was pumped for a productive day.
I’d finally gotten back onto a medication for ADHD about a month before that and had been in a constant state of improvement and productivity.
I’d created systems in my life and at work that kept me focused and able to hit my deadlines and create change and progress.
In short, I had it all figured out.
D-Day - Happy “Forced Retirement” Day
Here’s what I had to say to my journal entry that morning:
“At this point, I’m post workout, post yoga, post meditation, an hour into Adderall and sipping on a slightly weaker coffee than normal. I have everything going for me. I hope to channel it into some good shit today.”
Famous last words.
At that time, I had yet to come up with the name “Channeling Chaos” as a business. I had yet to even consider creating tools for helping people manage their chaos. I HAD created something that worked for me, and that’s what mattered.
Fast-forward 30 minutes, shortly after my 1 on 1 meeting with my manager. (I’m not making this up.)
My meeting was 5 minutes long.
I was let go… I no longer work at ####, I no longer work at ####
What a gut punch
I’ll get my PTO which was like 8 weeks or something
I’ll get a severance package for 26 weeks
I’ll get some $ for a health care bridge
I’ll get some pro-rated portion of bonus plan.. and since we’re EOY maybe that’ll mean close to $#? lets just plan on maybe $#
My insurance will be good through the end of the year
I will have some sort of Cobra thing to work with for insurance
I will have some sort of placement service to help me find a job
I don’t want to have to start over. )c: I don’t want to be the bottom of the food chain.
And the day turned into a fog.
The First Few Months - AKA The Initial Aftermath
I have no plan to walk you through the blow-by-blow. Since I like to chunk things into threes, we’ll go that route.
My mental state for the first day was a fugue, it was somewhat like that for a while.
Because my employers were generous enough to pay me out to the end of the month, and then to cover my medical benefits through the end of the year… I was a little bit in limbo.
Within the first week, I had my strategy figured out.
Vector 1 - “Status Quo” - Update my resume, look for a similar role.
Vector 2 - “Upskill & Pivot” - Learn Data Science skills, move into that specialization
Vector 3 - “Entrepreneur” - Create a series of smaller income streams, passive incomes that would support me in aggregate, even if one has a weak month.
My thoughts were to work on those with a small bit of overlap, but with priority being on each one in consecutive order. I totally did that, it worked well… but I realized when I got to Vector 3 that I REALLY didn’t have any interest in the first two. Was it wasted time? I don’t think so.
For the first month, I basically treated it like an overdue vacation. I had 6 weeks of unpaid vacation accrued, so I let myself act like I was still getting paid. It was the month from holiday-to-holiday-to-holiday, so I helped my wife with artisan markets (and realized how much I loved the chaos of those events and how dynamic the work felt.)
I spent a bit of time in that month working on my resume and got it to a completed state at 2 official months since layoff. (January 15th)
I had started doing the data science and Python stuff in the first month, got my first tier of certification done and then got the second done in mid-February.
Around that time, I had decided I was going to create a business… at the time, the obvious thing to do was create a name and an LLC, so I had that done by the end of February.
Three months in, I was staying true to plan, it was working. I also had a business plan (of sorts) created by then as well, so I was well poised for the next phase.
So you think you can write
I’ve talked about it before, won’t get crazy with it again. My plan, once I started my business, was to write and establish some of a presence. To create an initial series of Notion Templates that can help people with ADHD, and then continue to grow as a newsletter.
At the time, I’d seen stories of $10k months for people writing on Medium, on Substack and selling templates on Gumroad, so my dollar sign eyes thought create the things, people will follow you, maybe in 6 months we’ll see $500-1000 a month across all the platforms. Pie in the sky optimism, meet rude awakening.
I managed to create a following of 1000 people on Medium in my first two months. It all looked good. I managed to get to $200 a month there as well.
As I integrated Substack into the mix, I started to see the cracks in the Medium facade. I could spend 20 hrs a week there to be consistent and I’d slowly get to something like $500 a month. It was not going to turn into multiple thousands… and the time commitment was obviously becoming impractical.
Then the cracks in the Newsletter world started to surface. It’s harder to get the same growth rate, but also I started to see that the type of writer that is creating that growth is not who I was.
In my second three months, I grew my writing empire and realized that writing alone wasn’t going to create a viable income. I was going to need to SELL stuff.
Unfortunately, I got so invested in writing (and was enjoying it so much) that I stopped working on my Notion offerings and on the systems that would help people manage their lives.
Three months in to being an entrepreneur, and I lost hope. I saw that writing prolifically created content that felt shallow and meaningless. I saw that there was so much repetition, and worst of all, I saw that the audience it was creating was just other creators. The plan was unraveling fast.
I joined a mastermind at the time, though it was called something else. I learned how someone else created their writing and grew their audience. I saw that it would churn out shallow content as well. It showed me behind the curtain of the ‘online content creation’ empire. I saw the warts.
Writing is great, but what can you do for me today?
Let’s call the next 3 months “the Dark Times.”
Up til now, I was creating plans and executing. I was self-awarenessing all my progress and strengths and flaws and turning them into insight for others. Then I started looking at who was reading my stuff, how far the reach was, and how effective it was. I realized that a) I wasn’t a ‘guru’ and b) I didn’t really like ‘gurus.’
I moved from regular content creation to something more part-time.
I joined another mastermind, well first a challenge, but I saw its strengths so went to the mastermind.
I tried to create content on Twitter, I hate Elon, I hate Twitter… it never felt right.
Creating content on Medium was creating less fans, less money, and I saw that it was a walled garden that wasn’t where my audience was.
I leaned into writing about ADHD and saw that it felt insincere, or that it was too easy to let ADHD be my personality… and that’s false.
In that three months, I wasn’t making money, I wasn’t creating fans, but I was learning a LOT about who I was, what I wanted, what mattered, and why corporations are so dangerous for me and others.
By the end of the ninth month, I was feeling a bit hopeless, lost and like I was starting over.
In the darkness, there is a light
As I came to the final quarter, I saw that writing is nice, I’m good at it and its a great way to convey a message. But what I really bring to the table is the ability to create systems to ‘get shit done’, a history and skillset of mindfulness and a ton of compassion for myself and others.
I was back to where I had been at the start of entrepreneurship, “Help People.” I saw now that writing could be useful for sharing my story and for ideation, but that it was time to work on what would actually be useful.
“Create an offering” is one of the parts of the success formula, but the advice its just words. So much advice I’d encountered in my first six months were just words.
Words are wind.
What has really proven to be the greatest help for me is to end up in a community. I’m in the Corporate Dropouts community, which has shown me numerous others who are where I am now, or have been in the past. I’m found my smaller tribe inside of the “Badassery Mastermind” with Tim Denning and Todd Brison, we talk Substack, but also entrepreneurship. And I’ve created a handful of friendships with individuals on Substack that are constant reminders of the humanity out there and that being an entrepreneur (for me) is about ideas and people.
I’m happier now than I’ve been in a long time, but also more hopeful. I’m finally creating a community, which was part of my original vision. I’m actually putting effort into creation not just re-hashing old ideas.
What a difference a year makes
As I’ve closed in on this anniversary, I’ve learned a lot about myself, about what starting a business actually means, about the wisdom of “it’s not what you know, but who you know” and about patience.
It’s taken a year to get to the point that so many gurus say is where to start. I had to try things and see them fail, it was important to unlearn things about myself and the world, and replace them with something new.
In February, I had a concept of what this day would look like, but not what my life would be like. I hadn’t really laid out the reality of how you have to live to get what you want, just what I needed to do.
Nobody is telling you that success is about the life you live. It seems too simplistic, but that really is the truth that’s emerged. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur, you don’t have to have a million in the bank, and you don’t need to have thousands of followers. All of these indicators are by-products.
Happiness can come from success, or maybe they’re the same thing. Maybe happiness is the goal. I finally see that happiness for me is in interacting with people, helping them grow or build something new.
That’s where I am now, seeing that what I hated about corporate life was that you were just a number. The entire ‘shareholder value’ model of business is dehumanizing. Creating value for other humans is so much more fulfilling.
On into the future
I had a series of “last day” type events since the layoff. First I stopped getting a proper paycheck, then I stopped getting benefits, then I stopped getting the ‘job placement’ service and free therapy. Further down the line was a last day of unemployment. Every different “last day” was a slow chiseling of a safety net.
I thought I was out of “last day” events, and then the election happened.
With each net that was removed, I’ve felt a little more desperate. It’s also put a bit more urgency in my actions.
This New World Order that starts up is both terrifying and exhilerating. The next year, at least in the US, is going to be highlighted with inhumane behavior. A focus on control, on power and on transferring wealth from the have-nots to the haves.
Things are likely to get grim for minorities, so I’m hoping I can use my time to make some part of life easier for some of those people. My hope is to, in my own small part, empower people to take their world back. To let them create things that keep us human, and for everyone to be able to have hope in their lives.
My start is my new community, Chaos Channelers, and my ChaOS system which will be rolling out slowly over the new several months.
I’m feeling more optimistic today than I have in a while. There is a lot of work to do, for me, for humans and the world. I think my tools will help facilitate that, so I want to have them done asap.
I appreciate all of you for being on this journey with me.
Namaste!