A continuation of my year end self review. This time about my identity and where I see my self going.

Identity

There’s so much things I want to tell and to just let it all go. Everyday its in my head but in the end it always settles down to this thought – I lost myself in the space, confused and unprepared for the world.

I can’t find words that describe what it is that exactly what I want to tell. But I’ll try to find them as I go over writing this or I might able to discover it by reading between the lines.

Okay.

I always confuses my self most of the time in almost all the situations I’ve got my self into. I couldn’t able to come up firm decisions that it always have to end up the other party have to decide it for me. There’s this masculinity hormones that are running low in my system and I’m not cool with it. Why? Because my brother is the completely opposite of what I am. He’s tough and can take risks and as hell do whatever he like. He might lack neurons that can come up a multimillion idea but he is smart in his own way. Most importantly, he stands firmly and his fists are ready for whoever blocks his way. And I would rather have that than a guy who knows how to create a proposal but can’t break down walls.

I’m more close to my mother and two sisters. Relevant factor as far as my soft features are concern. There’s more of it than the other. Personally, I want the other way around or it has to be the other way around to begin with.

You get the picture. I’m definitely not man enough to be a man. I’m weak and I don’t exactly know what I am in this world. If we go back to talking about my career, this is the very reason why I can’t proceed with almost all my undertakings.

I lack consistency.

I doubt my self ahead.

I can easily pick persons to idolize and dissolve in their world.

I’ve ruined someone somehow.

My dedication is like a flickering bulb – sometimes its glaring, sometimes its totally blackout.

Last year made me realized all these craps. A friend told me that I keep on aspiring to become something that I’ve seen from someone. She’s damn right. Its a critical hit on me. Then I realized if I ever have principle in life then why I keep on wearing someone else’s shoes. I get that we need inspirations to generate motivation but somehow I overdid it. And instead of inspiration, it turned out to be imitation.

I want to crack my head open and cut all of these loose. But that’s not how life would allow us to solve things. I’m going to find a way out because there is a way out. This is where I mentioned where I see my self going. If they’re all weren’t solved where I am now, I gotta find the answer somewhere else. Something that I must try and Its what my guts is telling me the whole time. If I can’t make a move now, there might never going to be a chance for me to know the answer.

All of these lead to one thing that is missing in me – experiences. And I know normal people do get experiences with where they are and what they’re currently dealing with but somewhere inside my head keeps on telling me that going far away from my comfort zone might help ironed my identity and that I can boldly say I know my self more than anyone else.

Its going to be scary but I’m more scared to have all of these shits with me forever.

Mid this year I’m going to take a leap. Again, its scary but less scary with preparations ahead. Big thing that I certainly look forward to. I never want to lose this chance which I did once. I’m not saying it could be the ONLY way to find what’s the hell is wrong with me and I am definitely not using this as an excuse to go just where ever I want.

Sigh.

I’m a complicated person. Though I still find a piece of me that I know about but I wonder how it is to be whole. Its a new year so we have a chance to go chase the life we want and that make us feel complete.

This year is going to be finally over in a couple of hours. There had been so much things happened as usual, but this time things got intense and this year highlighted more of my career and identity.

Career

I was juggling between photo editing and web but primarily with web. I was able to come up photo shoots with my sister and it’s been awesome covering adventures with photos. I was really thinking of making both my primary jobs. I just don’t like the photo editing if I only edit photos that I didn’t take. So I have to end the photo editing part in the wedding photography studio. And I was back with web as my only job and photography as hobby. But I sold my camera to a friend somewhere in August. He hasn’t paid the half balance yet and Its been almost 3 months since he paid the first half and I’m a little upset obviously. That’s one part of my life that I suck at – selling and who to sell.

So I haven’t had any real photography sessions lately except with my phone. It can still give me good photos but I can’t wait to have a device again that solely for taking moments that I value the most. Photography as a profession is something that I don’t want to focus on yet even if I have the device again. Some people said I should get serious on it though but no as of this time.

I’m still not good at business. I could see there’s a little improvement though but not in the level that I’m willing to go against risks. I planned to put up a coworking space since I’ve been desperately looking for one in our area. Well, not quite desperately since I haven’t found or created one. Since there’s none, I have this idea of creating such community/business that provides rental desk to freelancers like me. I’ve always been wanted to work with people – inspires me to do great work that I can show off to them and restrict me from doing things unnecessary for work or in a workplace. I started talking to few people and conducted a survey but it hit me again. That lazy moment. The downtime. I know the coworking would prosper and has visible market but I lack the guts and courage and determination to push it forward. And it is back in my head again. Recently though I’ve been working for most days with a friend. We work either in her house or in my apartment. I guess we can see the year will end for me with that conclusion.

And still regarding about business, that little improvement I mentioned is because I listen to Sean McCabe podcasts. This man is awesome (together with his friends) and his dedication to his works is just shooting through the universe. I learned so much over the course of listening to almost 100+ of his podcasts to date. I’ll surely going to stick my nose on his podcasts for more years to come.

Works in the web was steady until recently. It’s the second time that it feels like December is a cooling down point. Last year, I didn’t have much work during the same month. And if it’s beneficial or not depends on the person and I say it’s fair on my part. I spend some time to rebuild my portfolio that I am hoping to launch first thing next year and the rest is for random things that include discovering new series, just recently though, reading and just plainly do nothing. It’s good to just do nothing once in a while.

On the contrary of not pushing the coworking, I created a team that I named Countryside. I team up with a friend to provide services on web development. We started to move to a higher bar on this as I have bought a domain for it. But there’s still doubt, again. Sometimes I think its just won’t going to work anyway specially if there’s no work coming our way.

One more thing I’d like to bring up is my thing about contemporary house/office interiors and building things with woods. There’s a subtle magic I feel when I see a space with wooden accent. I love outdoors. I like being with the woods – the color, textures and its unique presence. I have an uncle that work on that field. I’m working on looking for someone here in our area that might in need of his help and that I can start helping with as well.

Looking back at all of them now, I actually have had a bumpy ride on my career path. But there are few things that I’d like to clear with moving forward…for what’s really going to come. Starting next year, new beginning as may sound it is, I’ll look for a day job as web developer. Countryside will be a part time endeavor only. Well, Its safe to say that the day job could/should be enough to cover my bills and I could explore the other side of web development with Countryside. On the other hand, I will pursue and try to look for someone who needs house decorations or wooden furnitures and tap my uncle on that. They say you should be doing something different from what you’re doing in your day job. Could provide a dynamic in your system.

I think all of these are pretty solid to me but we cannot always guarantee in life that it will going to be how we plan it to be. The very reason why I decided to write it here so I could go back and read it again and asses if I still have the same direction that I want to pursue or if there’s a change in plan.

I can’t believe these are all the things I wanna share that I have all this time in my mind just solely about my career. What’s up with my identity will be in the next post. Writing it while getting prep up to welcome twenty fifteen later.