We need to be unsatisfied
In yesterday’s article called “Screw consistency and steady progress” I talked about how I finally realized that my attempt at making steady, consistent progress and focusing on long term goals made me miserable and ruined all my motivation to do anything productive.
From that realization I drew another conclusion that I don’t necessarily like, but applies to me, and to many others: we need to be sad, miserable and unsatisfied. Although these are negative emotions that we always try to get rid of, they are a vital part of the way in which we go about in life.
In my case, having to endure those emotions is what motivated me to pick up work again. It’s what motivated me to start in the first place. At the age of 16 I was poor, aimless and quite frustrated with the financial situation I was in. All the frustration and anger that resulted from my living situation back then was precisely what made me try to become a freelancer. I wanted to have a better life and I was willing to work really hard to achieve that goal.
Not much changed in the years that followed, which resulted in even more negative emotions, so many in fact that I gave up on my goal and got a normal 9 to 5 job, hoping that doing that will change something. That worked for a while, until I quit the job that I had and found myself once again in a very difficult position.
Once again, just like before, negative emotions found their way into my heart: discontent, anger, frustration and something else — desperation. I was lost and had no other option left. So, “armed” with a bunch of fears, I accepted an offer for a job in a different country, having no other alternative.
Luckily for me, leaving the country proved to be a great idea. In time I made enough money to solve most of the problems that I had and to even make a bit of progress in some areas in my life, with the aid of the new financial situation I was in. And that is where I am today.
However, even though things are, at least for now, well and stable, and I am satisfied with how everything is, I found myself unhappy in one particular area — my own personal work.
Because I am no longer in a desperate need for money, for a “way out” of my situation and for solutions to my problems, I found myself lacking any motivation to do anything productive. Sure, I like to work on these articles, on art, to read books, and to generally aim at improvement. But years and years ago those things were necessary efforts that were steered towards a clear goal: to improve my living situation.
Once the goal disappeared, and along with it my dissatisfaction with life, so did my motivation to work. I had one reason that dictated my actions, and now it was gone. It should be of no surprise then that I ended up wasting day after day playing video games, ignoring all the books I had and wishing that I could be productive but not being able to find any motivation to make myself work on anything.
All that changed recently, as it always does, when I started feeling miserable. I craved work, even without a good reason for it. Sure, I could wait until I am called again at my job, but that will take a while. I needed to do something, desperately, and that’s exactly what I did. I started working.
Yesterday’s article represents the realization I had about why I dislike consistent and steady progress. Today’s article represents the realization I had about the need for unhappiness in one’s life and how our never ending craving for more can actually be what keeps us moving forward.
I’ll come up with some goals, regardless of whether I need them or not. They might be superficial, or complex. It doesn’t matter. There’s always a desire in humans, and I’ll find some in mine. It doesn’t matter how good or bad they are. I will begin to work again. And all this is the result of a long period of misery and restlessness. Negative feelings are there for a reason. We might want them to go away, but, if we pay attention to them, they might show us the way towards what we truly want, not what we think we do.
