As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been catching myself passing on fun things more and more in the pursuit of making money. I’m 34 now, and, since graduating college in 2014 (I was a late bloomer!), I’ve spent the majority of my time only focusing on things that can be financially profitable. Should we travel to Europe? Nope, not profitable. Wanna see a movie? Nope, not profitable. Wanna try this new place for dinner? Nope, I have work to do…

This mindset is toxic, and I can now say it has taken a tole on both my physical and mental health. The constant stress of always trying to make more money puts your body in a constant state of “fight-or-flight.” Since this “mission” began, I’ve struggled with anxiety, depression, pvcs of the heart (basically a benign but alarming flutter), high blood pressure, and now, most recently, some sort of auto-immune disorder of the skin called dermatographism. Seriously, my skin breaks out in hives if it’s touched, and doctors are essentially helpless to cure it. “It usually goes away on it’s own,” they say…“in 95% of patients within five YEARS.” That’s a long time to be popping antihistamines daily just so I don’t break out in hives if my damn clothes are too tight.

Aside from the clear health issues, I’ve noticed I don’t even know how to have fun anymore. Like, seriously, the second I start laughing or having a good time, my brain starts guilt-tripping me into getting back to work. Evidently, there’s always more work to be done! Who would’ve thought. Oh, and I have these “modes of operation” that may or may not make me approachable or likeable. I’ll go from this goofy, sarcastic person to this sort of robot if I’ve been focused for long enough. When I’m “the robot,” humor bounces off of me, I take things extremely literally, and empathy practically fades into non-existence. It’s just not fun for anyone - but I’m insanely productive, if that means anything…

It’s even gotten to a point where every time I try to do something for fun, or try a new hobby, my brain almost immediately tries to develop a business plan around it. Just the other day my wife and I were talking about going to a pumpkin patch, which naturally led us to the idea of growing our own pumpkins, since we have so much extra space. This idea sounded fun to me! But not ten minutes later I was looking into zoning laws and permitting requirements to start our own mini pumpkin farm and sell to the town next season. THEY’RE FUCKING PUMPKINS. Just grow a few and be done with it. Sheez…

I honestly think this issue stems from the fact that I’m an engineer, which naturally lends me the ability do turn most of my ideas into reality. I have this weird inability to be deterred from any challenge, and have never once thought “there’s no way I can do that.” To me, there’s always a way to do it, and figuring it out is addictive. But, on the downside, it puts fake tasks on my plate so quickly that I finish them slower than I add new ones. So, no matter how much progress I make, the list is always longer at the end of the day.

So in the spirit of erradicating this toxic mindset from my life, I’m now going to focus on doing things simply for the sake of doing them. If there’s one positive thing I can take out of all of this, it’s that I’m incredibly thankful for my ability to be so damn self aware. Seriously, it’s usually a problem (anxiety yada yada…), but in this instance I can be mindful of where my mind is going and work on stopping it, or at least steering it towards a better objective.

Life is too short to always be working (whatever work means to you). If you’re not spending a good amount of your time doing things you love, simply for the sake of having fun, what’s the point of it all anyways? Money is fun, but there’s always more to be made, and missing life itself in the pursuit of more is, at least for me, not worth it.

I’m still going to keep building, investing, growing…but be mindful of my motivations and stressors. Building things people want is a passion of mine, but burning myself out to compete in a never-ending race isn’t for me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go learn how to properly align my new equatorial mount so I can take long-exposure photos of distant galaxies…just because I think it’s cool.