Maybe I should write something

I’ve been looking for some degree of stability, with regard to income at least. It’s not an imperative, yet, but I want to feel secure. I guess I want to feel successful. Recurring work would tick both of those boxes, and even though I’m not actively looking for work, a couple of contacts have gotten in touch so far this year and I’ve done some work. Neither opportunities have morphed into anything meaningful, however, and that seems to reflect all of my relationships over the last few years generally. On some level, I’m adding these experiences to my internal list of failures, but on a higher level, I’m accepting that this is what I really want. The time and space to build my own product.

Whether I’ll ever achieve my goal is another matter. Whether I’m smart enough or focussed enough or inspired enough. Whether I can defeat self-doubt. Whether I can do it all alone. I don’t know. I’m aware that even in my wildest dreams where I manage to launch a new product and that product becomes successful, I’ll need to bring on people to help me. That shouldn’t need to scare me because I’ve managed a team of 16 direct reports but that feels like another life right now. Time on your own makes you less sharp.

Everything seems unclear and while I hope things will crystallise at some point, I don’t fully expect them to. I understand that there are rarely certainties. I’d settle for being a tad more confident in my direction of travel. Despite the murky outlook though, I do feel more self-aware than I have been in the past. Perhaps that’s just a benefit of ageing. Being slightly more awake. Being slightly more stable mentally, emotionally — maybe marginally more at peace with being a quiet loner with no real love of humankind.

Being this somewhat awkward outsider doesn’t quell the basic need for intimacy however. The need for hugs and sex and vulnerability. And that, sadly, is what everything I’ve ever written boils down to. I can never really write anything new. This is nothing new. And I continue to search in vain.