There’s always a story going around about someone who got in a month what took someone else ten years to build. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes a title or a reputation. Trace it back and it’s usually a single screenshot, or something a friend of a friend heard. And yet, strangely, the story sticks.
It feels like everyone else is running off somewhere, and I’m the only one standing still. We call this feeling FOMO, and most of the time we laugh it off.
I think it’s a drug. It works the same way. At first, I just follow along a little, since everyone else is doing it. I book the exhibition everyone’s going to. I pay for the course everyone’s taking. I stay up all night reading about the industry everyone’s moving into.
Then, for a while, I feel better. Not because I got anything, but because the fear of falling behind goes quiet for a moment. It’s more like a painkiller. A painkiller doesn’t fix what hurts. When it wears off, you just reach for something stronger.
The first thing this drug breaks is your inner clock. Each of us naturally lives at our own pace. We work out for ourselves what we like, what we’re good at, and where we are right now. Once impatience seeps in, those questions fade one by one, and other people’s pace fills the space they leave.
Then I hear that someone quit their job and it worked out, or that someone tore up everything they were doing and started over, and suddenly my own work, which was going just fine, looks small. I have no reason to push myself to those extremes, but it happens anyway.
Before long, I’ve stopped looking at the cards in my own hand and keep glancing at the next table. When someone who used to think turns into someone who only reacts, that’s where the mind starts to die, bit by bit.
Look a little closer, and there’s a different fear underneath. It’s less the fear of missing out on something than the fear of being the only one who doesn’t know what everyone else knows. I wasn’t protecting an opportunity. I was saving face. Whatever starts like that doesn’t last. Anxiety made me grab it, so anxiety decides when I let it go.
Of course, some trains really have left the station. Everyone has at least one thing they wish they’d done back then. Still, anyone who tries to catch every train never gets off at any station. If you want to hold on to one thing deeply, you first have to practice letting go of the rest.
The work that lasts usually grows quietly while everyone else is bored. Impatient hands can’t stand that boredom. They go looking for wherever it’s loudest, and all they end up with is wasted time and a worn-out heart.
When I slow down, I start hearing other voices. People I catch up with now and then tell me they’re worried. They ask what I’m doing these days, and whether I’m really okay just staying put. They tell me so-and-so is already miles ahead. It’s usually well meant, and that makes it heavier.
But the person who has chewed on those worries the longest, and the most often, is me. They asked once and moved on. I’d been holding on to that same question for months. I’m also the one who pays if I’m wrong, and the responsibility is all mine. So there’s no reason to let anyone else make the call for me.
So when that feeling comes up, I try to ask myself just one question. If I miss this, will my life actually fall apart, or will my pride just sting for a bit? Most of the time, it’s my pride. That sting fades in a day. The habit of letting other people’s pace make my decisions lasts for years.
Tomorrow, someone will post again about pulling off ten years’ worth in a month. Can I see it, quietly turn off my screen, and finish what I was doing? That day might be the first day I live by my own clock.