Be patient, life is long

Sunday Serendipity - Volume 1

Hola amigos. It’s been a while.

Travel and client work has had me scattered all over the place the past few months.

I’ve been writing a lot but publishing little. I keep starting and stopping these long form essays that are piling up in my drafts folder. And it’s got me thinking…

I want to try something new with Serendipity Lab.

Something to help me stay more consistent and continue sharing all the weird and wonderful things I’m finding on the internet. So moving forward, I’m going to get in the habit of delivering a weekly dose of serendipity to your inbox.

With my essays, I spend a disproportionate amount of time researching, editing, and re-writing. This will be a different format. A short casual roundup where I’ll distill ideas I’ve picked up throughout the week and curate information I’m finding useful.

So without further ado…

Welcome to Sunday Serendipity

Future Me (source)

I celebrated my 35th birthday recently and as I near my 40’s, I’ve been reflecting on how long life actually is.

When I look back at the past 10 years, I feel as if I’ve lived multiple lives.

In 2015, I had just finished my Masters Degree at Florida State University. Even though I invested so much time and energy into getting an engineering degree, I couldn’t stand my 9-5 job in the U.S. so I quit and moved to Spain to start over.

I took a sabbatical and worked as a tour guide for a year. My parents thought I was crazy for giving up my 6-figure salary to do walking tours in Barcelona, but it was such a fun period in my life. It felt like time slowed down. Everyday was different and filled with new people and new experiences.

That lasted until COVID. Then after the lockdown I transitioned into online sales/marketing and eventually launched my own freelance business doing account management and client support for fully-remote companies.

Now, for the past couple years, I’ve been exploring my creative side here on Substack and dabbling with a little YouTube as well.

I’m proud of these achievements, but the progress isn’t always obvious in the day-to-day rhythm of life. Patience is something I’m working on. And funny enough, as I was writing this,

Matt Dahlia

posted an essay which reminded me of a podcast interview with Tim Ferriss and Steven Pressfield.

At the end of every podcast Tim asks his guests the billboard question: “If you had a billboard to get a message out to billions of people, what might you put on it?”

Pressfield’s answer: Life is long.

They always tell you life is short, but actually life is long.

If we find ourselves making mistakes or we haven’t yet found our real calling, don’t drive yourself crazy with that. There’s plenty of time…Look at me—it took me forever to break through in anything and I still feel that I’ve got a whole other lifetime ahead of me.

Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself, you’re on a journey whether you realize it or not; we all are.

Pressfield is one of the most famous authors in the world, yet he didn’t publish his first book, The Legend of Bagger Vance, until he was 52 years old.

I feel guilty when I take a couple months off from publishing, but there were times where he abandoned writing for years and lived out of his car picking up random jobs just to survive. Hearing that episode again was a good reminder to not drive myself crazy and instead practice patience.

If things seem to be progressing slowly, if you’re not where you want to be in life, listen to the interview, I’m certain you’ll feel a sense of relief.

Until next time my friends,

<3 B

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