🚀 Mistakes & Boomerangs
My life decisions are feeling a bit repetitive lately.
Here’s the theory: My Turkish heritage and Aussie lifestyle have turned me into a boomerang made out of kebabs - a tasty meal that keeps coming back.
See, I said that sentence to myself half a dozen times before writing it, and even though I’ve committed to leaving it there, it still sounds sexual somehow and doesn’t make much sense; tasty meals don’t come back - they’re inhaled.
Fuck it, it stays.
What I mean, though, is that I keep going back to things I’ve done, dusted, and thought I’d closed the loop on; things I’d decided weren’t for me.
And okay, okay, I hear you, “What do you mean?” and “Why should I care?”
Well, you should care because I have a sneaking suspicion that you might also do this - both to your benefit and your detriment.
So, I think knowing when it’s worth it helps - and look, no promises, but I think I’ve figured it out.
And for the explanation and examples of boomerang-style going back to things, let’s use my life because I want to continue the egotistical trend of “everything about me!” - and bare with me here.
🚲 The Journey
👉🏼 I graduate from university.
👉🏼 I get a full-time job working as some hybrid IT/Data/Programing/Analyst guy at a not-for-profit.
👉🏼 I stay in the position for a year and learn a lot. It’s not amazing, but then again, I don’t have a billion-dollar cha-ching idea to start a startup.
👉🏼 I stay one more year, and this time I’m not learning; I realize I don’t like corporate. I start blogging on Medium (where you probably found me), and I hone my coding skills.
👉🏼 At the end of that year, I quit and realize two things: I want to travel, and I want to start a business.
👉🏼 I travel all of 2019 (I can hear you swearing at me for that perfect timing).
👉🏼 Come back home in 2020, and go full-time freelancing and blogging. Get stressed out with how unpredictable it is but find some success. Then I struggle as covid picks up, and layoffs begin to happen.
And this is where the boomerang-ing starts to happen.
🍢 (Boomerang Kebab #1) Mid 2020 - Contract out as a Data Analyst to pay the bills, so now I’m back into corporate - but not entirely.
🍢🍢 (Boomerang Kebab #2) 2021- Accept a job as a Business Analyst for a consulting firm, learn a lot, meet many incredible people, hate a lot of the work, and now I’m fully back into corporate.
🍢🍢🍢 (Boomerang Kebab #3) I quit corporate again in 2022.
Picked blogging back up again,
Went deep into software development again and;
Booked flights to go traveling again.
For some of these, like travel, you might be thinking, “well, that’s okay, I also want to travel many times.” And for others, you might be thinking, “hmm…”
🧨 The Cuck
It’s like watching your friend go back to the same abusive ex - you’re shouting “Nooo!” both internally and externally - watching them repeat mistakes.
And as a reflective person, you can imagine my state of mind right now.
As I quit my corporate job, click buy on flights, pick back up the skills that I was previously trying to develop, and start blogging again - my brain is generating a lot of question marks.
You can also imagine how these question marks made me feel when I went back into corporate (something I decided I didn’t like previously), admitting defeat.
You can imagine how I might be feeling now and the negative self-talk that might be going on in my head in weak moments.
Because on the surface, and hell, even deeper - these decisions seem like they’re the same mistakes being made again and again.
We’re meant to use a feedback loop to avoid this - we make a mistake, assess and learn, change what we do, and get a different result.
Should I not be trying something different?
Why am I seemingly doing the same shit and expecting a different result? Is being a boomerang bad? Am I a helpless human going back to their cheating scum-lord-or-lady ex?
Well, here’s the thing, I’ve slowly realized that what I’m doing isn’t necessarily bad if I’m not the boomerang, but I’m the one throwing it.
➰ The Loop
I said earlier that we’re “meant to use a feedback loop,” didn’t I?
So it makes no sense to keep doing things that have failed because we’re meant to learn from them and change our behavior.
And the logic makes sense if we look at this from a broad “our life” perspective. But maybe we shouldn’t be looking at it like that.
Maybe we should be zooming in on the categories, sub-categories, and nitty-gritty individual actions.
Because lets lay out the facts here:
I decided I didn’t like corporate after my first corporate job, and now my second too… That’s two data points… Maybe I should zoom in and see what elements of corporate I don’t enjoy.
Freelancing got too complex and unpredictable, and from a life perspective, it meant “cool, let’s try something else.” In reality, it should have been, “what can I try, do differently, or change to make this work?”
I quit “serious” coding after starting other endeavors, hence never getting to the critical stage of being a fully-fletched software dev - this isn’t something I’m “boomerang-ing” back to; it’s something I never gave a real shot at.
So now, putting things into perspective, I don’t feel like a boomerang; I feel like the guy throwing it.
And to keep getting it smoother, wider, and with more finesse, I need to keep throwing it because that’s how I learn - that’s how we all learn.
And what I’ve gathered from all of the life decisions I seemingly repeated above is that I haven’t given things a fair trial. And if I have, I’ve ruled out an entire umbrella category for it when in fact, it may be other elements of the action that didn’t resonate.
Not seeing results in the gym shouldn’t make us rule out exercise.
Not being successful in business shouldn’t surprise us when most founders only get it right on the 10th try.
I personally haven’t gone in deep on endeavors, and I haven’t properly considered that every “corporate job,” “freelancing gig,” or “business” is different.
Time horizons and expectations are essential, and they go like this:
Six months in a project to see if you’re interested.
1.5 to 2 years to see if you can be successful at it.
An unknown amount of time and iterations to actually get there.
And learning a lot along the way. That’s all it is, my gal or guy.
So if you’re finding that you’re coming back to something, again and again, hey, you might not be crazy.
You could have learned a thing or two; you could have reflected on it and realized the mistakes.
It’s when you go back and do the exact same thing, with no adjustment or appreciation as to why you quit the first time - that’s when you’re not throwing the boomerang anymore.
I hope you found some value in this long-winded, unnecessary analogy-riddled rant 😉.
🔗 Link Dump
The theme of today’s link dump is consuming and creating excellent content because I’ve been obsessed with a few things in the last couple of weeks.
👩🏼🍳 Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is a thick and fantastically illustrated book on cooking fundamentals - anyone can follow a recipe, but experimenting when you know what each element does to the food has elevated my date-night cooking game. There’s also a Netflix series on it now.
📃 As promised, here’s my pre-publishing checklist - if you tick off most or every item on this list before publishing an article on Medium/Your Blog, it’s likely a great article. Note that this checklist is ever-evolving, and the explanations aren’t 100% done yet.
🐝 A new CMS/Email management system has hit the block, and it’s called Beehiiv - I haven’t taken a deep dive, but it’s promising because, unlike Substack and Revue, it passes on the revenue straight to the creator. Free up to 2500 subscribers.
🛫 Something to revisit, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. As I’m watching these episodes, it’s crazy to see the number of podcasts, series’, famous people, Instagram accounts, and travel bloggers that have all clearly been inspired and even made by this legendary series.
As you watch the 2013-released first season, you can see the almost-decade worth of change in the world, and man, will it light the travel and foodie bug in you.
💺 Armchair Advice
Anonymous: “Where’s the best place to go in Europe?”
This person, who was actually anonymous, wasn’t specific, didn’t give me any personal goals, any preferences - c’mon, my guy.
I could say Naples to two different people, and one would love me while the other would hunt me down after going.
If you’re a backpacker, I’d suggest eastern Europe, the Baltics, the Balkans, and all the good stuff. It’s cheap, amazing, not as touristy, and you’ll meet some really cool people.
If you’re going away for a holiday and want to see and eat what Europe’s famous for - that’s when you should hang around central Europe, but a pro tip is to spend more time in less famous cities.
Utrecht & Nijmegen > Amsterdam
Dresden & Hamburg > Berlin
Glagow & Bristol > London
Anything > Paris
And I love that some of you are probably seething with anger after reading these recommendations, especially the Europeans who know more than I do 😂 But I’m not saying “don’t go to these cities”; I’m saying “don’t spend all your time at famous locations.”
That’s all for this one, ladies and gents.
I’ll catch you in the next.
Keep well.
✌🏼 Sah