This is an article about the struggles of not living the life I wanted when I was a beginner in everything in my 20s, and how I overcame it.
Anatomy of a Fall: The Struggles of a Man that Failed to Become a Writer
This year, I watched a great movie called "Anatomy of a Fall", which tells the story of a female writer, Sandra, whose husband, Samuel, suddenly falls from a building and dies. She is suspected of murder and put on trial.
In the movie, Sandra's lawyer argues that Samuel committed suicide out of despair: he didn't want to do the teaching job he was good at, he quit his job to write but couldn't produce anything, and he didn't want to face the reality that he hadn't written a complete story. He kept contacting his publisher friend without getting any response, blaming his inability to write on accidents and family life, while his wife, who lived with him, had already successfully published several novels.
Interpreting Samuel's experience from this perspective, what I see is the struggle of someone who lacks the ability to become their ideal self, which reminds me of my experiences in my 20s.
The Struggles I Had in the Beginner Period
Looking back at my 20s, I see a life composed of great hopes, ongoing confusion, and intermittent struggles. I was eager to try different fields before deciding on my career path, but I lived in a system that rewards conformists and operates on a strict social clock. I longed for achievement, but I had no special skills and little knowledge of business and social rules.
When I realized that I enjoyed creating, I began to explore, only to discover that it was a long road full of challenges to the soul: the struggle of having an unclear direction; the struggle of realizing that mastering a craft takes a long time (I didn't know how long, or if I could even reach that point); the struggle of seeing others publish new content when I hit a creative bottleneck; the struggle of seeing others advance after yet another of my failed attempts.
However, I also understood that if I evaded these struggles, the future would be filled with other ones, such as: seeing others succeed in things I once desired but gave up on; continuously spending time and energy working for other people's goals; being stuck in a social role that I didn't truly identify with.
How did I Deal with These Struggles?
All I could do was to choose how to deal with them.
I could choose to play games, sleep, indulge in fantasies to make time disappear. I could do nothing, try not to think, and let life stay in the current order (which was not too bad objectively), endure the boredom, stagnation, and minor pains, and convince myself that life was just like that with the excuse that "trying wouldn't bring success anyway". After all, most people live like this, that’s not wrong, isn’t it?
Or I could try to solve them, but I would face more uncertainties, more frustration, but after solving some practical problems, I could have a temporary sense of satisfaction.
In order to improve this situation, I tried some actions to gradually change my life:
Daily routine: I adjusted my schedule to reserve time for the things I wanted to master step by step. I paid attention to my emotions and thoughts, listened to my inner voice, so that my goals gradually emerged from the fog.
Career plan: I got more transferable skills, I broke out of my comfort zone as much as possible when I changed jobs to accumulate experience in different business forms.
Emotional support: I maintained contact with close friends, learned to express myself better, and improved ways of communication.
This is a long process of self-adjustment and continuous affirmation (I will summarize the methods in future articles). I started to see the effects later on.
Photo by Kammeran Gonzalez-Keola
Anatomy of a Fall: The Calm Writer
Back to the movie, when I sat in the cinema watching Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra really resonated with me: she was always calm and self-consistent, she could enter a state of concentration and write in any environment, and she had her own clear and firm stance on life.
This is the state I am gradually entering now.
Now in my 30s, I have had some small successes in different aspects of my life, and the pains I had in my youth have greatly reduced. I've handled quite a few difficult challenges. I've understood the necessary process to validate an idea and how to turn them into reality. I've understood that it's unrealistic to expect sudden breakthroughs. I'm starting to sense progress towards my next goal.
The once blurry path, I can now see how it breaks down into specific tasks.
I can look back to my younger self and write this article down. And I do believe I can be the writer of my own story.
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