there’s no better time than right now.

why did I get engaged and leave my safe agency job at the same time? because there's no better time than right now.

there are many pieces of this story, and many are more to come but right now, i’m mediating on being the sum of your parts, how what happens to you becomes you. i believed this was how the body & the mind worked, life happens to you, something great, something terrible, and you become that something. that trauma, that joy, is you. the knowledge of that experience integrates itself into your personality. essentially, everything you are is made of everything you've experienced. ingredients then product. but people are not cakes. I think we’re more like a piece of tech, hardware & software. in that way, you then are the default of your programming, unless you manually overcome it. you are sum of your parts, but you don't have to be. what i've found in recent tests (yes, i've been running tests on myself) is that the body is a habit machine. it's simply there to take action on repetitive tasks (locking your door, brushing your teeth, walking, basic stuff) so that the brain doesn't have to concern itself with those actions. we are “creatures of habit” because habits are effiecient programming. but the brain doesn’t always have the best judgement for what is and isn’t good software. it locks in habits based on repetition, or protection. And not necessarily based on what type of person you’d like to be. For a very long time, and sometimes still to this day, I live in fear: fear of not being good enough, fear of selling out, fear of not being liked but mostly fear of failure. fear of failing at my dreams, big or small. it’s gotten to the point where my body will habitually check in on fear for me. it will fill me with anxiety or stress when a particular project, life goal, or sometimes even a particular time of day arises. my body has come to recognize that program which doesn’t stop me from my pursuit but does slows me down from accomplishing as much as i’d like. the body has recognized the integration of fear as way of perhaps keeping me out of harms way, as a coping mechanism. and yet, the more you think about the anxiety or distress the stronger the wires become. the hardware that are to run that specific program in your body solidifies. so in this vicious cycle, the more attention i gave this anxiety or stress, the more difficult it was to get rid of. the question i’ve been able to ask myself, with the clarity of meditation, is not why i am anxious but rather where are these thoughts of stress sprouting from? where is this program coming from? The answer is the artificial intelligence of my brain, using the programming in the information of my past and previous experiences and trauma to write new code to prepare my hardware/body for potential threat. these thoughts aren’t me. i know that because i don’t agree with them. i don’t agree that i should feel this way. if my state of being is directly related to my thoughts, and my thoughts are not my own, then i have to change the way the thoughts get there. i have break the habit loop that releases them, by consciously creating a new habit in place of the old, that will better funnel my thoughts and thus emotions into a program that better suits my goals. conditioning my mind to think differently will be no easy task as the mind wants the path with the least resistance. but by queuing up a specific response to make a new routine then rewarding that gesture i can implement new behaviors; ex: when i feeling anxious about not having enough work, i combat that feeling by drafting an email to a new client, and reward myself with the pride that momentum causes, response or no response. that’s progress. i’m learning to create new habits that must motivate the momentum. the repetition of that momentum relives the pain of the previous habit loop. so that’s where i’m at and that’s what i’m doing all the time, every time the fear hits me now. i acknowledge the fear, create a new habit for that fear, follow that new habit until it overcomes the old, then become a better, more conscious and connected dude. as for why i left my job and got engaged essentially at the same time, well, no one ever made their dreams come true in the field of certainty.