I want to go back to being Adventurous

I want to go back to being adventurous, I mean I used to be terribly adventurous, doing things without the thought of any consequences.

For goodness sake, in 2011 I presented my technology to Bolivia’s President and his Cabinet in his Presidential Residence.

I travelled all the way to Canada to give my TEDx talk on Men’s Mental health, yet here I am feeling stuck.

Truth is, giving my TEDx talk in 2022 was my last really courages Adventure, that was followed by imposter syndrome, depression, processing my ADHD diagnosis as well as a number of other personal challenges that prevented me from providing for my family in the way that I wanted to.

Through sheer coincidence, I was hired for a recruitment role for a corporate transport company after I had been looking for work for a long time, as my own business was not taking off under all the challenges that I was facing.

The story of how work found me.

The position was bitter-sweet. I was grateful for the opportunity but having been offered the role, because someone jumped ship after their first day did make me feel as the last resort choice.

This meant, I felt enormous pressure to prove myself but discovered some incredible skills that I had forgotten all about.

For the first time in a long time, I felt part of a team again, “The Maidstone Maniacs” I call ourselves as we were the outliers, who would make the impossible possible. We supported each other through the daily challenges that grew into great friendships.

I applied my curious mind that always thrived on research & development as well as trial and error with the mission to find ways to achieve higher attendance rates for the weekly pre-employment assessments we were holding.

I rediscovered how analytical I am, where data from my custom created spreadsheets just jumped at me to tell the story of the correlation between candidates and them attending their assessment.

Collecting the data and analysing it, was not my job but it was the one thing that motivated me week after week, doing my extremely repetitive job.

I am very proud that during my almost 2 years at the organisation, I have been able to contribute to the increase of candidate attendance consistently by 30%. But this achievement is not accredited only to my playing around with words for scripts, confirmation emails and protocols. It was a team effort, and I couldn’t have had a better partner in crime than CJ.

CJ and I were the dream team, making it happen and I felt very safe knowing that we had each other’s back, no matter what stories candidates would come up with.

The real essence to our success lies in exactly this; 100% trust in each other, clear communication, having someone to rely on and having each other’s back.

With that being said, in recent week’s and month’s I hit a wall. Self-motivation became more and more challenging, as I was struggling to see the purpose of my role, the system that I had implemented was working and it felt there was nothing more for me here.

I am also getting more and more frustrated with myself, as I originally wanted to work this role by day and work on my own goals and dreams by night. With everything going on, I barely had any energy left though and my dreams are more or less where I left them.

I was toying with the thought of handing in my notice for months, but the comfort of that monthly salary felt addictive and stepping away from this sense of security would bring a lot of uncertainty.

It took me a while to realise though that one certainty about uncertainty is that it brings with it opportunity.

So I am either extremely brave or stupid, depending on how you look at it, as I finally mustered up the courage and handed in my notice today that felt very bitter-sweat.

With it, I truly hope that my sense of adventure will return, as I really miss adventure and doing something impactful.