Today I’ve had a hard time sitting down and writing this post.
Life is as chaotic as it has ever been. I constantly feel like I’m chasing after something. Any time I have the chance to stop for one minute (luckily it still happens every now and then), I realize I only have the energy to stay still, and recover.
My job has become a big part of my life, and something I take a good deal of pride in. However, I’m constantly running the risk of letting it overshadow every other aspect of my life. Not in terms of mere “amount of work hours”, but more in terms of “mental capacity” to do anything else but think about stuff that happens at work, even if it’s just some office chit-chat or anything related to motor sports.
It would be a uphill battle to try and restrict this instinct. Well, I’m not even sure I want to, for crying out loud. I’m happy to live and breathe in this atmosphere. It’s what I have wanted for so long: to feel proud for my contribution to some incredible sporting results that we have celebrated as a company in 2023. A contribution that might be infinitesimal if you look at everything it takes to win in motor sports, but, crucially for me, was higher than 0 for the first time in my life.
And that makes all the difference in the world: to know that, no matter how small my role has been, it did have even the tiniest of impacts on those final, glorious results.
It has been an incredible privilege to witness and celebrate some of these results, which were a testament to some of the incredible work my colleagues have done in the last two years, as well as clear evidence of their professionalism, even when pitted against very harsh odds.
I realized this year that I couldn’t keep my work at bay by trying to restrain it, so I reacted by making everything else bigger by comparison, starting from spending time with my family and, to a certain extent, giving more importance to my non-professional ambitions.
This meant trying to fit a lot of stuff into 24 hours, each day. Many things inevitably have fallen through the cracks, but I’m trying to hang onto those which have stuck so far. Some of them are silly, like keeping my Duolingo streak alive, others are really difficult, like writing regularly.
By doing this, I’m trying to become a better person, little by little. The professional aspect of my life has needed a lot of attention in the past few years, but now it’s time to start addressing other underlying issues of mine. Things that I generally want to change for the better in my life.
Any journey of self-improvement is difficult, and mine is no different.
Even in my private life, things have been very busy and ever increasing in complexity. This is awesome, and everything I have wanted for the past years, but it still requires a lot of energy and attention.
(I know what you might be thinking and no, I haven’t had a kid in the past months…)
In short, to rebalance my professional life, I had to make everything else more important. What did get the axe then?
I guess gaming, to be honest, which makes me a bit sad. It might seem weird to someone who has never been an avid gamer like myself, but it’s an incredibly difficult hobby to let go of. The amount of joy, satisfaction, learning, frustration, entertainment and, why not, friendships I have created over video games can not be underestimated. But something had got to go, and I guess it’s gaming for now. It will be back though, of that I’m sure.
The bigger the sacrifice, the more value you’re putting on everything else that gets spared.
So, what’s next for the thirty-fourth year of my life? Incredible, life-changing moments, for sure, on all fronts. I feel like this is the year we either go big, or we go home.
And, despite how much I like being at home, I’d rather go big for a while.
We’ll see how that works out for me.