Through a series of unexpected life events, Matt had found himself on a quest.
It wasn’t what he’d planned, but once he found it—or it found him—he couldn’t ignore what he thought of as his calling. It would take an enormous amount of work to start, from becoming a non-profit to setting appointments when the material was ready. There was so much, the list often picked up momentum and ended with a dizzying headache and a little bit of nausea. It wasn’t that he didn’t know where to begin—he could figure that out—but the journey seemed so long and convoluted that even the first step was intimidating. So, he continued to go to work.
Paralyzed by the evils of “what if,” Matt made every ridiculous change they asked for in every corporate video, but he felt a little piece of himself falling away every time he said, “Sure, whatever.” The atrophy was threatening to become permanent. Something had to change.
“Just do it,” his wife Linda said whenever the subject came up. “I don’t mean quit—we kinda need the paycheck—but just start your dreams. They aren’t going to start for you.”
Matt sat down at the coffee shop across from work. He thought about what he wanted to do, the difference he wanted to make, and how big it all seemed from where he sat. “You know the only difference between you and Patrick is that he took the step you were afraid to take, so you work for him,” Linda had told him when the company first opened. “He’s not special. In fact, I happen to think you’re much better than he is.”
Matt smiled at the thought. Linda was biased in his favor, but that was a good thing. She was right, though. Patrick wasn’t some Business God who always knew what to do, he was just Patrick, the guy who needed a friend to tell him to stop after the fourth beer every weekend. Patrick, the guy who still brags that he cheated on his finals to graduate from high school and says that he took enough classes to know what he was doing—a college degree wasn’t necessary. Patrick the guy whose desk was always buried in a thousand things but none of them were ever the thing he was looking for. That Patrick.
How much more could Matt do if he was able to dedicate more than just half of every Saturday to his dreams? What if he could somehow make it his full time job so he could make the high-quality video series he was now qualified and equipped to do, if only he had the time? Patrick did it, and if Patrick can do it, there was no reason Matt couldn’t.
When Matt returned to the office after lunch to discover that the little wheel had finally stopped spinning, he quickly made the next change and watched the wheel reappear, but this time it didn’t bother him. He took out his personal laptop and started to work on his own projects. He wasn’t wasting a minute of work time, he was just choosing a more positive waiting-activity than cursing under his breath. With that one decision, he had two projects to alternate between, he always had something constructive to do, and every time the little spinning wheel showed up, it just meant more time for his personal work.
Someday, he would be able to make the transition to run his own company, but for now, he had the best of both worlds—a steady paycheck and time to work on something better. It didn’t matter if Patrick made the changes in the office or not because Matt was making his own changes, just in a less impulsive, more thoughtful way.
Come 5:00 PM, Matt looked at the clock, looked at the spinning wheel on the screen, and went home. He wasn’t stressed, he wasn’t drained, and he wasn’t miserable. When he walked through his door a few minutes later, he was greeted with the delighted squeals of three surprised children and a very happy wife, who he couldn’t wait to tell about all the progress he’d made instead of waiting. He was excited again. He was alive.
For the first time in a long time, Matt was glad that this was his life.