Finding my roots in my business

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I’ve pretended to be happy, okay, upbeat, and positive in my communications with you in the last couple of months.

Occasionally, I have also become cunning, manipulative, and sleazy in my communications (and I loathed that).

The discomfort towards my behaviours has been taking a hold of my emotional space. And it’s creating a huge depression.

I created this blog to document my journey and to help

Not to do business.

It’s a wonderful miracle that this blog somehow transformed into a viable business that had supported my livelihood for many years.

I’m still not quite sure how it happened. But one for I do know for sure — it seems to do best when I truly try to help.

But this miracle led to a series of tragedies

Twice now, I tried to go “all-in” on the business (and the blog).

Both times, I became obsessive, blinded by money, and I lose my way.

I would listen to gurus that tout what should be done, and I would even do some of these things that went against my conscience. (Like putting up a modal to grab emails, which obviously didn’t work with the smart crowd that I work with).

And since I have pretty good stamina, I would hammer away at the “work” with determination.

So far, when I do this for a prolonged period of time, I would find myself falling into depression.

I would end up not wanting to work, not because I don’t enjoy working, but because I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. (And sometimes because I became too ashamed of my actions)

It’s not pretty.

So eventually I had to stop.

I hope to find back my core

• There is a reason why I continue to teach — even though it may not be the most profitable business in the world.
• There is a reason why I chose to be a developer instead of a teacher — so teaching must not be everything I do.
• And there is a reason why I choose to run my business instead of being employed as a developer and getting a cushy pay.

So far in my journey, I have always neglected at least one of these three elements for a prolonged duration.

Each time this happens, I would fall into depression too.

Recently, I was lucky to have found Jon Yongfook’s blog. One of his articles spoke about the idea of splitting time equally between marketing and coding as a tech founder.

When I read the article, I felt that I may have just found a path out of my depression with work — hopefully permanently.

So I’m planning to spend an equal amount of time doing three things:

1. Designing and coding
2. Marketing
3. Teaching

I have not decided on the ratio yet. But I’m likely going to experiment with a 1:1:1 ratio (or simply just two weeks each).

And I hope everything would fall back into place.

That’s it from me this week. Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

By the way, this article is originally written on my blog. Feel free to visit that if you want to have these articles delivered to your email first-hand whenever they're released! 🙂.