on committing to things
a conversation on a walk and talk 4 months ago changed the direction of my life
In February of 2024 I went on a walk with the founder of Futureland, Vin, that led to me quitting my job 3 months later. We talked about a lot of interesting things, including his career journey, but I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing he said.
Vin committed an entire year, 365 days, to music.
Made some kind of music for 365 consecutive days, totalling 21 hours of continuous music, had no made music prior.
Then wrote code for 365 consecutive days, lead the creation of Futureland, did not know how to code prior.
Then designed some kind of interface for 500+ days to learn design and to keep Futureland progressing.
Internetvin on X
The reason that stuck with me the most is it prompted me to think about all of the things I had started but never finished. I’m 25 and starting to be aware that the way I live my life now is how I will likely live the rest of my life - and at 25, I’ve never committed to anything, let alone one thing.
I’ve always been filled with ideas and dreams and the beginning is always the most romantic part of a journey because everything feels easy and you’re hopeful. It’s a completely different experience to see something through, to continue to choose it when it’s hard, to commit - but that’s also where the magic happens (or so I’ve heard, I’ve always been distracted by the novelty of something new.)
Once I became aware of this shortcoming, I started to think about all of the other ways this lack of follow through was present in my life and wanted to more deeply understand where this fear stemmed from.
Commitment to me feels deeply vulnerable in many ways - it opens you up to failure, you can invest hours in something only to realize you don’t actually like it, and along the way you have to say no to so many unexplored avenues.
I want to feel the satisfaction of setting my mind to something and seeing it through. I’m not sure whether what I’m pursuing right now is what I’ll do for the rest of my life, but I know this is a muscle I need to build. You don’t just one day find something that inspires you deeply and all of a sudden learn to stick through the hard, unglamorous parts of it. By waiting for that one thing you end up focusing on the destination and robbing yourself of serendipity in the journey - I’d rather spend my life trying to make something happen than waiting for something to happen. I want to be an active and committed participant in my life, and to me commitment feels like the way to achieve that. I might commit for a year and decide to quit everything I’m working on now but through decentring success and profit, I’m able to lean into the things that the journey teaches me along the way that will inevitably guide me to what I’m meant to.
In the decision to learn how to build the muscle of commitment, I had to really look inwards and think about the things that matter to me. That meant considering things that are meaningful and fulfilling to me - a life audit of sorts to understand what I wanted my life to amount to. Where if I failed, or if it felt really hard, I could lean into the mission and the why as a sort of anchor to ground myself in to see things through. Where if I “failed”, it wouldn’t matter because these were things that I cared about deeply anyways so my time spent didn’t have to amount to something profitable. Where showing up felt like a deep act of self-love because I truly believed in the things I was pursuing - and that led me to realize my current role was not in line with the things I believed in.
To satisfy my need for novelty, I’m splitting my commitment across two things to allow for context-switching when necessary. This required being honest with myself; I get bored easily, so I needed to find more than one thing to commit to where I could switch things up if I was bored without completely giving up.
For the next year, I’m committing to:
Building community in Toronto
I’ll update this space with a link once it’s live in the coming weeks! I love Toronto and a huge part of why this city means so much to me is the relationships that Toronto gifted me. Most of these were serendipitous connections through going to community events, and there’s a huge gap in amplifying awareness/spaces for these connections to sprout.
Writing on Substack (please subscribe 💖)
I’ve been moved by other people’s experiences communicated through writing since I was a kid. By consuming other people’s writing, it felt like an intimate insight into their lived experience and helped me feel less alone in my own struggles throughout life.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I’d love to know how you feel about commitment, and if there’s anything you’re currently laser focused on committing to. Also, feel free to share any feedback by replying to this!
Rabs