Where am I today?

I am a man at the first half of his thirties. I am a perfectionist and that is also why I am a failure.

My account of Bank of America shows my balance as -$128.48. It is unjust how tiny the minus sign preceding the number looks compared to the feelings it causes.

I am living in a small room, paying the rent and bills with the help of family and some very close friends. I don’t mean that they help me to fill these in part. They cover all of it. My own income is absolute zero.

I am not feeling great. I eat very unhealthy things. My choice of food and eating habits are simply a reflection of my life: awful. I have a very ugly belly that I cannot stand seeing in the mirror. Top of my head has also lost all the furniture. I think I look kind of bald if you are tall enough. These things make me realize that I am not the man in my head. These little(!) clues prove that I am getting old (add -er to be optimistic).

I am in a constant state of living in the future. My faculty of imagination is so powerful that I can easily confuse myself about what is real and what is fantasy. Every day, several times, I pay all my debts, I call all those friends that I couldn’t for several years, I spend great time with my son, building that giant robot together, I cover all his expenses, I buy a nice car to my father, I visit my family in that dream farm house that I built for them… I make everybody happy. I make great things. I have all my products used by millions of happy customers. People love my products. They appreciate the original solutions I implemented for so many problems… This can be the longest paragraph in the history of journals if I let myself write all. All those beautiful things. Happens every single day. All in my head.

I am far away from those fantasies. I am also geographically far away from everybody I mentioned. I live a lonely life in a far country where nobody knows me. I live a temporary situation. It has been almost a year; but I see it as a temporary situation.

Summarizing all in simple English: my life sucks. I am officially a loser.

My Journey Plan

Don’t let the title title of my journal fool you. I don’t aim only for money and I am not telling this to look better or because I think aiming money is a bad thing. Not at all.

I have dreams. I have been living in dreams for a very long time. The dreams I have are huge. The dreams I live in are just a small part of it and all I do is just daydreaming. As I continue blinding myself to my reality, life keeps getting more and more difficult. I have to stop daydreaming and start living my dreams. (In time, hopefully, I will feel better about myself and change “have to”s with “want to”s or “choose to”s.)

Dreams are essential to have; but I should also have plans.

Thinking of home-made ice-cream is the dreaming part. I am very good at it, already. Having the recipe for it is the technical plan. I have a lot of it too. Turning that recipe into ice-cream requires two more things: the action plan and implementation. My journey will be all about it. My recipe may be wrong about the amount of some ingredients. I may need to make it again. My action plan may also fail because the guy running the local shop decided to make his own home-made ice-cream and went home. I will update the plan and take a longer trip to another shop. Still, at the beginning, I need a plan. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I just need something to follow until it fails me.

I want to reach the top of that mountain there. I can see it from here. I can guess how to go there. However I really don’t know the path in detail. I don’t know what I will face on the way. I don’t know how it will feel when I finally arrive at the point that I can see only using binoculars. However I know that I want to reach there. Not another mountain; but this one. Not another point at the mountain; but that one. Maybe I will end up somewhere higher or lower. Maybe I will get lost several times on the way because my maps are not even close to being accurate. However I know that I want to reach there. It doesn’t matter how high the target point is. It doesn’t matter how deep I am below the ground level now. I know that if I keep walking while making sure about my direction, I will reach there.

As I tried to demonstrate, my target has to be a certain point. This point will be my North so I can have a compass. When I get lost on the way, I will be able to fix myself by just checking my direction. I will go back and try another path. There is no perfect plan. I will never be able to draw it without starting the walk.

So I target earning my first billion (in US dollars) in less than three years starting today. I have briefly told you about my current situation above. Now we both know that I am far away from the point I want to reach. If it was a target that nobody hit before, maybe I would not be this confident. However it is common knowledge that so many people did this before. So can I.

I have a target to reach. I have a deadline. I have a plan roughly drafted. So I am now starting the journey.

What is wrong with me?

I have already called myself a perfectionist and marked it as the biggest, if not the main, reason of why I am far away from where I could have been or where I wish to be. Perfectionism, when you allow it, makes you weak. It makes you someone that you cannot recognize and you cannot accept that you had become. It keeps you from doing anything. I can build great things; but I always get lost in the stupid pursuit of perfection ignoring or forgetting that work on perfection can only start after you finish something.

Let’s say I want to cook a favorite dish for dinner. A very straightforward task. I go to kitchen. I take the pot and then see a stain at the bottom. I decide to clean it. I spend twenty minutes on it and then accept that the disturbing burn mark in the metal is not going to wear off. By that time, I have probably already lost my interest in making dinner at all.

Yes the example is overly simplified; but the mechanism is there. I get distracted. I have somewhere to go, I want to get there on time; but I get lost in cleaning the way. I never arrive at my destination. Even if I do, it is not on time and not the way I wanted.

Here is a real example: I want to write letters. Letters to people I love. Nicely written letters. By hand. Nice paper, nice handwriting. I had so many things to say. So many beautiful things. I dream of my mother reading my letter. I dream of my son jumping and opening the envelope… I never start writing. So many times, I bought papers. Cream-colored, smoothly-textured, beautiful papers. I bought pens with inks that look awesome on those papers. So many times… I have never sent a single letter. I have never dared to dirty the paper up with my ugly handwriting. This is not a joke. This is how I have been for so long.

I have to change this.

I have to fight.

I know that if I had just pushed something out, it would have been great. I know it with experience. However I still let myself to be that sick stupid kid.

Why am I writing this?

Or a better question: Why am I sharing it?

I want to change. I want to move forward. I want to stop sabotaging myself with a stupid obsession of perfection. I want to break this.

This journal is my first step.

My aim for writing this is to push my limitations, to break my shyness of doing humanly imperfect. I am sure the text is full of spelling and grammar errors; but this time, I do the opposite of what I am used to: I will try not to read every paragraph ten times trying to fix everything again and again until I quit writing completely. I know that sometimes I will contradict with myself. Maybe I will write something that is the opposite of what I had said before. This time, I forgive myself. This time, I allow myself to fail.

To err is human. I am just one of the billions of people on this planet. I am not perfect. I cannot be perfect. I have never done anything perfect. I have never seen any other human being finishing anything with perfection. I have to progress. I have to share. I have to put myself out. I have to break my walls. I have to start my journey. I have to start walking now.

Sharing this journal is a battle with myself. I am sure that before I publish this first day’s post, I will find every excuse on the planet to postpone it with the secret hope of eventually quitting. I won’t allow that. This time, I will not think. I will do.

Who am I?

I know that I am extremely boring now and it is very unlikely anybody had read this far. I also know that there are so many odd people out there who would like odd and boring things. It is a possibility that some of those odd people got to this page after randomly clicking so many things online. If you have read this far and are interested enough to consider considering reading following posts in this journal, I can also assume that you may wonder who I am.

Let’s think for a moment that we met somewhere in person. A friend introduced us. We exchange names, shake hands, have a short eye contact, and ..? Now we know each other?

For now, yes, I am not giving my name; but it really doesn’t matter. Nobody knows me anyways. About my identity, I am doing much more than just sharing my name: I tell you who I really am and whom I want to become, with so much detail and perfect honesty. I will keep writing every day.

Why I hide my name? Still the sick shyness of that perfectionist kid? No. Not anymore. I am fighting that. The reason for not sharing my name now is completely different.

In my journey to my first billion, I will do a lot of things online. I will work on marketing the things I will make. I want to keep this journal separate from the journey. Journal should reflect the journey, it should tell the story; but this telling shouldn’t impact the journey directly. I want to make sure this journal will not unintentionally become a part of my marketing campaigns.

After the first few months, when I have proven myself that my business plans are working without any help from people that want to help me during this journey, I will happily write my real name here. Then you can enjoy connecting this talker with that doer. It is crucial for me at the beginning that every sale of every single product I make will be because the product is good itself and not because someone reading this thought that I am a nice guy and decided to support me.

The other reason for not sharing my name now is to make the journal prove something. Let me try to explain this point.

I write this journal for myself. Now it is boring and mostly useless for anybody other than myself. I accept it. However once I start collecting the fruits of my work, I believe it will be a very nice document for ones who follow their dreams.

I have read so much on success, productivity, efficiency, etc. Most of these readings were of a genre called “personal development”. So many writers in this area tell stories of successful people, especially their own. The ones who were really successful in something other than talking about success and giving you unlimited jet fuel are unfortunately a minority. I want to make sure that my success is something other than the result of talking about success. Does it make sense?

When you use talk of success for your own success, it is self-marketing. I mean the time when I tell you that the best way to have your front yard so beautiful is by using the mower that I sell. You will need to figure out what I really want to help: a) your weekend duty, b) my sales quota. Best marketing people are the ones who honestly aim both. They know what they sell is really the best thing for the job. Most of those personal development gurus are very honest people and they really believe that what they sell is the best for your needs.

I am not a personal development guru. This is not a personal development blog. I am definitely not a success story… Not yet.

I believe this makes everything simple for everybody: I am not selling anything here. I am just a guy who decided to start a journey and wanted to share his travel journal here online for the reasons that are already explained. I don’t expect anything from you. If nobody reads this, I will not be sad, I will keep writing. If you read and share your opinions, it will definitely be motivating for me. It will be like greeting your neighbor in the morning which makes both of you feel better. Other than this, I don’t want anything from anybody with this journal.

I am just telling a story as it happens.

Last words for the first post: I have created a twitter account as a second place to post about my journey. Mainly, it was to create this Medium account; but since I have it, I will try to tweet frequently. At least I will tweet every time I post here. Before I have finished writing this, Twitter marked my new account as a spam account. I don’t know their exact algorithm; but I hope they don’t lock me out which will also mean losing access to Medium. Now I am doing something unique in my life: I will just click publish. I admit, I have read paragraphs as I was writing; but I am not going to go up and re-check everything.