Courtesy of a former wrestler, I know what it takes to become a state champion wrestler in high school.

It would involve grueling practices with wrestlers above your weight class, plus weight training. Meanwhile, preparation for qualifying for your own weight class would begin eight months ahead of time with an apple for dinner and going to bed early so as not to experience the hours of hunger that follow.

He boiled it down: “Basically, a miserable life.” No thank you.

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It’s been ten months since I closed the Little Middle School, and I’m still not sure exactly what I’m going to do next.

That’s okay, right? Yeah, I think it’s okay.

I’m paying my bills. I’m enjoying my day-to-day work. I’m making new friends.

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I used to struggle to stick with things, especially creative projects.

The Internet is littered with my abandoned websites, blogs and profiles. My hard drives are crusted over with books I’ve started writing and various courses that I began developing and never completed.

There are plenty of people out there who will tell me that I didn’t want it badly enough, I allowed myself to fail, I lacked discipline, or I didn’t believe in myself.

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When I started my first business, I didn’t really think about the implications.

It didn’t feel like much of a commitment. Did I really need an exit plan for teaching music lessons? Nah. I figured I could do it is long as I wanted to, to whatever degree I wanted to.

That’s the nice thing about freelancing. That’s also the nice thing about being young — you don’t really think all the way through the consequences of your actions.

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Obviously, sleep well. Eat well. Get exercise. 

And if you’re doing all of that and you still feel awful, what then? 

My hypothesis is that burnout comes from a mismatch of our expectations and our choices. 

To fix that, we can adjust our expectations, or we can adjust our choices. 

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