Boiling Away The Cynicism

Posted on August 8, 2024

I feel like a lot of my posts have a bit of a musing-on-life theme at the moment, and I’m ok with that. The net is awash with technical content and reviews, and it’s been decades since my technical scribbles were a part of the UK blogosphere. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of settling down, and how toxic a narrative it really is.

So I was watching Junior MasterChef

As one does. I’ve got a bit of a thing for Gordon Ramsay and tend to inhale his shows from time-to-time in the hope that one day he’ll make me into an idiot sandwich. Only the older seasons (2014/15) are available in the UK so my housemate and I often do a bit of ‘where are they now’ searching after a contestant we really liked gets knocked out or wins.

In the decade since most of them were young chefs dreaming of restaurants and bakeries of their own, many of them have gone on to do three or four different things. Some are still in food, others have taken the skills they learned and started businesses, or done some acting, or gone off to college, or open a llama sanctuary. The internet is full of quotes from them saying things like “if you don’t take risks, you don’t get anywhere in life” and “if my gut isn’t 100% invested in what I’m doing, it’s time to change what I’m doing” and I found myself thinking ‘oh, just wait until you get older’.

And then I stopped myself.

What a sad thing to think. I almost slapped myself. At what point did the idea that age means getting worn down, cynical, and giving up on dreaming big? It reminded me of my last post, where I shared words from my brother when I saw him a couple of months ago for my birthday. And I realised – I might say that I don’t want to settle down… but am I subconciously craving that mythical stability to the point that my first thought was ‘just wait until you get older’?

It turns out, I don’t always follow my own advice.

In my talk at EMF earlier this year I spoke about the need to keep an open mind and not get too tied down to the notion of a ‘career’ or a ‘path’ to follow. By and large, that’s been something I’ve lived by to date. Increasingly, however, I find myself between the rock of economic instability and the hard place of corporate overlords. I moved four years ago to the most expensive place I’ve ever lived, and took a job that paid me far less than I was worth because it was something I wanted to invest my time in. That decision was valid – but the consequence has been a slow erosion of my feeling of adequacy, a frustration that I can’t do more, and a general sense of undervalue that I should have – but didn’t – predict.

Rather than seeing this for what it is, I let myself get sucked into the worst trap there is. I tied my productivity to my sense of self-worth, and tied the notion of productivity to someone else’s objectives and view of the world.

Oops.

I could beat myself up about this. Trust me, I’m great at beating myself up about things. But instead, I’m filled with gratitude. Daddy Gordon may not have noticed me, but him and his inspire-the-next-generation bullshit has reminded not-quite-the-next-generation-any-more me that life is long and brilliant and bumpy and magic, and viewing it as a journey to be enjoyed is not just a luxury for the young.

Yes, I need to eat. I need shelter, and warmth, and all those other things that an old dude in the 1940s once said were really important. But there’s a difference between surviving and thriving – and honey, you just wait.

I’m putting my cynacism in a pot to boil off – my best thriving days are still to come!