Rope struggle by Meelimello, Pixabay

The Daily Struggle Of New Life

  • Adam Douglas

Since my wife’s and my separation 8 years ago it has been a rollercoaster of emotional ups and downs. I feel I’ve been through so much in such a short life thus far. In the span of only 4 years, I’ve lost 4 people, 4 pets and almost lost my son in a car accident. This includes the loss of my wife of 20 years (16 years together) and mother of 4 children. In recent years I’ve lost my job, to top it all off I’ve lost real contact with my three eldest children, almost lost my Grandmother and now my Father is not doing very well. Heck many years ago I even went through having cancer, dealing with my daughter having to be at the hospital frequently and my wife having diabetes. Thankfully my daughter got better, and my cancer surgery was a success. I’ve taken all this as this is life and I need to move on. I thought that though these events did upset me greatly at the time I will be okay, and I need to focus on moving forward. With only 1 of my 4 children living with me now, I need to focus on myself and getting back to who I am. Never did I think that people need to find one self, but I get it now, I’m lost.

In finding myself and self-improvement I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection and reading self-help books. Even went to counselling for a while, but unfortunately I had to stop that due to the loss of my job. I hope I can get back counselling sooner than later. No I haven’t found a significant other, let alone gone back to dating. I just don’t want to bring my baggage onto anyone else and repeat my failed marriage. I’ve been out of work since 2019. You see I’m trying to move forward in my life and create a new life and a new career. It’s just so much change and learning, that it gets overwhelming at times. In all honestly I’m struggling to move forward in my life.

You see I have big dreams to become an independent content creator that will make 3 shows, Adamsdesk (video), Swift Flow Adventures (video) and Mindfulsations (podcast). These are my passions and I want to grow my knowledge in these areas but at the same time making a living doing so by helping others. My vision is to show my passion of technology by empower people’s lives through the use of open source software that provides freedom of choice, safety, security and privacy. Though each day seems a struggle to get up and push forward. Even though I have achieved so much considering what I’ve done thus far using new software, tools and workflows I’ve never used before. Here is what I’ve done thus far.

  • Created logos for Adamsdesk, Swift Flow Adventures and Mindfulsations
  • Created and published Adamsdesk website
  • Setup my own shortcut service using Yourls
  • Setup my own mailing list service using phpList for newsletters
  • Created and published Adamsdesk Knolwedgebase website
  • Created and published shelleymchristian.com website
  • Created and published Steep Hill Food Co-op website
  • Created Mindfulsations recording template, workflow, episode issue template with my brother
  • Created Mindfulsations mission statement, target audience with my brother
  • Created Mindfulsations website design (incomplete) with my brother
  • Created Ventoy Adamsdesk Theme
  • Acquired equipment in order to record audio / video
  • Started publishing content to my blog, Adamsdesk
  • Joined 100DaysToOffload challenge to encourage blogging (ongoing)
  • Signed up for Master YouTube class by Matt D’Avella (incomplete)
  • Setup and publish on social media accounts, Twitter and Mastodon
  • Setup Adamsdesk YouTube channel
  • Setup Swift Flow Adventures YouTube channel
  • Research podcast hosting providers
  • Research Amazon retail (incomplete)
  • Developing my business acumen from local community support (incomplete)
  • Attended Grow With Google local business workshop
  • Enrolled in Blogging For Devs email course
  • 2019 I cycled 1100 km (683.50 miles)
  • 2020 I cycled 2100 km (1394.88 miles) (goal 2000 km, 1242.74 miles)
  • 2021 I cycled 1594 km (990.46 miles) goal of (goal 3000 km, 1864.11 miles)
  • Developing a web base control panel for client (ongoing)

Then there is reading or listening to audiobooks. In the past I wouldn’t have considered myself as a book reader unless it was technology reference let alone someone that listens to audiobooks. However, as you can see below I have finished these books in the past 6 months or so.

I decided sometime ago after reading, watching and listening to some self-help material that I’m to surround myself with positive and successful people. That will support you and push you forward. So I thought since I don’t have many friends outside of family that I would surround myself with positive strong-willed people through content consumption. I began to follow people on social media, YouTube, RSS feeds, books, movies, etc. that either provided self-help or had qualities in their own content that pushed positive values. In doing so thus far I learned that to be successful most of these people were into exercise, and read books. However, I’m not perfect, and I seem to slip back into bad habits of not staying on this momentum of reading, exercising regularly, and getting work done. I feel like time is ticking away, and I’m not moving with it. I’m not making income to live, and my savings is going away quickly. With all this said, I somehow have this feeling of knowing that I will move on somehow, but how that will look and working out I have no idea. The main things I want is to live life with purpose and intent.

My intent is to be vulnerable in order to heal, work through my feelings and thoughts while focusing on my accomplishments. In doing so it is my hope this will show it’s okay to struggle even though you are in the midst of healing. These feelings and thoughts are entirely normal, and we don’t have to hide it.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting 100DaysToOffload.com.

  • Rope Struggle, photo by Meelimello, published Mar 2, 2018, Pixabay
    • Correct spelling
    • Correct punctuations
    • Correct grammar
    • change topic
    • add tag MentalHealth
    • remove tag mentalhealth, mindfulsations
    • Fix broken link

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