Day 648: First Gear

Before going on the ayahuasca retreat, my intention was to spend a week or two max after it ended to integrate and ease back into my “normal life”. Then I’d fire on all cylinders working on Browserflow, building the business, and writing long-form posts about the experience.

Well, it’s been a month and a half, and none of that is happening.

All I can say is that thinking about browser automation and building a business is not the most natural thing to come back to after having my world absolutely rocked. The retreat was incredible, and one of the reasons why I’ve had a hard time shifting my focus back to Browserflow is that I feel like I need to write about that experience before resuming work stuff. But I’ve had a surprisingly difficult time putting the experience into words, and so I end up neither writing nor working because of this expectation I’ve created.

No more. I still want to write that post about the retreat, but I’m giving myself permission to do other things and let the post be written in its own time. It’s also possible that it’ll never happen, which is fine, too. It’s all fine~

So what have I been doing in the meantime? I spent a lot of time with my family (my relationship with them was a topic that came up quite powerfully during the retreat), got really into motorcycles for some reason, flew to Austin, bought a motorcycle, stared at my screen every day hoping that the motivation to write about the retreat would magically arise, tried to write even when the motivation wasn’t arising, spent a lot of time pacing back and forth, got back into bouldering, and started a workout routine using gymnastics rings.

So, in short, a bunch of random things. In the times that I tried to work on Browserflow, it felt like trying to make my way up a hill. Which shouldn’t be that hard except that the hill is impossibly steep and both my legs are broken. I just couldn’t get into it. In stark contrast to my familiar way of working where I can stay focused for hours and hours on end, I could barely keep my mind on Browserflow for a few minutes before getting distracted by something else. It’s strange because I’m still excited about Browserflow and want to work on it, but when I open my code editor, my mind just refuses to move forward.

I’ve been trying to be patient with this process of coming back into my work and letting it unfold in its own time. And boy, does it feel like it’s taking a while. But at the same time, it’s totally understandable — I wouldn’t expect someone to easily return to work after a major life event like moving to a new country, having a baby, or having a family member pass away, and as strange as it may sound, doing an ayahuasca retreat feels comparable in that it’s one of the most intense things I’ve experienced.

My intention for starting Road to Ramen back up is that it feels like a helpful way to ease into that transition. Before the retreat, I felt like I had a ton of momentum and was moving at a pretty rapid pace. And with the retreat, I just completely stopped.

Ever since then, I feel like I’ve had this unhelpful expectation that I can just go right back to how things were before the retreat, but that clearly isn’t working. It feels like I’m trying to shift directly into fourth gear from a standstill and the result is that I’m stalling, over and over again. (This metaphor will be completely lost on all my American friends who don’t know and don’t care how manual transmissions work and it’s only due to my recent obsession with motorcycles that I even have the slightest clue of what I’m talking about.)

Staring up and moving forward again after completely stopping feels difficult. Working feels hard. Getting motivated feels hard. Writing this post feels hard. But I know that the more I do something, the easier it gets, so I’m going to focus on taking the first step. And hopefully that’ll make it easier to take another and another.

Hello again, Road to Ramen.