Small warning before you start reading.

There is quite a lot of waffle this week.

I was tempted to write about something else, but I think this might be considerably more interesting to read back in a year.

So future Jake, this one’s probably more for you.

Regardless, you have been warned.

Let’s begin.

CATCHPHRASE

To set the waffle off on the right track, I need to tell you about my current catchphrase.

I’ve never had one before, but I genuinely don’t know how many times I’ve said the exact same three words recently:

I’m just 23.

Not quite the superhero catchphrase I imagined having.

But let me explain.

THE £50,000 PROBLEM

Two weeks ago, I came home at about 4am and decided to apply for a job I assumed I’d never get through the screening process for.

Last week, I interviewed for it.

Paid Social Manager.

So basically, running Facebook ads and trying to make a gambling company more money.

Extremely moral, I know.

Anyway, it came with more responsibility and a salary of around £50,000 a year.

The interview went really well, and by the end of it I found out they wanted to move me straight onto the next stage with a manager.

Shortly afterwards, I got sent the link to book it.

And I did the logical thing.

I never booked it and disappeared on the recruiter.

When I told my friends and family, the response was pretty predictable.

£50,000?!

Which is fair.

£50,000 is a lot of money.

Especially when you’re 23 and still trying to figure out what you’re doing.

That’s 50,000 pretty convincing reasons to at least finish the interview process.

On paper, it was annoyingly sensible.

Do the interview.

Do the task.

Maybe get lucky.

Earn more money.

Simple.

Except the entire time, I had one thought going around my head:

I’m just 23.

Which makes absolutely no sense.

Because I don’t think I was scared that I couldn’t do the job.

A lot of the reporting, tracking, and systems that me and my manager currently use are things I’ve built myself.

So realistically, the next job would probably just mean a bit more responsibility, mostly through more meetings, more decisions, and more budget to spend.

The obvious question is:

If you can do it, they think you’re a good candidate, and you already do a lot of the work anyway...

Why wouldn’t you?

WHAT DO I ACTUALLY WANT FROM WORK?

The answer is that I don’t really know.

I’m not rejecting some terrible future.

That would be easy.

The path that job could offer me is pretty nice.

I could keep climbing.

Get promoted.

Earn more money.

Become better at what I do.

And that’s basically the path we’re told to follow from the moment we leave school.

Study something useful.

Get a decent job.

Get better at that job.

Earn more money.

Move out.

Keep going.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Maybe I’m just young and naive for thinking there’s another way to do it.

Maybe in ten years I’ll read this and laugh at how idealistic I was.

But I want to believe there’s more.

You spend such a ridiculous percentage of your life working that I find it hard to accept the idea that work should just be something you tolerate for five days so you can enjoy the other two.

It’s not that I don’t care about money.

Of course I do.

Money gives you freedom, lets you travel, lets you move out, and makes a lot of life considerably easier.

I just don’t want salary to be the only thing pulling me forward.

I think everyone needs something they can throw themselves into.

Something they care about.

Something they can get slightly obsessed with.

For some people that’s their career.

For some it’s sport.

Art.

Music.

Building stuff.

Whatever.

I think you need something that lets you express whatever weird thing is inside your head.

Something you actually care about working towards.

Something that gives you more than a salary.

Something where you don’t spend Monday waiting for Friday.

Maybe that’s unrealistic.

Maybe it isn’t.

I want to believe there’s another way.

And that’s why the safe route gives me so much anxiety.

What happens if I get really good at building a life I never actually wanted?

Every step further down that path makes leaving slightly harder.

A bigger salary means being able to move out.

Moving out means rent.

Then more responsibilities.

Then one day all the business ideas I’ve had since I was about 13 stop being things I could try today.

They become things I might try at Christmas.

Or during annual leave.

Or “once things calm down”.

And maybe they never do.

So surely the answer is obvious.

If the structured road doesn’t lead towards the life I think I want, take another road.

More obstacles.

More risk.

But maybe more aligned.

Simple.

Right?

I’M STILL TIPTOEING

Nope.

Because I’m not exactly charging down the other road either.

This week, I applied for another role, this time as a Project Manager at a different local company.

Almost immediately after sending the application, I was already wondering why I’d done it.

And I think that’s the weird part.

I keep finding these jobs, thinking they look like the sensible next step, and applying almost on autopilot.

Then the moment they start feeling real, I realise I’m not even sure I want them.

I think part of that comes from how obvious the logic is meant to be.

Better job means better salary.

Better salary means progress.

Progress means you should be happier.

So I keep following that logic until an actual opportunity materialises in front of me and I’m suddenly sat there thinking:

What the actual fuck am I doing?

That’s basically where my head is at right now.

I’m trying to build a life around adventure, freedom, creating things, and doing something different.

While simultaneously building the biggest safety net possible underneath myself.

And I don’t think either side works particularly well when mentally I’m trying to live in both.

At work, part of me is already thinking about what comes next.

Then outside work, when I finally get to the things I actually care about, I’m tired or moving slower than I want because I can’t give them enough time.

It’s this weird middle ground where nothing is actually terrible.

But nothing feels fully committed either.

And I feel like that’s probably quite a normal place to end up in your twenties.

You’ve got enough independence to choose what you want.

But enough options that choosing one means closing another.

And closing doors is pretty scary.

Luckily, whenever any of this gets uncomfortable, I have an incredibly convenient answer.

I’m just 23.

I can go gym tomorrow.

I can properly commit tomorrow.

I can figure out what I want tomorrow.

And technically, I can.

That’s the problem.

“I’m just 23” has slowly become an elaborate way of saying:

It doesn’t have to be today.

And then tomorrow comes.

And conveniently, I’m still 23.

CLASH ROYALE

Anyway.

Clash Royale.

I know we were in the middle of something, but let me cook.

I was eating dinner this week and put on a video from Ken, currently one of my favourite YouTubers.

Usually he just rages at people while playing Clash Royale and tells random stories about his life.

Usually quite funny.

Except in this particular video, he started talking about why it’s important to be comfortable being alone.

His point was basically that you’re going to spend a lot of your life with just yourself.

And sometimes, constantly filling your life with other people can just become another form of procrastination.

That one got me.

Because obviously I want to see my friends.

I want to go out.

I want stupid nights where absolutely nothing productive happens.

Those are my favourite kinds of nights anyway, just sitting on a bench somewhere talking pure waffle.

But I think there’s also a point where you have to ask yourself:

Am I actually enjoying myself, or am I avoiding something?

Because if I know I’ve got things I care about doing, commitments I keep pushing back, or parts of my life I’m not particularly happy with, it’s very easy to fill the empty space instead of sitting alone and actually dealing with them.

And my excuse makes that even easier.

I’m just 23.

There’s loads of time.

I can get serious later.

I can get healthy later.

I can properly commit later.

Except all my friends are 23 too.

And when I look around, I can see them moving.

Some are in the best shape they’ve ever been in.

Some are starting careers they’ve wanted for years.

Some are completely changing direction and figuring things out as they go.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve been slightly stationary.

Not failing.

Not doing nothing.

The projects are moving.

My brain is definitely moving.

But if my life was some massive chessboard, I feel like my pieces haven’t moved in a couple of rounds.

Although, realistically, that’s probably bullshit too.

Because I’m looking at everyone else from the outside.

They probably look at me building two projects and think I’m moving too.

Maybe everyone in their twenties is just staring at everyone else thinking:

Fuck, they’ve figured it out.

When in reality, most of us are probably just making it look that way while internally having no clue what we’re doing.

THE BIG CONCLUSION

This is probably the point where you expect the revelation.

The big lesson.

The thing I realised that magically fixes everything.

There isn’t one.

I still have no clue what I’m doing or where I’m trying to steer my life at the moment.

And I think that’s actually what has surprised me most about Life of Jake.

I imagined this project being me going out, doing cool shit, building things, and documenting it all.

Instead, a lot of it has become a diary of friction.

Every couple of weeks there seems to be something internally fighting with whatever I’m doing externally.

And maybe I’m creating a lot of that friction myself.

I keep saying I want one life while still behaving like I’m living another.

I apply for jobs I don’t want.

I say I want to be healthier, but I don’t train.

I say I want to stop tiptoeing, but I keep finding reasons not to put my foot down anywhere.

I’m trying to move towards something new while constantly making sure I can retreat back to something safe.

Maybe that’s just what being 23 feels like.

Loads of possible directions.

No real idea which one becomes your life.

And a constant battle between the thing you’re supposed to want and whatever weird thing in your head keeps pulling you somewhere else.

I don’t think I’m going to solve that in one week.

Everything is still too early.

Clickrabbit is early.

Life of Jake is early.

I’m early.

I’m just 23.

The only thing I really know is that I probably need to stop using that sentence quite so much.

So yeah, this week I’m going back to the gym.

Partly because I actually want to feel healthy again.

Partly because my friend Matthew has been yapping in my ear about it all summer.

For the next few weeks, I think the goal is just to hover a little less.

Get healthier.

Keep building.

Spend a bit more time alone.

Preferably outside though. I don’t exactly want to become a hermit.

I think that’s probably enough of a plan for now.

Nothing dramatic.

Just try to change a few things, move a bit more deliberately, and see what starts to feel different.

And maybe that’s all this week needs to be.

A snapshot of what life felt like at 23.

Confused about my career.

Trying to build two projects.

Trying to get healthy again.

Still applying for jobs I don’t even want.

And generally having no clue whether any of this works out.

Hopefully, when I read this again in a year, some of it looks ridiculous.

Hopefully some of the things I’m worrying about have completely disappeared.

And hopefully I can look back and see that, somewhere around here, I actually started moving.

If not...

24 is still pretty young.

Anyway, enough crises for one week.

Look at this.

I took this walking to work one morning.

It was about 8:50am, I was half asleep, and this couple walked past me carrying two fish in bags.

No idea where they were going.

No idea where they’d managed to get two fish before 9am.

I just thought it looked really cool and completely out of the ordinary.

Wish I’d had my film camera on me to capture it properly.

Would’ve made a great shot.