A couple of weeks ago, I watched The Odyssey.

And annoyingly, I've been thinking about it ever since.

Not because I've suddenly become obsessed with Greek mythology.

Although it is really cool.

But because I realised we might all be living our own slightly less impressive version of it.

I don't mean that we're going to encounter Cyclopes, angry gods, or sea monsters.

I mean knowing roughly where you want to go, getting distracted along the way, and somehow turning the journey into something much longer than it ever needed to be.

Let me cook.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY LESSON

For anyone who hasn't seen one of the adaptations, read the original poem, or knows absolutely nothing about Greek mythology, here's basically everything you need to know.

Odysseus spends ten years fighting in the Trojan War.

The one with the giant wooden horse.

Throughout all of this, the thing he wants most is to eventually get back home to Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and son Telemachus are waiting for him.

Eventually, Troy falls.

The war is over.

He gets on his ship, and it's finally time to go home.

Except a journey that could have taken weeks somehow takes another ten years.

That's The Odyssey.

On the way, Odysseus and his crew get lost, tempted, trapped, shipwrecked, attacked, and constantly dragged away from where they're trying to go.

One of those stops is the land of the Lotus-Eaters.

Some of his crew eat this sweet fruit called the lotus, and suddenly they lose all desire to go home. They're perfectly happy staying exactly where they are.

Odysseus has to physically drag them back onto the ship.

And that's the bit that stuck with me.

Because I think we all have plenty of our own lotuses.

Scrolling, drinking, smoking, porn, Netflix, going out every weekend, or even keeping yourself busy with things that feel productive without actually taking you anywhere.

Anything that makes right now comfortable enough that next week feels like a perfectly acceptable time to start.

MY TROJAN WAR

If I'm forcing my life into this analogy, university was probably my Trojan War.

Not because it felt like a war.

I loved university.

But those years probably changed me more than any others in my life.

You leave home, and suddenly your entire world gets bigger. New city, new people, independence, relationships, friendships, responsibilities, stupid decisions, and emotions you didn't even know how to deal with yet.

And like we all know, it isn't always amazing.

There are periods where we feel properly low. Things go wrong. People come and go. You fuck things up, get hurt, and suddenly have to understand emotions you've never really dealt with before.

But that's almost what makes university so good for growing up.

Something knocks you down, you figure it out, and when you eventually get back up, you know yourself slightly better than you did before.

University can give you the highest high one week and an absolutely horrible low the next.

But even through the messy bits, I felt like I was progressing.

By my final year, I genuinely felt more like myself than I ever had.

I loved living independently, living with my best friend, the city I was in, going to university, and the people around me.

And the whole time, I was imagining what would happen afterwards.

The businesses I'd build.

The places I'd live.

The things I'd create.

All these different versions of who I could become once "real life" finally started.

Then one random Tuesday, it ended.

Last lecture.

Walk out.

Done.

A little while later, I woke up back in the same bedroom I'd been sleeping in since I was a teenager, surrounded by the same streets and the same hometown I'd left years earlier.

Except I wasn't the same person who had left.

And for quite a while, I had absolutely no idea what to do with that.

THEN MY ODYSSEY STARTED

So I went onto autopilot.

I got a local job in iGaming, and the routine started.

Go to work, spend eight hours thinking this isn't really what I want to spend my life doing, come home, put Netflix on, and repeat.

Then the weekend would arrive, I'd go out with my friends, stay out far too late, lose half of the next day feeling like a zombie, and eventually Monday morning would roll back around.

For months, I barely had any proper side projects.

Which is strange because I've spent years saying I want to build things.

I've always wanted businesses. I've always wanted to make videos, take photos, create things, and document what I'm doing.

I knew that.

I just wasn't really doing any of it.

Because those things require something from me.

They could fail.

People could judge them.

I could put loads of effort into something and discover it's shit.

Netflix doesn't ask for any of that.

Neither does another night out.

The lotus is easier.

And for a while, that works.

You're not completely happy with your routine, so you find things that make it easier not to think about it.

Then eventually, the things you were using to escape autopilot become autopilot too.

The night out isn't spontaneous anymore.

It's just what you do every weekend.

The things that once felt fun slowly become another part of the schedule.

That's when it started bothering me.

Because my life wasn't bad.

I was seeing my friends, laughing, earning money, and making plenty of good memories.

I could realistically do exactly that for years and have a completely decent life.

But the version of life I'd always imagined would still be sitting somewhere in the back of my head asking what happened to it.

I've touched on this before, especially back in Week 0, but I think this is probably the clearest I've ever been able to explain it.

Hopefully I can stop writing about being stuck now.

I already know that's a lie.

THE DETOURS

The weird thing is that I haven't been doing nothing.

I've actually been doing loads.

That's partly the problem.

I've spent months applying for other jobs because whenever I feel frustrated with my current one, that seems like the sensible next move.

Another start-up appears.

Apply.

Interesting marketing role.

Apply.

Something abroad.

Apply.

But quite a few of those applications have been half-arsed because, if I'm being truthful, I already know I don't really want the job.

I'm applying because it feels like movement.

Say I get one.

Maybe it's more interesting. Maybe I move somewhere cool. Maybe the salary goes up.

Eventually, I know I'll probably ask the same question again.

Is this actually what I want to spend my time doing?

Unless somebody offers me a job at an animal sanctuary, probably not.

And that's where The Odyssey analogy comes back around for me.

I know where I'm trying to go. I just keep finding new islands to stop at on the way.

Another job.

Another programme.

Another little project I don't care that much about.

All perfectly respectable detours that let me feel like I'm moving without having to properly sail towards the thing I actually want.

THE FIRST MOVE

Eventually, something small broke the loop.

This.

Life of Jake.

For the first six weeks, it was basically my playground.

I'd write something every week, mess around with the website, build custom components, experiment with AI tools, take photos, and slowly make the whole thing more mine.

Then I'd send it to the same friend, my mum, and occasionally my brother.

Nobody else really knew it existed.

Then the whole Washington situation happened.

I wrote Week 6, sent it to my friend, and for the first time thought:

Mate, I actually want to post this one.

So obviously I spent the next two days finding reasons not to.

I was supposed to post it last Wednesday, but I was watching the eclipse and convinced myself it was too late and nobody would see it.

Took some cool pictures at least:

Anyway, it was still a bullshit excuse.

I was just nervous.

Then Thursday came, and I noticed a tiny hard edge on the blur at the bottom of the graphic.

Once I'd seen it, I couldn't stop seeing it.

Eventually, I realised I wasn't trying to make the graphic better.

I was trying to make it impossible for anyone to criticise.

So I posted it.

Sixteen people clicked through.

Nine liked it.

One subscribed.

And a few people messaged saying they genuinely enjoyed it.

Tiny numbers.

But I was ridiculously proud of them.

I'd put something I cared about into the world, and nothing terrible happened.

If anything, it made me want to build more.

That was the first domino.

CLICKRABBIT FINALLY CLICKED

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know I've also been "working on" Clickrabbit for ages.

And technically, I was.

I was sourcing leads, testing niches, making funnels, running campaigns, and constantly finding another free trial to keep the whole thing moving.

But that's exactly what it felt like.

Keeping it moving.

Not really building something I liked.

I was doing enough to say I was working on Clickrabbit without ever properly backing the version of it I was building.

Then recently I came across a start-up called Explee.

Their whole platform just looks so cool.

It reminded me what kind of business actually excites me.

Something technical.

Something with systems behind it.

Something that tries to change how something is currently done instead of just doing more of the same.

And that made Clickrabbit finally click.

I want to try re-engineer the way businesses turn paid ads into customers.

It'll start as an agency, working directly with real businesses and campaigns.

Then, if parts of the system genuinely work, I can slowly turn those into software.

Service businesses first, then maybe e-commerce and SaaS later.

Different types of businesses, same starting point.

Paid ads go in.

Customers should come out.

Everything in between is what I want to improve.

Rather than make you read six paragraphs about tracking, funnels, reporting, creatives, and AI agents, this is roughly what my brain looks like right now:

I'm not interested in building complexity for the sake of it.

I want to see if I can build something that changes the way this is done and sets a new standard for it.

Whether I can actually do that is another question.

But that's a problem I'm genuinely excited to find out.

And weirdly, my current job is useful for this too.

I'm around paid advertising every day, so I can use what I'm learning and the real problems I see to pressure-test some of the ideas behind the Clickrabbit machine.

BACK ON THE SHIP

If you've made it this far and you're under the impression that I've now suddenly sorted myself out, you're completely wrong.

I'm still going to go out.

I'm still going to waste time.

I'm still going to procrastinate.

And I'm definitely still going to eat plenty of lotuses.

The difference is that now I've got something competing with them.

I've been trying to watch the tv show Severance all week, but almost every night I end up back on my laptop talking to Claude Code, changing something, building something, or disappearing down another idea.

Not because I've suddenly become incredibly disciplined.

I'd just genuinely rather build right now.

And I think that's what's changed.

The old habits are still there. The routine is still there. My life hasn't suddenly transformed.

There's just a bit less noise around the things I actually care about.

Anyway, I've spent this whole article talking about my Odyssey.

Yours probably looks completely different.

Maybe you've got something you've always wanted to try, but you've built a very comfortable routine around putting it off.

I don't think you need to blow up your life tomorrow.

Maybe you just need to knock over one tiny domino.

Try the basic version.

Put something out.

See what happens.

Because sometimes the first domino doesn't change your life.

It just makes everything around it a little quieter.

And reminds you that you actually want to move.

P.S. As you can probably tell, this has been quite a technical week behind the scenes, so a mental dump was required.

Sneak peek at what's coming next week 👀