Why everyone should pursue their “moon-shots”

When I entered working life it wasn’t after long that I realized that there were a million “traps”. There are the office politics, social games and frustrations of all sorts. That’s just a few. One of the biggest traps was to expect the job to get you the feeling of “accomplishment” that we all need to keep on going on a day to day basis.

A job can’t give you that. A job is first and foremost about money. If you put too much stock in a job, then you put the bar way too high. Then every day needs to better than the one before. And that’s just not sustainable.

Well, that’s just one of the things that you have to figure out the hard way. I did at least. And I learned my lesson, because it all changed when I made the following conscious decision: I will work 40 hours for my paid job, and 20 hours for my moon-shot.

So what I call a “moon-shot” is the “wildly ambitious”. It’s my version of being an astronaut. It’s the one thing that so outrageously hard to accomplish that it’s almost impossible. So what is that? Well. Initially--- I thought that it would be to conquer “psychology” or “philosophy”, even though I knew in the back of my mind what I wanted to get a go at.

That’s when I started writing, and as it is with everything that you just start: the first stuff was pretty bad. I called it literature, because there was no story from a to b, and it wasn’t really about something. Then my uncle told me that a story should be simple, not a puzzle. I took it to heart, and started looking for examples.

That’s how I ended up getting back into Stephen King. It had always been down my alley, because it had always been “around”. Also side-ways, because I grew up watching The X-Files and all that. And it just so happens to be that Stephen King is a really good writer. The stories are easy to follow along, because they follow an easy structure and use easy words.

So that’s what I started to lean into for the next five years or so. I published 5 novels. Then after they all fell flat on publication, I realized that I had to get a hold of marketing. So for the next two years I tried YouTube. Got some data-points, but time is scarce, and I can’t act on them now. So here I am: back to this old blog, twitter and reddit.

The dream is still there though. I still call it a “moon-shot”, but my whole point is that I would never have been able to pursue those ambitions if I hadn’t dedicated the time and resources to them in the first place. And more importantly, even though I haven’t achieved any success, my moon-shots have given me more of a feeling of accomplishment than my job ever has. And that’s a big take-away, also for me.

So this is my advise to anyone who has just entered the work-force: 40 hours for the job, and 20 hours towards your moon-shot. Your “moon-shot” is where you will find your “true fulfillment”.