I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different.
Memento (2000)
I’ve been in Sydney for one week now. And I cannot tell whether I am dreaming or living in reality. Though there are constant stresses, such as finding a permanent place to live, settling things with my old workplace, and the pressures from my current one, I cannot believe that I am here.
I moved here because of a singular belief: Sydney is the No. 1 ranked city for startups in Australia. And I poured everything into this dogma for the last month, and here I finally am.
It takes me an hour to commute to work, my housemate’s friends have never heard of the suburb that I work in, my coworkers treat the city as something foreign and alien, and yet here I am.
Last year, a doctor diagnosed me as bipolar. A therapist called me beautifully pragmatic. But I feel like neither of those labels aptly describe the boundless energy I feel daily from being here. I feel like I could run forever; and though the oxygen I breathe burns my lungs and sears my muscles, the pain is just more motivation to work harder and make a greater impact while I’m here.
I feel like I’ll never stop and nothing can stop me.
During my transition from Emerald to Sydney, I tried to rationalise it as a juxtaposition between strength and power. I may not have any power ie. money, influence, charisma or leverage, but at least I have inner strength, ie. resilience - I told myself. And I tried to source that strength from moments of past tribulations, such as spending my high school summers swimming competitively, or the one time I had to make money by participating in a clinical trial.
But I don’t think it’s any of that.
Just like the aforementioned quote, I believe that I am experiencing euphoria simply due to a misplaced belief in something higher than myself. In layman terms, I am delusional. And I have perpetuated a myth so I could find an excuse to change environments, seek new thrills and exert further stress on myself.
We can all cosplay at playing startups and “making an impact on the world”, but, at the end of the day, the difference between power and strength is this: the former affords you multiple attempts to try again, while shielding you from the consequences of hurting people; the latter will have direct consequences, but at least you’ll have various life lessons if you’re able to survive.
So we here go. This is it. Brian, you could play pretend being an entrepreneur when you were in rural Australia, but this is the big leagues now. It cost you everything to transport your life to Sydney, and let’s see whether you have the aptitude to pull it off now, or whether it was the result of a big ego.
Time will tell whether you made the right decision to move, or you were better off fucking off to where you were.