<- Home Alireza Ahmadi

A few weeks ago was my thirtieth birthday. That day was non-stop party, endless fun, and unforgettable gifts and memories …. just kidding. I didn’t celebrate my birthday at all. That day, after a few hours of remote work, in a city far from practically everyone I know, I went to a burger-shop, hoping having a burger would improve my mood (spoiler: it didn’t, though the burger was amazing) and then, wandered around the streets long enough to question every single decision that I’ve made in the last few years.

When I was in my early 20s, I assumed that in a few years I would figure out how to live and by 30, at least, I would be on the right track. The problem is, I’m not even sure which track I’m on right now. I almost never enjoyed my life and now, it’s even worse than before. I got myself so busy that I barely have any time for hobbies. As for my social circle, apart from 2-3 friends who are rarely free, almost all of my friends left the country — which wasn’t surprising considering the country’s worsening economic and social conditions. On the more intimate side, I recently got dumped by someone that I loved, because of quite a few wrong decisions that I’ve made in a short span of time. The best part about my life is probably my career and even that, is light years away from what I imagined it to be; My income still has a near-linear correlation with the time I spend working, and majority of my career decisions worked out quite differently than I expected — some for better, some for worse.

In the past few days, I spent more than 20 hours thinking, ‘What’s the problem?’ Do I overestimate my potential? Maybe, I’m somehow delusional about what I want and should be more honest with myself. Or, perhaps it’s the fact that I don’t put enough effort into achieving what I want. Maybe I’m an optimist, naively hoping that everything will work out as I wish. Maybe I can’t achieve what I want because I want too many things at the same time. Maybe there’s no easy way to become happy, rich, or wise, and I’m not working hard enough. Maybe, current environment or my routines are holding me back. Maybe, I’m giving up too soon. Maybe, I’m not taking enough risks. Maybe I think too much about what I wanna achieve and how I’m going to achieve it, but don’t take enough action toward achieving them. Maybe I’m over-engineering my life. Maybe everything is alright, and I’m just overthinking. Maybe I’m dumber¹ than I assume myself to be.

Perhaps the answer to all the questions above is both yes and no, to some degree. I may never know. What I do know is that something isn’t right.

If you think rationally, turning thirty probably shouldn’t have any sort of significance. After all, years are just numbers, and how is 30 any different from 29 or 31? But, as cliché as it sounds, this milestone somehow made me move a step back and take a look at where I am now, and more importantly, what’s ahead of me.

I spent that last few years, reading, learning, and exploring a wide variety of areas — both personal and professional — that I thought might fulfill me. During these years, for every 10 outcome that I desired, roughly 8 of them turned out completely different than I expected. I gained some experience and probably some insights into what makes me tick, but now I believe it’s time to stop wandering aimlessly, and reconsider some habits, principles, or mental models that lead to scatterd thoughts and actions.

I need to focus.

The result probably won’t be even close to what I expect. Perhaps in a few years, I might be in a worse state than I’m currently in. Yet, what I understand now is that analyzing and improving a plethora of threads is beyond my capability. So, if I want to bet on an approach for living my 30s, it would be to act more pragmatically and dispose the majority of open threads in favor of rerouting my time and energy towards a few actions that will, hopefully, significantly improve my personal and professional life. Do I know what are those actions are? Kinda. Will I make mistakes in executing them? Of course! I made so many mistakes in the past, and I’ll definitly continue to do so in the future. But with luck, I can try to make fewer mistakes than before. I don’t have to be perfect all the time — as I can’t; just need to constantly become better, even in the slightest way — even by making one less mistake.

This post was more of a self-therapy session than a piece of writing useful for the others and probably should’ve stayed in my private notes, but I decided to publish it anyway. Maybe I just didn’t want it to get lost among the rest.