Everything I've learned from failure

As an HSP, I underestimate the power of my mind...

I shouldn’t ideally be writing this now. I should be at my remote work desk writing long-form SEO articles for the blog on my previous employer’s website. But I’m here writing my first soulful content in a long time.

I have been crushed by the weight of hustle culture and even burnt by cold capitalism because of my desire to survive in a world where money in your pocket determines if you will eat dinner or afford a decent roof over your head. It can be — if we are being honest — quite challenging to balance passion and purpose with sheer survival, especially where I come from. In most cases, survival, in its rawest form, wins. Passion and purpose are tossed away because a hungry belly is a hungry belly regardless of what you think about quantum physics or mental health. And that has been my life for a while now.

finding your soul

I have had to sacrifice my passion and purpose for survival. What I got in return was anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and soul-crushing fear — fear of the unknown. I won’t say I’m not cut out for the corporate world, but I’m certainly a Highly Sensitive Person with a powerful mind. A mind so powerful that the moment I begin to express discontent with a situation, it begins to crumble by itself. The universe finds a way to help me get out of it, even if that means I become unemployed twice in less than 9 months.

That is what people might consider failure: losing a job you worked hard to get and were grateful for because it meant a stable income. But is it really failure if it helps you to put things in perspective? If it helps you to find yourself, rescue your soul and redirect you to more worthwhile and fruitful opportunities, is it really failure?

I may have lost yet another job and source of income but who says financial security should come at the expense of your soul or mental health? When you begin to doubt yourself for the most basic activity you’ve done your entire life, that’s when it dawns on you that the system has really got you.

Now I love a good life: Holidays, rich meals, you name it. And money can afford you those. But if I’m slaving away at a keyboard all day to deliver an average of 3000+ word blog posts everyday five times in a week and then having to see my article go live on the website without at least a credit to my name, I’m tempted to have a rethink. Not even the good-enough pay can make me cope with the anxiety from the weekly reports and targets demands and the lack of support from fellow writers and the line manager. Throw in the physical symptoms I started to experience from the anxiety disorder such as burning feet, pins and needles, tingling, and heart palpitations — and I become a complete wreck.

I failed. I failed at pretending to love writing (actually, they’re helpful articles within the context of SEO and marketing) technical, soulless, and bland long-form blog posts on topics I have to research deeply about just for — you guessed right — money. I failed and I own it. I failed at trying to be okay with being treated as a mercenary and a statistic on a content team rather than an actual human with emotions and feelings.

I do still very much enjoy writing, as you might have guessed I made it down to this point writing this post alone without help from anyone. But if I’m to do it for just money, maybe I’ll pass. I’m an adult and I know that I’m expected to contribute to the economy of my country and not try to make things go my way all the time. But I also reckon that there are far better scenarios than my current reality and I do deserve to experience them. My soul seeks expression. And only writing that allows me to do just that will I entertain further.

Thank you for reading Sensitiv! If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe for more as I will continue to share my vulnerable realities here.

P.S. I wrote this in July 2024. By December 2024, I’d spent three months at a new job I enjoy way better. I got what I was looking: my purpose. I got it.