Why? - #1

Welcome to the first journal post, subscribe to be tuned in for more

Hey friends,

I’m on a 12 hour plane ride right now from Paris back to the states.. usually these long periods of solitude and silence are great for reflections and personal time. Something I personally think I need more of so I’ll be using this platform to hold myself accountable in this “self-improvement” journey I’ve been on the past few months. Writing has never been a strong suit of mine, English class was never my favorite - probably because this was one of my weaknesses as I never had the patience to read/sit still, my lack of vocabulary, and inability to articulate my thoughts/feelings in an eloquent way. But a few months back I was inspired by Andrew Neeme’s story telling through written word and Landon Tice’s vulnerability in their own substack journals. Each gave their own perspective on their life which I found a ton a value from; and I’m sure this experience was also valuable for them. Which explains why I want to start this of my own and the topic I want to focus on in this journal note.

Why?

The lifelong question to explain the journey that each of us are current on. Why are we the way that we are? Why do we do the things we do? The people we surround ourselves with, our hobbies, our occupations, our passions, what excites us? Why do we live? What is all this for?

For a majority of my life, for 24.5 years (I’m 25 now), I’ve been going through life without much care or thought in the world about my why. Why I played sports growing up, went to school and college, or why I quit my job to pursue YouTube? I was sort of tunnel visioned without much perspective - I went through life making decisions that I thought was the “path” for me, then got older and realized there’s more freedom in our lives to pursue whatever we wanted and making videos online called to me for some reason. I always acted on my intuition but was never introspective; you could call me a bit of an airhead. Just “lah-di-da” doing things in the world without much deliberate thought or action.

About 6 months ago thanks to my lovely girlfriend Nicole, I got pushed into going to therapy and it’s been a huge improvement on my life. See my entire life up until a few months ago have been rather one dimensional - I’ve operated everything in my life for only one purpose: for me. I’m not saying this was a flaw to think and operate this way, but I didn’t even know what I was doing and why. I spent every waking hour the past 3 years eating, sleeping, breathing poker and YouTube - everything I was doing was career oriented without a semblance of balance. Granted, I’m still operating this way now but maybe with a tad more perspective. Slowly trying to wrap my brain around why I personally do the things that I do. What values in life are important to me? I don’t have the answers but at least I’m working towards it and challenging myself on the why, something I want to put into writing today here.

Every single decision you make in life should have a clear cut resounding “why”? Similar to poker (something I’m learning and a leak I have), you should have a reason to do something other than “because I felt like it” or “because fuck this guy”. It used to be: “i play poker because it’s fun to gamble and something to do when I have nothing to do at home.” Well now it’s: “i play poker because it fulfills my competitive drive and to produce good content for career.” Every decision we make has an opportunity cost. Last year, I spent 900 hours on the felt playing live poker.. not including travel time, online poker hours, dinner breaks, etc. Yes, I enjoyed those 900 hours of playing - but I definitely could’ve done soooo many other things in life with that time. So I fulfilled my competitive/career bucket for 900 hours, what about the rest of my life of things important to me? What about quality time with the people closest to me? It’s time away from strengthening my relationships with friends, girlfriend, and family. What about traveling the world or someplace new to gain a new perspective and learn about a different way of life? What about spending time to brainstorm on a new business idea and executing on it that may eventually free up more time later on in life? What about hobbies to fulfill the happiness bucket like golf, skydiving, snorkeling with fish to name a few.

Everything we do has an opportunity cost and maybe this year I’m going to be more deliberate on my actions. Out of everything in life, time is the scarcest resource we have and maybe we should make the most of it. Spend more time with the people we love and care about, do the things that may be a lower hourly or -EV monetarily but +EV in happiness. Valuing happiness equity is a concept I’m starting to dig more and more into. But this all starts with the concept of why? What’s motivating us to live each and every day? Is our goal to be happy? To be the most successful version of ourselves? To make money? For stability in life? For our children or future children? No one has the answer besides you. It’s time for me to try and figure that out this year.

If you made it this far thank you, it means a lot that you struggled through my below average writing skills. Hopefully with more of these, my writing can increase and produce higher quality content. Or maybe I become just like Landon and Andrew and become too busy and drop this project. But here journal #1, thanks for reading.

Much love,

Ethan Yau (Rampage)