MAYBE - a story of perpetual hope

Photo by Zulian Firmansyah on Unsplash

Recently I realised that I don’t enjoy working in absolutes. I enjoy a good plan and I’m going to need a firm yay/nay if we’re booking something but for life, as a concept, I’m very ‘go with the flow’.

I’m less inclined to accept last minute invitations these days and prefer to be home almost 100% of the time so this might sound completely untrue if you know me at all.. but it’s the thing I’m most sure of. I have no interest in a 5 year plan. I averaged a new job every year in my first 10 working. My circle of friends evolves with the seasons and as soon as you tell me I need to do something, I want to do something else.

I’m recognising that this avoidance of feeling ‘trapped’ in something has been with me since I was a child. I need to feel some amount of freedom because the alternative is suffocation by your own daily routine.

THIS is what I discussed with my therapist when I was, once again, attempting to pin down why I continue to present myself for public consumption. I am happy in the hobby but I will never stop searching for the why that stands between someone who chooses to film themselves and post it for strangers and someone who would never. I feel like that ‘never’ group is diminishing year on year but still.. what makes it so appealing?

I thought it was probably attention or seeking external validation I felt I was missing somewhere in my childhood but once that box has been ticked, why keep going? Especially when not all attention is positive.

It’s the maybe.

The maybe is also why I started the candle business with my friend. It’s why I set up a little t-shirt shop on Etsy, why I’m working on a new book.. it’s the ‘what if?’ that you just don’t get from a 9-5. I may work on content for months (years!) and feel like a tiny fish in an enormous ocean and then one day, an email! The mere potential of that ‘one day’ email is enough to keep swimming.

My best friend is opening a shop. She’s had an amazing opportunity and she’s very generously extending that to me. This is a great example of the ‘maybe’.

If I were Mel Robbins, I’d call this my ‘Maybe Theory’

- stay tuned, I will make that video.

It’s a door that’s always little bit open but that you have to wait to be invited through. Through my numerous internet activities, I have cracked countless doors. Posting videos and snippets across the different platforms is like maintaining the sliver of daylight I can see through each of them. Yes, of course I make money doing some of those things but I could make money working more days at my day job for a lot less hassle. The possibility that at any time someone might open a door with an opportunity that could change my life.. that’s the real bait.

The doors may never open.. or maybe they will but the opportunity will be minor or of no interest to me, but WHAT IF?

And that’s why I do it.

I have had so many amazing things happen in the last 15 years, all because I decided to pick up a camera and share something online. I can’t imagine my life without it. I met a couple of my closest friends and my audience helped launch a business for not just me but my friends as well. I will never not be grateful.. but if it all went away, I know I would find another way to create those ‘maybes’. I’m a happier person when I allow myself to live in a state of perpetual hope so I’d happily start all over.. just for the chance at a knock on one of those doors.