The Same Problem

In 2013, in college, I wrote a business plan for an app called Habit Town.

Here's how it was going to work. You make your to-do list, and a bunch of cute little guys called Habiteers run around your screen. Check things off, and they build you a town: houses, a ski resort, "maybe even an air strip or two." Slack off, and a Godzilla-like monster stomps through and eats a Habiteer or two, "all because you forgot to do your laundry one too many times."

I'm laughing. I also kind of still want it.

I found Habit Town this week, digging through my Google Drive for old writing. What I found instead was plans. Life plans, business plans, a lesson plan, a road map, a ten-year plan, even a plan for the end of the world. At least twenty of them.

I lined them up, and I noticed something.

It's the same plan.

In January 2014 I made a nine-year bucket list called "What I wanna be by 33." Lift 200 pounds. Run ten miles. Travel to Japan. Right under "Do full Swan dive yoga pose" is "Get out of bed when I wake up."

A little further down: Be a business owner. Have my own housing.

And the very last line: Have true self confidence.

33 came and went in 2023. Today this website has three quests on it: own land, build my own house, sell a profitable business.

Look familiar? It does to me.

Some of these plans are great. Some of them are... a start.

"A New Business Venture," 2014. Needs: a plan, a customer, a niche, determination. Ideas: blank. I listed everything a business needs except the business.

In 2016 I wrote my life plan in a teacher's lesson plan template. Under materials, "The internet" shows up five times. One of them says "The internet, but probably a real estate agent." The section called DREAMS (SOMEDAY BUCKET LIST) is still the template's fake Latin. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. I never got around to filling it in.

My lesson plan for 2018 has one objective: "Become a millionaire." Materials needed: "Pellentesque (30)." That's more fake Latin. Apparently I needed thirty.

In August 2018, a whole document, start to finish: "Live someplace like this ^^"

November 2019: "Old plan was to get rich. New plan is to get healthy." Then it just stops.

A month later, the ten-year plan: "The old 'Get Rich or Die Trying' Chris is gone. Now, it's Action Chris." It calls 2020 "the year of the cocoon." I was more right than I wanted to be.

I love this guy. He never stopped trying.

Here's the part that took me more than a decade to see.

I was never short on plans, and the dream barely changed. A place that's mine. A business that's mine. In 2019 I wrote that I wanted to build "something that I can definitively say is 'mine.'" Even my 2022 plan for the end of the world, once you get past the scary part, comes down to one question: do you want to be at home, safe and sound, growing your own food?

What I was short on was the last line of that 2014 list.

Look at Habit Town again. It's a game that makes a to-do list less scary. In 2015 I wrote a plan to run my life like a business and pay myself pretend money for every goal I hit. In 2021 I just said it: "To-do lists give me anxiety."

My ten-year plan lists the threats "from within." First up: "Self-doubt, imposter syndrome." And in 2021 I wrote that the idea of earning a living from my own skills "still hasn't fully sunk in yet. Mostly because I don't believe in myself enough."

Not money. Not time. Me.

So here's how it went. I'd write a big, beautiful plan. I'd look at the whole thing at once, all seventeen steps, and get overwhelmed. I'd stall. A year later I'd write a brand new plan, with a brand new name, for the exact same dream.

The problem I was trying to solve was never really "how do I buy land" or "how do I start a business." It was: how do I build the life I want without getting in my own way?

There's a song in my Drive from April 2020. The file is called "Home, there's so much time between where I want to be and where I am." Yeah. That.

The funny part is, past me kept writing down the answers.

• "Doing the Little Things Right." (2019)
• "It is not wasted effort to try something that doesn't work out. The only wasted effort is the energy expended on indecision." (2019)
• "Gentle, but firm." (2021)
• "take your time, no need to overwhelm yourself right now" (2021)
• "You're on step 1, you need to think about step 1, not step 17." (2021)
• "It's about repairing my relationship with myself." (2023)

Same advice, from the same guy, to the same guy, for years. I think it's finally sinking in.

In 2021 I wrote that how far I'd come was "still only to the starting block. I've joined the race." Five years later, I named the first piece on this website The Starting Block.

In 2019 I wrote that I hoped I wouldn't be the same person by 2025. "I hope I am better."

Some of it came true, just not the way the plans said. In 2016 I wanted to learn to "write code (maybe)," build robots, buy and sell real estate, get a book published, and "bake a legit cake." By 2019 I had a real estate license. I write code now, no maybe. I wrote a book. And in 2019 I wrote that by 2026 I'd be creating an agricultural company. It's 2026, and I have a little company called Johnny Autoseed, about robots that grow food. It's small. I'm counting it.

So, to every guy who wrote one of these: thank you. You kept the dream alive long enough for me to pick it up.

Here's the plan. Same as always. Own a piece of land. Build my own house. Sell a profitable business. Have true self confidence.

This time I'm not rewriting it. I'm working it, one small piece at a time, right here where you can watch. If a piece doesn't work out, that's not wasted effort. Indecision is.

So, my friend: what's the plan you keep rewriting?