The Big Decision
It’s funny, decision is a word that I always struggle to spell.
Around my 30th birthday, I got really, really sad. I’m sure that’s something that happens to a lot of people - 30 is an age that’s made to feel so significant for some reason.
Luckily for me, my birthday is at the end of July which means that I was one of the youngest in my year at school and, therefore, most of my friends turned 30 before me. At one friend’s 30th, around March, I sat at a table with about 25 other nearly 30/freshly 30 year olds discussing how we felt about the milestone. Most felt anxious whereas I felt pretty fine about the situation - for some reason, I just wasn’t dreading it like everyone else seemed to be. The birthday boy mentioned that ‘it’s because you’re actually successful’… which I suppose might have been the case. Within my circle of friends, I’m seen as someone who’s doing pretty well for myself, I own a successful company, I make decent money, live on my own and generally seem pretty put together. Very few of my friends are married or have kids so, in that area of life, I don’t really feel like I’m behind being single or childless - I also don’t really think I want to get married or have kids.
Anyway, back to why I was sad in the last week of being 29… I was suddenly worried that the life I was living wasn’t my purpose.
I got into this career completely by accident, it wasn’t an area I was passionate about, I wasn’t someone who grew up watching YouTube or following influencers, I’m not even someone who’s ever cared about celebrities (except Rihanna… but I’m Bajan so she’s basically my cousin). For a long time, I did things for other people - I’m most certainly not a people pleaser but I was someone who constantly felt like I needed to prove myself to others. A good example is me saving up for a house. I started taking saving seriously around 2019 when I got a new job where I was making more than I’d ever earned. I was living with my parents at the time so I was able to save quite a bit of my salary each month. I decided that I would save to buy a house, not because I particularly wanted to own a house but because I wanted to be able to say I’d brought a house before I was 30. After a few years, I had the money to buy, but I suddenly realised that I don’t want to be stuck in England forever and, owning a house would tie me to this country in ways that I didn’t want. I’d been saving and saving, just to post that key-in-hand photo to Instagram so everyone would know that I was a homeowner.
My mum always said to me that the best thing about getting older is that you stop caring what others think of you. I’d always felt like I didn’t really care because I’m not someone who needs to be liked - what I realised is that I was someone who needed to be seen to be doing well and, in that sense, I really did care what others thought. With my journey of trying to let that side of me go, I realised that holding on to being a successful business owner was also for other people. The sense of pride I’d feel when I tell people I own a company and the joy I get in them assuming it’s a little side hustle and then realising I’ve been listed on the Forbes Under 30 list (that I had pinned to the top of my IG to make sure people saw it as soon as they followed me). I was doing all of these things to make sure others saw me as successful however, I wasn’t actually happy.
So, as I approached 30, I realised that there is nothing more that I could achieve that would make me happy. I was doing well, getting the awards and accolades, making money - if none of these things made me happy then what more could I do in this space? It would still take me a few more months to actually make the decision but the seed was planted. I’d been doing all of this for other people, it was time to put the pride aside and do something for myself.
In November I made the decision to leave the company I’d built and I’m excited to document the journey.