Commitment Issues

I talked to my little brother Matt today on the phone and he asked me to be his best man. I’m pretty excited about that. I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I would probably be his best man. Anyway, we started talking, and I told him about my plans to be a nomad. It was kind of funny because he sounded SO nervous for me. He didn’t say a whole lot, and I knew that meant he was thinking this in his mind: “Whoa, what’s wrong with Aaron? He’s going A-wall. He’s never going to get married with the path he’s taking. I don’t feel so good about his plans.”

His silence basically came off like the same response that I got from my Mom. Worried that I’m throwing my life away and running away from something. Well, I’d probably think that if I was somebody else. I mean, usually when I hear somebody is doing something kind of different, I am jealous of them. But, I think most of my siblings are just wondering what my long-term plans are. I don’t blame them for worrying, but I just think it’s a waste of their worry muscles. Worrying never does anybody any good.

While I was talking to him though, he brought up kind of a good point about what I’m doing. I was telling him how I just lose interest in things pretty quickly, and it seems like I have an interest in something, but then I lose interest, and I move on to something else. He mentioned how that was kind of like my Dad. That was something that bothered me about my Dad growing up. He would get interested in something, spend a bunch of money on that hobbie, but then it just wouldn’t last. I always thought the use of money on the Hobbie was a waste if you weren’t going to stick with it. Well, I see the same kind of patterns happening in my own life. It’s not even the fact that I lose interest completely, I guess I just get bored and I’m ready to move onto something new.

For example, I remember when I wanted to learn the guitar. So, I got a guitar, I learned a few songs, and then I lost interest. I mean, I still like to play the guitar once in a while, but now that I basically learned it good enough so that I can learn a song whenever I want to, I just don’t enjoy it enough to pull it out every day. See, the question is how that tendency will translate to my professional life. Am I just going to need to switch jobs every year to keep things interesting?

Well, after thinking about it a while, I’ve realized it’s not all that bad. I mean, I have an eye for opportunity. I really think I do. I have a few entrepreneurial friends who just feel like once they get a good enough idea, they’ll be able to start their own company. For me, I feel like I have pretty good ideas fairly regularly. So, for me it’s not about having the idea, it’s about execution of the idea. I love having a new idea and trying to go after it. I could see myself being a serial entrepreneur, but I need to pursue my ideas further, until they are successful. So, this kind of goes back to what I wrote about before: I should never drop something before I am successful at it.

After thinking about all this, I’m wondering if my travel idea is just one more of those ideas that I need to get out of my system so that I can move onto the next one. I wonder if once I get out and I’m on the road traveling around, I lose interest, and I only travel for like 2 weeks before feeling like I’m done doing that. I could see that happening, and I wouldn’t put it past me. That’s why I need to make the decision right now, that whatever I decide to do, I need to stick with it.

If I decide to travel around and have a blog and what-not, I shouldn’t be done with my trip until I have created a successful blog and I’ve seen some of the things that I want to see.

I also wonder if my desire to move has affected my ability to finish some of the ideas I’ve had. If I know that my location isn’t permanent, and that I don’t want to stay in a place for much longer, then it doesn’t make sense for me to start any sort of sustainable business. Like RateMySummerSalesJob.com, I would probably want to stay around in Utah somewhere to make that a success. If when I’m working on that project, I have a feeling that I don’t really want to stay in Utah for much longer, it might be hard to actually push through on the project, because I know it’s something that just won’t last. I think that’s also true about the other jobs that I had. When I worked at Qualtrics, I knew that I would need to be there for at least a year if I wanted to be a successful B2B salesman. Well, I didn’t really want to stick around in Provo long enough to be successful there, so that’s probably what led to me quitting my job.

It seems that my desire to live in a certain place is strongly connected with my ability to see things through to the end. The more I can plan on living someplace long-term, the more I will be able to start businesses that will endure. So, it seems that for me to be able to find a place that I can see myself living long-term for, one of three things needs to happen. First, I get married. Then, I make a decision with somebody else involving where we want to settle down. Second, I just make a conscious decision about where I would like to live for a year or two. Third, I make some sort of long-term commitment in a location where I feel obligated to fulfill my commitment. I guess this would be like a job or something.

Basically, this analysis has helped me to see that I do think it would be beneficial for me to travel, because I think it can help me to make a decision about where I want to live next. Once I have made that decision, I think it will help me buckle down and follow through on the ideas that I have. Besides, if I don’t follow through on this travel idea, it will be perpetuating my bad habit of having a great idea but never following through with it.

2 Comments

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  By Kristina, December 10, 2009 @ 7:42 pm

  Interesting ideas Aaron. I believe all of us in the family have struggled with what you are talking about at one time or many times. Yet since we all are so stubborn I think we have to just experience our own mistakes to learn from them. I think follow through and commitment are huge though. It’s like the old motto If a task you have once begun, never quit it till your done. Though the task be great or small, do it well or not at all.
  That has been ingrained into us from a very young age. We are try to find our way of completing what we believe is important. Good luck on this journery

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  By Aaron Anderson, December 11, 2009 @ 10:50 am

  Yeah, I’ve thought about that motto at times, and the second half seems to be more true to me than the first. I think it’s a good idea to not quite a job until your done. However, quitting isn’t a bad thing. It’s much better to quit something if you know you can’t give it your all, than to just stay in and give a half-hearted effort because you don’t want to be a quitter. I think of wrestling my freshman year as a great example. I didn’t want to quit, so I just barely scraped by and did the minimum. I even over-exaggerated an injury so I wouldn’t have to practice, but I still didn’t quit.

  I think it’s bad that quitting is looked down upon so much. If you aren’t quitting some things in your life, then you’re probably just settling.

  However, I still don’t like the feeling of quitting things, and I feel like when I quit jobs and stuff that I’m not true to my word. It’s a balance that is hard to figure out.

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