When do you
actually think?

When do you actually stop and think about your own life?

Not in the dramatic way.

Not “what is the meaning of life?”

I mean actually sit down, look at what you are doing, and realise how fucking weird it is.

Because I do a lot now.

My days get busy quickly.

Messages. Work. Code. Contracts. Emails. People asking things. Things breaking. Things needing decisions.

Then school exists somewhere in the middle of all that because apparently I am still fifteen.

Most of the time, it just feels normal.

That is the strange bit.

Then I actually looked at it

I recently sat down and basically did due diligence on myself.

Which sounds stupid.

It probably is.

But I started looking at everything like it belonged to somebody else.

• Twopieces of news coverage
• Onecompany
• Actualcustomers
• Possiblehigh-value contracts
• 15years old

And that was probably the first time in a while I looked at it and thought:

What the fuck?

Because if somebody else told me that was their life at fifteen, I would think it was ridiculous.

Not impossible.

Just ridiculous.

Then you realise you are the person saying it.

I probably should not have any of this

And I mean that literally.

Statistically, socially, whatever way you want to look at it, I probably should not be in this position at fifteen.

Most people my age are not having conversations about contracts or infrastructure or company decisions.

That is not me insulting them either.

They are fifteen.

That is probably the more expected situation.

And I am not going to do the fake humble thing and say:

“I do not deserve any of this.”

Fuck that.

I do.

I did the work.

If something I build gets recognised, then yes, I am going to take the recognition.

That is how this works.

Pretending I somehow accidentally fell into everything would be more dishonest than admitting I am proud of it.

But deserving something and understanding how strange it is are two different things.

I do not know everything

This is another thing people seem incapable of holding in their head at the same time.

I can know what I am doing in some areas and still know absolutely fuck all in others.

I am not some genius who understands business, law, software, finance and every other thing perfectly.

I do not.

I ask people.

I research things.

I get things wrong.

I change my mind.

Sometimes I realise I have misunderstood something completely.

That does not cancel out the things I do know.

And the things I do know do not magically make me knowledgeable about everything else.

Both can exist.

Apparently nuance has been discontinued.

Nothing anyone does is actually normal

I do not even really like calling what I do “abnormal”.

Because what the fuck is normal?

Normal compared to who?

Someone else my age?

Someone in another country?

Someone with completely different interests?

Someone who has spent five years doing something I have never touched?

Everyone becomes weird if you inspect them closely enough.

People have strange routines. Strange skills. Strange interests. Strange jobs. Strange situations they somehow ended up in.

So I do not think I am normal.

I do not think I am abnormal either.

I think I am just doing my thing and it happens to look completely ridiculous from the outside.

Third person is dangerous

This is where it gets funny.

Looking at your life in third person is probably good for you occasionally.

It gives you perspective.

It makes you realise how much has changed.

It makes you notice things you stopped appreciating because they became routine.

It can also give you an absolutely horrific god complex in about thirty seconds.

That sounds significantly more insane.

Same person.

Same day.

Completely different framing.

You can make yourself sound like the main character very quickly if you remove yourself from your own perspective.

That is probably why self-awareness matters.

Because otherwise you read your own life like a Wikipedia page and start thinking you are fucking Bruce Wayne.

Most of it still feels boring from inside

This is probably the funniest part.

The outside view sounds impressive.

The inside view is usually:

That is what progress normally looks like while you are actually inside it.

Messy.

Busy.

Mostly boring.

Then every so often you zoom out and realise the boring little tasks have somehow built into something much bigger.

And then you go back to answering emails.

I think you need both views

You probably need to look at yourself from outside sometimes.

Otherwise things move so quickly that you stop noticing them.

But you also need to come back down.

Because if you spend too long staring at your achievements from third person, you will become unbearable.

There is a balance somewhere between:

“Nothing I do matters.”

and

“I am the greatest human being ever produced by Merseyside.”

Both are probably wrong.

I have done things I am proud of.

I have done things that are unusual.

I have opportunities now that I would not have believed a while ago.

I earned a lot of that.

And I still have absolutely loads to learn.

None of those statements cancel each other out.

Sometimes you need to stop working long enough to notice how far things have moved.

Just do not stare for too long.

You might start believing your own press coverage.