What if you just did what you wanted?

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Have you ever loved something so much, you let it take over your whole life?

I do this a lot. Sometimes it’s a romantic relationship. Most recently, it’s been my business.

The problem is, no matter how intensely I feel I’ll never get enough, I always do eventually. I’ve never been able to enjoy making one thing my whole life focus for more than a few months.

It’s a tricky balance: to be really great at something, you need to devote a ton of energy to it. But if you do too much, you burn yourself out. Where do you draw the line?

I was talking to a friend last week about small business ownership. He’s a successful businessperson, and he said something I’ve heard a lot: he works mega-hours, but he doesn’t mind, because it doesn’t feel like work to him.

Lots of people say this, and honestly, I consider it a dangerous idea. Working all the time because I loved it and it didn’t feel like work is exactly how I killed every shred of fondness I ever had for my yarn business.

So I asked him what he meant. He said, well, I do the most important stuff in the morning when I’m fresh, and then I do dumb stuff like email in the afternoon, and when I get tired, I stop.

Whoa! He stops?

It’s sad, but I never even considered stopping when I get tired. This was a completely new idea to me. Frankly, I’m usually tired. I always figured if I stopped working every time I was tired, I would never work at all. But maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe if I rested when I was tired, I wouldn’t be tired all the time.

Everyone says when you start your own business, you will work your ass off. It’s a given. You’ll work harder than you ever have in your life, in the noble quest for freedom and self-determination. It will be hard and scary. You’ll face failure and night sweats. You’ll forsake sleep and forget what your romantic partner looks like.

But if you stick with it and never say die, you’ll triumph! There is no failure, there is only learning! There is no impossibility, there is only working harder and being braver. There are no roadblocks, there are only obstacles to scramble over or run around. There is nothing but kicking ass and taking names.

That’s how I’ve been approaching my business, and it’s paid off bigtime. If I believed in impossibility, I never would have quit my job.

But.

At the risk of sounding like a total small-business wuss (not to mention heretic!), there’s only so long a person can keep that up. I seem to have hit my limit.

I’ve seen this coming for a long time, but I still didn’t believe it would really happen. After all the amazing and seemingly impossible stuff I’ve accomplished in the past year, I started believing I could do anything and nothing would ever go wrong. Then I fell on my face, figuratively speaking. I spent a week solid doing nothing but writing the first draft of my new book, which was awesome, but then I totally hit a wall and could no longer make myself work at all. I think I had kind of a mini nervous breakdown, actually.

And then I fell on my face, literally. I was running in the woods, and I tripped over a root and hit the dirt. One minute I was running, then the next thing I knew, I was sliding on my hands and knees, kicking up a big cloud of dust. In front of two buff guys. Ow.

I’m still enough of a zealous nut that, once I confirmed that I could still walk and wouldn’t need the guys to carry me back to the parking lot, the story I told myself about this was one of triumph. See, self? One of your worst fears about running in the woods came true, and it was still totally fine! The guys were nice, and you still got to enjoy the woods for a mile or so back to the car, and you got home before the endorphins wore off.

Hell yeah, it didn’t kill me, so it made me stronger!

In a way, I think that’s true. But another part of me thinks, have I become so full of shit that I buy it even from myself? Seriously, does everything have to be a triumph with me?

Up to now, I’ve subsisted on deadlines and adrenaline. I’ve set insane goals for myself and wallowed in everyone’s astonishment when I achieved them. But you know what? It’s worn me out.

I quit my job so I could work on stuff I really cared about and do work I love. By being such a psycho about it, I’ve sucked all the pleasure out of it. Instead of enjoying what I’m doing, I’m constantly looking at my huge goals and feeling late, behind, stressed, and inadequate.

I’ve tried many times to be more reasonable about my goals. Take breaks, set a schedule, make time for myself, take care of myself. Yet, every time I’ve done that, within a few days, I was back to doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Over the past week or two, it’s become clear to me that my main struggle is a dilemma between ambition and happiness. I see so many great things I want to do, and I want it all to happen right now! Not to mention, the sooner I get it done, the sooner I’ll have a sustainable income flowing in. When I set audacious goals, it drives me to work harder and achieve more. But doing it at my frantic pace has been making me miserable, and driving myself with fear and “have to”s doesn’t seem to be working any more.

What if I just did what I wanted instead?

This idea captured my attention when Leo Babauta wrote about it in a post suggesting that you throw your to-do list out the window and just do the one thing you’re most excited about each day.

I love the idea. Just do one thing! Just do the thing you’re most excited about! Wouldn’t life be grand!

But then I’ve always dropped back, thinking, “Easy for him to say–he doesn’t have a job, and he already has an established business that supports him.”

Also, “When the hell would the oil get changed if I did that?”

(Clearly, I am not a minimalist.)

Well, this time, I’m going to try it. I’m quitting goals. No more deadlines, no more mania, no more working despite exhaustion. My one and only goal is to live a happy and peaceful life.

Each day, I will do whatever excites me most. Sometimes, this may be sleep or bake pies. Honestly, sometimes it may still be the last few deadlines I have left for Beyond Fear. But overall, I hope most days it will be something like working on my next book or writing a blog post.

I’ll tell you the truth: I’m terrified this won’t work at all and I’ll just lie around eating bonbons all day, until I run out of savings and end up in a van by the river. But everything I’ve done so far has been toward growing, triumphing over fear, stretching the boundaries of possibility. Why stop when it’s just getting good?