Just yesterday I truly understood the words, "Squandering", or "Untapped potential" means in the context of my own life. If I am completely honest with myself knew deep down that I can do a lot more, a lot better. Yet to understand why it matters, you have to feel the same way about someone else. A small story to explain this, Yesterday around 0430 in the morning my younger cat went missing, it took me about twelve hours to realize that fact. At around 1800, I was sitting outside and hoping she would be brave and move, because I know she is capable of it. She gets easily scared. The more she moves, the higher the chances are of her being close to a device on the Apple network (she's wearing an air tag) and higher the chances are she'll be found. At that moment I realized how God must feel like when he looks at my life. He'd be sad, at the thought that he put me on this planet with all this potential and I'm living a shell of a life. At that moment, I decided to change that fact. I've still got time, or at least the rest of my time I'm going to dedicate to changing that fact. If at the very least to be able be proud and answer myself everyday, "Yes I did my best today".
An update on the cat, last night around midnight she did manage to get close enough to an Apple device and I'm a lot more relieved as I know the area she is in and that narrows down my search. I've let the people living there know and I'm feeling a lot more positive about finding her. She ran away to that place once before last year, so it does make me feel a lot less stressed.
Hard work is the goal
Everything I want in life, everything I could possibly want and beyond is achieved as a side effect to hard work. So I'm making it my goal. Every day to be a little bit better. Most importantly stop listening to the opinions of others, especially on the Internet. Except from the ones who are where I want to be, tell me about what they did to get there, not what they do now.
Somehow when I lost the cat yesterday, I understood what truly matters in life. Then I asked myself why am I getting in my own way to avoid fears that don't matter to achieve things that don't matter that much either. Sure I still want to be wealthy and the best programmer I can be. But there is no need for the fears and the shame. The things that really matter can't be bought with money.