Hello! and thank you for joining me and your future self on the journey to put in meaningful effort to create the life that inspires passion, well-being, and success. That's right, the goal of this blog is to become a jumping-off point for our community to encourage the awkward, stumbling progress forward into new-found mastery and expertise that will act as stairs to lead up the face of that mountain of your own private, biggest dreams. The "ME" work starts now; read on and at the end of this post, share how you are going to participate to begin shaping the community.

Altruism, the sacrifice of one’s own resources of time, energy, property to benefit others without expectation of reciprocity, is a theme that has likely been championed by some person or agency in all of our lives. And I am certainly not arguing against good works and charity to others that is often a product of altruism; I believe that we as a human society have a moral responsibility to one another. Psychologists acknowledge the ability to care about others as a criteria of mental health, along with being capable of content/happiness and participating in creative and productive work. It has even been found that an "overly-positive self-evaluations exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought" (Taylor & Brown, 1988). It would appear that we are hardwired to be "good" and do the "right" thing.

I bring up the concept to highlight a pervasive flaw in a blindly altruistic society—people “fall through the cracks”. Even with our best intentions of looking out for one another, altruism demands personal sacrifice and some people allow themselves to be fully depleted due to self-neglect when working to only help others. These calls to help others can and should be answered, but I argue that as a whole, our society has not invested the resources to ensure that the "doers" have the capacity to understand and complete the actions to which the benefactor is agreeable. We mean well, but either we cause ourselves or others undue difficulty unintentionally. I believe that society collectively acknowledging this risk could spur necessary conversation about how we can safely engage in the healthy pursuit of caring about others.

Image credit: Gunter Flegar. Along with religions, it has been common for governments to ask its citizens to give up time, energy, and even life for a national cause.

I am reminded of an airplane oxygen mask: “In case of emergency, secure your mask first before assisting others;” you’re not helping much if you’re unconscious. If society were to agree upon the importance of self-care via a modest level of self-interest, I believe we could see fewer tragedies perpetrated by people who have not addressed their own well-being. If we each make sure that, at minimum, we know that WE care about ourselves, how could people then feel like “no one cares”? We must be our most important support system so that we may move through our life decisions with confidence and conviction to pursue a life that belongs to only us. Once we see our own actions as the true determinant of our future, we are able to start making meaningful progress toward our dreams.

What is the one thing that you like to do most? For me it’s talking about myself writing! I have always enjoyed reading and frequently created my own stories and poetry in school but once I zeroed in on my “day job” area of interest and entered higher education, my writing transitioned from creative to exclusively academic. I completed my mandatory education for the career that I had chosen and began working in the field and had my first financially successful years. I was still paying back my student loans but I had money to spend on what I wanted but then I realized, I had stopped pursuing the activities that made me happy to pursue the things that made me “successful” in general societies terms: money, flashy things, a family. And while I believe consumption of goods, personal wealth and the choice to create a family are all worthwhile endeavors or in some degrees necessary for their own personal reasons, when confronted with the question of what I wanted living to mean to me, none of these pursuits came to mind. Instead, I found only a desire for the satisfaction in making decisions that make me happy, so I may, in turn, share that with others daily.

By embracing my own personal value, I have realized my goal for my own existence in pursuing the activities that make me feel satisfaction and purpose without impacting other’s pursuit of the same goal. I have been wanting to share my experiences and how my life has changed for the better with others, with the hope that it will be helpful when considering how to approach the short amount of time that we have alive in this small part of the universe. When looking at life in this manner, time becomes the most precious commodity and true productivity becomes the process with which to best take advantage of our time.

Get lost! Using hiking to allow myself to be lost in nature's wilderness has undeniable benefits for my mental clarity and mood and the cardiovascular exercise helps me to pursue a healthy weight along with strong lungs and heart.

When I had my “A-ha!” decision to live for myself first, the tendencies of past-me to feel overwhelmed which often lead me to be frozen in indecision. It was only once I looked beyond past- and current-me, to future-me, that I understood that I could not remain unchanged and still achieve my goals. So in that moment, I picked my one thing, “I’m going to write creatively again” and dedicated myself to that plan by taking one small step of brainstorming a project idea, which ultimately lead me to the creation of ThisIsMeWork.

Cross it off the list! Not all productivity is created equal; balance is necessary for managing responsibilities first to allow for freedom to pursue hobbies.

ThisIsMeWork will be a productivity blog that will seek to allow me a way to be productive in my goal of finding the experiences and passions of this life that I want to celebrate and devote my time and energy to develop combined with one of my well-established loves—writing. I plan to use the blog to create an incentivizing cycle of being productive to create content. Steemit will be the sole platform that I will be releasing the content at this time, with potential expansion for cross-promotion of my work as well as the Steemit community to be addressed at a later time.

ThisIsMeWork will employ a semi-anonymous format to allow for my readers to put themselves into the “Me” position. I think this departure from the traditional blog set-up, of the blogger being the environment within which the topic is discussed, allows the productivity and self-development potential be the feature of each piece. I say semi-anonymous as I think that some context will go far in speaking to specific examples of how I am utilizing a skill in my life, but was being sincere when I said that I like to talk about myself, so you notice me slipping away from the format, just give me a shout!

I have hopes that this blog will organically begin to be shaped by the community that follows the posts through personal input as to what topics are examined and pursued by ThisIsMeWork. As the community is growing, I will provide more direct observation of productivity with my own personal interests. Planned potential content includes:

 -personal philosophies and moralities--goal writing, critical reasoning

 -entrepreneurial endeavors—inventing products, freelancing, business planning

 -health—mental and physical, ways of eating with recipes, mindfulness, sexuality

 -hobby exploration--playing an instrument, fitness/sports, photography

 -Managing finances—crypto, IRAs, credit-building

 -Modern survival skills—simple tailoring, cleaning, coding

By this point, hopefully, you are wondering how to join the journey that is ThisIsMeWork…and I don’t have the answer for you. But I guarantee you do. What is your one item that you will select to start taking better care of future-you? Is there an activity, learned concept, skill that you have found to help you feel satisfied and has purpose within your personal goals? I hope that people with experience in the topic areas that I discuss will provide feedback for the way the subject was addressed, in particular if there is a more accurate, safe, productive or efficient way of approaching it.

I want to spur discussion between people of varying levels of familiarity with topics so that if you are also interested in progressing yourself in a similar manner, you may inspire and be inspired by the conversation with the community about the experiences. Also, let me know if there is a topic/activity that you are interested in seeing integrated into this blog, along with any questions and I will do my best to address any edits at the beginning of each new post to help keep important conversations moving forward.

Thanks for your valuable time in reading my introduction and I hope to see you back for more productive self-development soon!! Follow to ensure you don't miss a single post!

(Y)ours,

ThisIsMeWork

References:

Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103(2), 193-210.