Be Your Own Universe.

I’m about halfway through a Christmas vacation filled with sleeping the entire morning, waking up at about noon, then marching down to the kitchen to prepare myself a nutritious “breakfast” of baked french fries & mini corn dogs.

And I’m sure the image being projected into your head as you read this is of a sloppy, sleepy greedy bastard inhaling snacks at an incredibly fast clip. But the truth of the matter is I am totally okay with it because I know I absolutely 100% deserve this extended period of irresponsible fat-assery.

During the other 51 weeks of the year, I am busting my tailto go above & beyond and prove my worth at my day job as I have done for the past ten years I have been there. Every single day, I show up wanting to be better, faster, and more knowledgeable than I was the day before. I do this partly because the more confident I am at doing my job, the less likely I am to find a city bus to step in front of when things get stressful and pressurized.

I also do this because I believe in maintaining my personal brand of vocational awesomeness and that the reputation for being someone that is exceptional at his job will pay off. I believe that the hours I spend “off the clock” will show the powers that be that I am a valuable coworker who is dedicated and willing to sacrifice and in turn, this sacrifice will be recognized.

In many ways it has.

But something I read from a former co-worker earlier today had me re-evaluating my thoughts on brand maintenance when it comes to the workplace.

Like myself, she put in long hours and went above & beyond — even to the point of sacrificing her precious family time because she believed it would be appreciated and reciprocated. Because hard work pays off, right?

In her case, no. She was ultimately laid off.

But I don’t think there was any malicious intent involved. It was no doubt a business decision by the company: a decision meant to assure the company's preservation as a whole. But it has to be quite a wake-up call to know that the very place you sacrificed so much for — sacrifices you in the end.

And so immediately I thought about reconsidering my present policy of going hard at the gig in the hopes of someone giving the slightest of damns about it. As much as I kinda roll my eyes at New Year’s resolutions, I cozied up to the idea of a renewed focus in 2022 to center myself in my personally created universe of work, life, and everything else.

Fast forward to later in this same day to a different friend’s social media post.

This particular friend talked about how her family was shocked by the number of people who refused to wear masks in public places. To which I replied via comment that we live in the most self-centered country in the world — where people do things simply because they can.

Even as I wrote that brilliant take, I chuckled to myself at the irony. Literally, just a few paragraphs ago, my smart ass was talking all that “centering self” stuff — and now here I am taking a cheap dig at people doing just that: centering themselves.

But this is different.

Not to pick on masks, because I know COVID is a hot topic that is divisive, but the choice to wear a mask out of consideration for everyone’s health and safety doesn’t mean you are de-centering yourself or that you are compromising the delicate balance of empathy and your self-interests. Crazy as it may seem, it is possible to be cognizant of how your actions affect other people and things. It is also possible to be mindful of how other people and things affect you.

And that’s when it becomes clear: we are our own universe.

In the daily grind of simply existing, we spend a shit ton of energy trying to find a place to exist in everyone else’s realm of influence. When in reality, we have our own universe to oversee and manage.

Without sounding blasphemous, we are the God of ourselves and our reality. We control how much influence one thing has over another in our lives. And in my own personal universe, my career is an important celestial object with influence — but it is not the center. With that said, I acknowledge the existence of the people closest to me and I am empathetic to society as a whole within my universe. They have an influence too. But they are not the center either.

When you center yourself, you are saying everything revolves around you. And when you de-center yourself, you are saying something else has power over your mere existence. But by being your own infinite expanse of creation, you give yourself a different kind of power over the things in your lives.

Though you may believe in a power higher than you in the grand scheme of things, here on Earth in this life, you are the creator of your very own universe. And once you have a true grasp of that control and understanding, your actions are no longer taken as sacrifices or empathies, but as self-imposed laws of your personal nature.