Follow your Competence, not your Passion - Part 1 Quarter Life Crisis

Follow Your Competence, Not Your Passion - Part 1 - Quarter Life Crisis

You wouldn't believe it if I told you that 12 years ago I was back in Chiwaridzo, Bindura. A small mining town north of Harare, Zimbabwe. I was back to being a ghetto boy with little hope for a break. It felt like this was the end of the road.?

When I left South Africa earlier that year, it was me saying this didn't work. 3 years after I 'barely' got my mechanical engineering degree and 3 months after being laid off, I had given up on the dream. My passion was gone.

What had happened in the 3 years since graduation in 2008 was, with nothing but ambition, my degree and my passion to change the world, I had gone to look for a job in South Africa because I could not find employment as an engineer in Zimbabwe.?

I intended to get my Masters at Wits University, I enrolled but couldn’t pay for it, only finished one course, Management of Technology. Dropped out. Fortunately I got a job working for a small contractor and that kept me going for a bit.

Until it all fell apart in less than 2 years and I had to go back home. Now I was looking for work again.

After pressing send to a thousand CV emails and not receiving a single reply, except that one where you type the address wrong and it immediately replies saying “mail delivery failed”.? I had that sinking feeling that it would take more time than I imagined to get my next gig.

I had come back to my home country Zimbabwe with not a cent to show for it some months before. This was now 2011 and the buzz of the 2010 World Cup had faded.?

I remember looking? through the window of the Pioneer bus on the N1 going North past Sandton, Midrand, Centurion and Pretoria; I imagined the lost opportunities with every company logo and billboard I passed until I got to the border.?

Was I a failure in life?

Now my mum's chickens were my domain, engineer of chicken droppings and all that I surveyed in my mum's backyard.?

Late twenties, stumped out with no runs (struck out if you don't understand the cricket metaphor); I had enough time to reflect, pray, hope, unwind, cry and despair. All at the same time.

This was a transition point for me and made me think a lot about my choices and where I was going in my life. After the cushion of being at home and at school during the 24 to 25 years of formal education, I had been exposed to the real world in the past 3 years and it shook me.?

Life was tougher than I imagined. I didn’t know I was smack bang in the middle of a Quarter Life Crisis.

You might have never heard of the Quarter Life Crisis but you might be experiencing one now if you have the following ‘symptoms’ according to a LinkedIn article published 5 years ago:

Are you unsure of what to do next in your career or life?

Are you frustrated about your career options?

Are you not earning enough?

Is buying property out of your reach?

Are you stuck in a rut?

Do you feel you haven't travelled enough?

Are you under pressure to get married or have a baby?

Do you feel you haven’t achieved personal goals?

Are you not yet pursuing the career you want?

(Source, *1)

As you can imagine, I ticked every box in that questionnaire if there ever was one then and it filled me with more despair rather than the hope I had before. It is often in these times when you realise that the fire has faded.

Passion had left the building. Confusion and regret had moved in.

This transition point was a crossroads for me and I learnt a few lessons that you or someone you may know need to know are very common. Here is a list of 5 things I learned very fast that year I was broke, bust and disgusted:

1. Passion isn’t enough to make it in life (Learn about survivorship bias)
2. Hardship helps you focus
3. Keep believing, keep praying
4. Other people are often fighting their own battles
5. Network, network, network

I have 5 more coming in the next instalment.

You will no doubt want me to break these down if you are in a similar state to what I was going through at that time so here it goes.

1.Passion isn’t enough to make it in life (Learn about survivorship bias)

All the time growing up, every movie star, every celebrity, every athlete, every superstar gave basically the same advice; follow your passion, pursue your dreams and they will come true.?

This is the stuff great movies are made of, when that orchestra plays at the end with a rousing crescendo and the race is won or the team scores a last second goal or buzzer beater, inspiration rises within you and you feel you can conquer the world.

You want to believe it’s true. You want to experience it in your own life and go against the odds. It’s because we all fall for survivorship bias; this is defined as a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group.?

There are a lot more athletes that didn’t make it, a lot more actors that didn’t get the part and the majority of athletes that competed didn’t win the race. We get to hear the stories of the people on the podium who are interviewed, the underdogs that won the championship are an anomaly. Most underdogs lose.

So I figured it out at that point in my life that my passion for technology was not enough to get me a good job as an engineer and my dream of getting a masters degree was not acceptable as fees by the university.?

It also dawned on me then that I really didn’t know my passion until there was a tough time and things didn’t go according to script. When ‘it’ hit the fan, you know what ‘it’ is, some things I was passionate about quickly changed. Some of my old passions crumbled into dust a lot faster than a very dry leaf.

2. Hardship helps you focus

You drop a few things when tough times hit. You shed bad friends and can’t afford a lot of bad habits. You lose access, mobility and means to pay for a lot of things. You are left alone even while living with other people. You go back to basics, forced minimalism.

The time I lost my job I went into survival mode and there is nothing like rent that is overdue that will make you forget that you have an engineering degree and you take whatever comes. You do whatever it takes to make sure you. I didn’t have a family then but I was enough of a burden to myself.

Eventually this need to survive sent me back to Bindura, as I narrated at the start. At home I managed to zone out of the noise and the buzz of everyday work life, unwind from the things that triggered me everyday. The feeding of my mothers chickens and cleaning the chicken coops gave me perspective.

In seeing who I was and who I was defined by at that time I focused more on spiritual things that gave me meaning beyond salaries and income or social standing. I prayed and began to get a new revival to know that my worth was more than the job title or salary bracket I was in.

3. Keep believing, keep praying?

Transition is a lonely time. This is the biblical desert experience where you are alone with your head full of doubts and suggestions that you are worthless. For everyone else, life goes on and it hardly missed a bit that BT was now back in Chiwaridzo.?

This was a time I learnt more about myself and who I am and discovered a lot more about living life that is beyond a job. In the despair that I describe so grimly in the opening of this piece, somehow I never stopped believing.?

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I did now veer to the left or the right in my faith. I knew deep down that there was a lot more at play than my eyes could see. On the surface, trouble abounded. I was swimming in a sea of it. But I had an assurance that it would pass. That is faith.

I kept praying, often with tears and this didn’t get me much better in many of the days, but it kept me going. I read my bible and saw that many men and women suffered much worse for something worth more than what I was crying about and it opened me up to the realisation of how selfish I was in some of my dreams and passions.

4. Other people are often fighting their own battles

Not many people knew of my predicament, I did not shout it from the rooftops. People often have multiple problems of their own. Everyone was too busy with their own life and their own problems to have the extra burden of mine.

My whole life until then was a series of comparisons. It was always about keeping a mental note of where my classmates, both from high school and university, had ended up in life. Facebook didn’t help since the posts and the pictures were always there to remind me.

A pang of jealousy would naturally hit when you saw that one of your colleagues was now a manager or a head of something and the other. I was head of sweeping chicken doo doo. I had stopped posting my achievements on social media then in embarrassment still thinking I was the centre of the world. I wasn't.

Few missed my absence from social media, it is the curse of short attention spans and new content everyday. I found out the little reputation I thought I had was still intact and could keep it as long as I wished.?

I also found out who my true friends were and are to this day. They kept in touch, never judged, always prayed for me and encouraged me. One of these eventually linked me to my next job. Which leads me to my next point.

5. Network, network, network

I am not contradicting the last point I made. Yes, people have many battles they are fighting; but you do make an impact in how you relate to the people you are in touch with. Choose to make a genuine positive impact in other people’s lives.

That is my philosophy on networking; the desire to offer help and do good, especially when it is in my power to do so. It is a biblical principle that I, as a Christian, adhere to and see how it affects others.?

When you network in professional settings; your goal is not to always be at an advantage. People are not stupid and they see through fake people; they can smell a parasite from a mile off.?

I tried then, as I do now, not to take advantage of anyone I knew in a position of power. I only offered help in any way I could at certain points in their lives.?

I kept in touch with my old colleagues and friends, laughed and cried with them along the way. Certain people knew me only for certain technical capabilities, but I did what?

I did so honestly and wholeheartedly? that people remembered me when they needed a particular task done.

In the end it opened my doors when a friend called me about a job that was going to be advertised if a few days…. ?to be continued.

In the next instalment. I will take you further on my journey and outline the other lessons I learnt in detail.?

If you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, please share it with someone who might need encouragement. Link with me on twitter and LinkedIn and this is also available on my personal newsletter website, btontech.substack.com.