You know that moment, when you are standing on the edge of a cliff, preparing to jump into the water below? You want to jump, but you also kind of don’t want to at the same time. You take a step towards the edge, but then falter and decide not to jump just yet. You take a step back, away from the open blue, back towards safety, and feel a swap of disappointment that you didn’t do it. So you prepare for the next try. And sometimes, when the jump is really scary, but your wish to do it equally strong, you get caught in an loop of dancing at the edge, almost to the point of no return, but you don’t actually cross it.
This is how I felt too. I knew that I want to make some changes in my life, and I’ve found a project that would allow me to do it. I also had an idea about the channels to use — Kickstarter. So I had all the things I needed to start, no excuses left. I just had to decide if I really wanted it or not. I knew that if I want to do it and succeed, I needed to commit fully. I couldn’t do it half-way just like you can’t stop the fall towards the water once you decide to jump.
So I was thinking about it for a while, and did some research of what it would entail. I was checking how high the jump is and how deep is the water below, if you want.
I’d been in touch with the startup ecosystem through my work and I knew success requires putting in the hours. And since I work as a physicist in the aviation company, and I have no intention of leaving my job, I would have to find the hours in the afternoons. And that would inevitably mean that I would have to take some time from my hobbies.
If you had mentioned that to me a year ago, when I was above 2000 m every weekend, I would have ditched the idea without a second thought. But because of the covid situation, we were confined to regions. I happen to live in Zasavje, the smallest Slovenian region, which sadly doesn’t have any mountains. We have hills, and plenty of them, and a ton of great crags for both sports climbing and drytooling, but definitely no mountains. And when you need half an hour from your home to any point at the region border (and you have to make an effort that it’s actually half an hour, not less), while driving to the mountains would take you an hour and a half or more, you are suddenly left with some time to spare. So the time commitment at that moment didn’t feel so bad.
I knew of course that time would come when the region borders would open, but I was pretty confident that I can squeeze both climbing and the board game project in my free time anyways. I accepted that the winter season with ice climbing and skiing was lost to me, so I intended to focus on the summer season instead, on rock climbing and on getting my form to a higher level, and I could do that in the local crags.
Another major factor was that I knew I had a team of close friends and family who would support me and help in in the various stages of the project. The most important of those people was my fiancée, a civil engineer by profession, who also likes board games. We’ve been together for almost 10 years, and we make a great team. We share a lot of hobbies, from mountain biking to climbing and alpinism, and we’ve gone through quite a few adventures that had strengthened our partnership. We know each other really well, and we also know how we perform under pressure, both as individuals and as a couple. So we had a few long conversations and we played out multiple scenarios. And we decided that this was something we wanted to do together.
We also knew that the project would require some financial investment. At the very least, we would need to hire an artist as nobody from our group is skilled in digital art. So we asked around to determine how much the project would cost and decided that we have the investment capital.
And through the process, I noticed a shift in my perception. I went from ‘it’s totally crazy that I would go to Kickstarter with thisgame that’s not even finished’ to ‘hey, we’re going to Kickstarter’. I think there were two sub-processes that helped me made that transition. The first was researching unknowns, and the second was talking about them. As you talk, you have to streamline the flow of thought into a single series of words. You need to define things and be precise and you start to realize what are the important parts and how you feel about them. And why you feel about them the way you do. You can word them and turn them around and look at them from a different perspective, and then re-shape them, and with each iteration you get an idea that is more defined and better focused.
It’s the same with writing, but I was not in the right state for that, as the pages don’t give you any feedback that is not of your own devise. And I needed that feedback. I needed to test my ideas against others who have more experience and different perspectives of life than me. And I know I am really lucky that all those amazing people listened to me, sometimes more than once, as I would take their feedback and come back with a new iteration of the idea, and wanted to test it too.
I also noticed that perception changes slowly and that in this case, the change started on the conscious level. I think that’s maybe a bit unusual as I can list many examples when I first felt something, and then became conscious of it and the reasons for it. I think it was due to all that thinking and conversation and the analytic approach that I took. So I reached a phase where the awake me was used to the whole idea. But then I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I was in that stage when your mind wonders around, distant and almost in a different world, still under the impression of dreams. I think that’s one of the rare times we get an insight into our subconsciousness.
And in that state, the thought of going to Kickstarter and creating a board game that we would share with the world felt preposterous and taking on a project felt like a huge and unwanted burden. It almost felt like my subconscious mind transported me back in time, before the shift started. And the feelings frightened me, but when I woke up in the morning, I was back at the same level I was the day before and the midnight thoughts were forgotten.
I know that one should never make important decisions in affect, but I have never experienced such a discrepancy in my conscious and subconscious. I must admit it was an interesting experience. My subconsciousness then finally caught-up and got used to the idea in a few weeks.
I decided to commit a few days before that happened though, when my conscious me knew that I wanted it and had all of the information, so the last few episodes were a bit scary. I was already tangled in something that felt against my instincts in the dark of the night. The way I dealt with it was that I made my mind think analytically just enough that it drifted away from that wondering state, and acknowledged that what I’m doing is okay, but not so much that I would get too awake and couldn’t go back to sleep.
So I decided. I jumped. I left the fear and second thoughts behind and I committed to the idea. It’s amazing how things crystalized once I did that and I gained confidence and drive, and became really excited about the project. The next steps became logical and I couldn’t wait to take them.
And what was the hit with the water like? I don’t know, I think I’m still flying.
Cheers to committing!
Nika
