#1
If you don't know what you like
If you haven't turned thirty yet, or you're right around thirty, or you've just passed it by a year or two
#2
What do I like?
Am I really doing well at the work I'm doing now?
Should I be changing my career path?
By the time I get married or start a family, I'll be stuck where I am with no way to move
What exactly am I doing right now?
#3
Something everyone carries
But forgets in the busyness of daily life, or pretends to forget
The more you look back, the harder and more suffocating it gets,
Like a past love that suddenly comes back to you, making your chest unbearably tight and heavy
Making you feel like you should run back, but you don't know how, or even if you go, there won't be answers...
#4
While doing something,
whenever you pause for a moment, this thought grabs hold of you.
'What am I doing here right now? ... '
Whether it's love or work or daily life or hobbies or career or dreams ...
#
Half-close your eyes
Breathe in
Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth.
Hold the air in your lower belly for a moment
Then gently press your belly and slowly release it through your mouth..
In short, it's abdominal breathing.
Repeat four or five, maybe six or seven times.
Try it, and you'll understand why without even realizing it.
##
The reason people live-
Even without
such a grand purpose for survival
Going through daily life requires various forms of achievement.
No, they help.
1. The method of cursing the country, cursing the economy, cursing the company boss, or cursing your seniors and juniors.
2. Choose a good country, choose good parents, move to a neighborhood where good people live,
graduate from a good school, get a job at a good company, meet a good husband or wife,
have good children, die well, and be buried in a good place.
3. Set small achievable goals
and create small motivations for modest changes in daily life
What you must not forget is to leave traces,
those traces should be in a form you can look back on, and even better if they can be shared with others.
_ Examples of small daily motivations: checking what time you wake up, writing a diary,
going to a gallery every week, watching early-bird discount movies every week, reading books, drawing one picture a month, writing poetry
_ If you want to go further: adjusting the work you're doing, thinking beyond the scope of your work,
writing your own business plan related to your current work, persuading your company to adopt that business plan, and so on.
# -1
I mostly choose options 1 and 3.
# - For example a)
For whatever reason... I was a fashion design student.
But I was short, not good-looking, not particularly stylish, and my family had no money.
And I was definitely not gay.
Yet I desperately wanted to be a designer.
First, I went to Seoul every weekend to join fashion-related communities and became an executive member.
During every school break I worked in Dongdaemun, after graduation I worked in fabrics,
then I opened a small cafe in Daechi-dong where I designed, produced, and sold custom-made clothes under my own brand.
# - For example b)
My dream, for whatever reason, was to own my brand and open a store.
And to make it a global brand.
This brand wouldn't simply sell products or technology.
Nor would it sell trends or propose lifestyles.
Instead, this brand would
present various ways for people to build their own lifestyles,
and help them cherish the small things in daily life and find ways to live together
- and it would do all this very globally...
At 24,
I wanted to provide a cafe-style store concept and service to sell new designers' clothes at fair prices.
That's when I created the name normalstory.
At 26,
I thought the easiest place for ordinary people to consume what's called "lifestyle" in daily life was a cafe.
Because there you could learn about fashion, hair, makeup, real estate, business, IT, marketing, characters, culture, and more
all in the shortest amount of time.
Moreover, if the consumer was a high school student,
you'd be meeting the consumers who would form the main target demographic in 10 years,
and if the consumer was middle-aged,
you'd be able to grasp the most actively consumed trends of the present.
At 27, whatever the reason,
having randomly chosen coffee, I spent 6 months just doing dishes and cleaning bathrooms at a cafe before barely learning to make coffee,
and worked for free at a woodshop for 3 months to save on interior costs.
Then I walked all around Gangnam visiting each real estate office to finish market research,
and at the tail end of that summer, I opened a small cafe in a small commercial space behind Eunma Apartments in Daechi-dong.
To prove that marketing and cultural business could be done without money, I didn't put up a sign
and instead started recruiting crew members through a blog. Together with them, I built an ecosystem in and around the cafe,
creating space for indie bands and artists, and planning programs that ordinary students could participate in.
Not projects that I controlled or pulled along,
but projects they could create and own, even if there were failures, stumbles, or conflicts along the way.
And now, at thirty (29 in international age!!!)
Now, to build collective intelligence rather than going it alone,
I've temporarily set aside normalstory and entered a small research lab to sharpen my skills.
Constantly enjoying.
Constantly feeling.
Continuously motivating myself so that my senses, passion, and dreams have nothing to be ashamed of.
