I was sitting at the computer yesterday, behind the register at work where I barely get any customers, so that is where I spend most of my time. Most days I do the little work I have to do then I can just sit there and survive the shift. I have held the job for three years because it is the easiest job in the world. I am still struggling with addiction though. My nervous system is shot from years of doing drugs to reach a normal baseline of dopamine. When you are dealing with that kind of weight, your emotional capacity is capped. It gets really hard to focus on anything but yourself.
But I forced myself to look at the bigger picture.
I spent my shift building a system. I sat and mapped out over 120 clips from 14 episodes of my podcast. I broke down my darkest confessions, my relapses, my acoustic jam sessions, and the moments I was literally crying on camera. I laid out four months of content to be scheduled and posted automatically. I did all that and right in the middle of doing it, I panicked.
I looked at my old YouTube channel. I looked at the K-Holla baggage attached to it. The pressure felt heavy. I subconsciously looked for a reason to stall. I used the old hyFen8ed vs. Kyle Holloway branding trick and I asked myself if I should just abandon the old channel, burn the bridge, and start completely over with a clean slate on my hyFen8ed NOW Network channel. My brain was looking for any excuse to self sabotage and avoid doing the actual work.
Then unlike I used to, I caught myself.
You do not burn the bridge down when you are standing in the middle of it.
Sometimes I get so caught up in just trying to stay alive that I forget my purpose in the first place. hyFen8ed is not an entertainment empire anymore. It is a functional bridge. I'm bullshit for other people to walk on. When the pressure gets heavy, the old instinct is to run or numb it. But my messy, unpolished reality is the exact thing that makes this bridge walkable for someone else.
If I delete my old videos I am destroying the path for the exact broken but trying people I am trying to reach. People do not connect with a clean slate. They connect with the truth.
I am not across to the other side yet. I am standing right in the middle of the bridge with the lights on. I am not the perfect picture of recovery who has it all figured out. I am an addict sharing what it actually looks like to heal in real time. Today I survived my shift, I faced my shadow, and kept going for anyone walking behind me.
If you are new here and want to know how I got to the middle of this bridge, catch up on the story at www.hyfen8ed.com/#story.
