Just like there’s a saying, “ You are what you eat” I believe that idea also transmits to we are what we consume, another famous saying. What I mean by that is referring to the news, information, and the people who we are surrounded with. Lately, I have been becoming a lot more conservative of my digital consumption and the information that I receive. In the past, I rarely filtered all of those and safe to say, I experienced a lot of information overload. I know too much and sometimes they are not that useful. This realization was prompted when I had a conversation with a mysterious eccentric guy from the UK who loves to travel around islands that are protected and only a few would have access to. The conversation started because my friend was wondering about his career. He was jobless in Thailand, learning English just by talking to strangers he met and wanted to find a better job, somewhere in an English speaking country. Somehow from that conversation, this unnamed guy mentioned the idea of mastering something more than juggling things.

It’s not verbatim but I remember he mentioned something that goes along this line, “ you can dedicate yourself to a field for 2-3 years and become really good at it or you can just juggle around all of your skills and become a nobody.

I heard this a lot of times in my life. But as a self-proclaimed pro jack of all trades, that still didn’t sit with me until I went back home and decided that I desperately needed to change my ways.

Who am I going to be? I thought that being a jack of all trades is great in conversation but it’s not that useful when I need to make a living.

I sort of have to choose and like everyone else in this world, you have to “legally” pick a title for tax purposes. Whatever that is, be it a housewife, freelancer, banker, unemployed, you gotta name the things you do especially if you’re still participating in the society.

When asked, Who are you? People often mention their occupation or this and that but me, I just don’t know what I would answer. I do this and that and sometimes a little too much. That being a freelancer doesn’t even fit me at all. I could be an entrepreneur, a copywriter, unemployed the next day, a content creator, a community manager, there’s just way too many things that I used to do and currently do in my life. But then, I decided that all my life, I have found something that I love, which is writing and technology. Those two are quite inseparable and it’s currently something I am trying to pursue. I love the idea of having creativity while also challenging my brain and feeling like I could push myself forward solving complex programming problems and challenging things. So, with that in mind, I decided to just drop whatever I was consuming and limit the information to what truly matters to my life.

Unlike in the past where I dived a little too much of everything, now most of the time the content I consume are either within my hobbies, advancing my learning or my personal life.

So, no more gossipy series or things like 90 days fiance or random beef from one youtuber to another, even some niche things like aesthetics problems and commentary. And through that, I notice the shift in the way I see things. My time is a lot more organized, as you can see I also religiously write movie reviews and a few posts/day. I became a lot more involved in things that I used to love doing and even more so, I feel like my brain thanked me for not putting useless information to it.

So what? I probably don't know different species of whales and that's okay; it’s not within my interest. I bet the same for people who don’t care about coffee, to them, it’s only a cup of joe that gets them through the day. But for people like me, who have interest in it, we can talk about it from dusk to dawn.

I feel like when I started diving into things and getting a lot more into it, the quality of things I do has improved quite a lot. I connect with people, I learn new things and also a lot more retention to it. In comparison when overwhelming my brain with different sets of information and totally unrelated, I feel like it’s quite an improvement to my life.