Russell Phung

A fun little video I worked on. Who knew how much footage was needed for a short video like this, in addition to editing time haha but it was a lot of fun! I’m getting more used to recording myself and how filming/editing works and the associated workflows.

I started writing the script for this about a week or two ago because I was feeling quite low. The words are things I’ve learnt over the years and things that I need to constantly remind myself. It’s tough feeling like you’re constantly having a hard time and never feel like enough, and sometimes it feels like an all-consuming mental effort to try to keep it all together.

My standout favourite part is inspired by a comment I once saw in a reddit comment:

Let go of the fantasy that you can make things better if you try hard enough, work hard enough, say enough, do enough. Stop. Just stop. You’re enough. You always have been.

Words that I’ve needed to constantly remind myself and actually made me cry the first time I read them haha. Hopefully you can find solace in them too.

Regardless of how I felt, I chose to try and channel it into a little script and video that I thought may be able to help others going through something similar. I once read that one of the ways to find your niche in business is to solve your own problems and monetise the solution. So here’s me trying to weaponise my depression (haha). I’m joking obviously, since that is not a very healthy way to think about it, but if I’m to accept that it will just be part of my life, it would be remiss not to try to take advantage of it in some way – especially in a way that aims to help other people. My sole purpose at my previous jobs in IT/data analytics was to solve problems, so I’m going to channel that towards myself instead and see if I can help others along the way too.

My psychologist once told me to look up the statistics for depression and mental health conditions (shown below, courtesy of Beyond Blue). She said it would show me just how common this experience was and that so many other people are feeling the same way I am. To be honest, at first it just made me feel worse. That this many people felt the way I feel made me profoundly sad.

So I’ve turned it into motivation instead – knowing it’s not just me feeling this way, but so many other people in the world. And if anything I say or make even helps them just a tiny bit, I genuinely feel like my life will have been worth it. To be honest, this has become one of the biggest driving factors in my life above anything else.

I’d like to finish this off with a funny comic I drew. Hope you’re all having a better time than me because I really wish you weren’t able to relate to any of this, but otherwise, let’s navigate through this weird experience we call life together.

@depressed.butoptimistic

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to read the first of my penned thoughts on this website.

The purpose of this website will be to:

• Organise my goals and refine them
• Keep myself accountable by screaming my aspirations to the world
• Measure my progress by providing updates as I go
• Document my journey and hope that my progress can help others
• Seek that elusive life of doing what you love

I’ve written out my main areas of focus here, but really these are just my initial aspirations. Who knows how these will evolve or get replaced or removed as I continue on my journey.

In fact, if I am still 100% focused on all of these areas in five years, I’ll honestly be shocked – each of these could be an entire lifelong focus.

For the sake of tracking, I will list them out as of this date (2023-07-07):

• Comic Strip
• YouTube
• Worldbuilding Project
• Algorithmic Trading
• Generative AI
• Game Development

You know, listing out all the things that I want to work towards and like doing makes me think of a sandwich. Where all my interests and what makes me, well, me are all the pieces of filling that make up a Russell sandwich.

It really makes me wonder what other people’s sandwiches look like and what their fillings are. I think that’s part of how I try to find wonder and appreciation for others. Knowing that each and every single person in this world has a completely unique sandwich with different fillings. Every person has their own perspective on this world. What does your sandwich look like?

If we take this analogy a step further even, maybe crafting a good sandwich is the path to being more happy.

I’m sure a lot of people have a lot of wildly varying opinions on what might make up a good sandwich. Common pillars that are said to make up important pillars of life are:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships
• Happiness

Maybe if at least one of my fillings contributed to each of these, I’d feel more fulfilled? I guess this is starting be be very similar to popular concepts such as ikigai. But who knows! Guess we’ll just continue along with my newly crafted sandwich and see how it turns out and see what we learn along the way.

This isn’t even including any of the thousand things that I will be trying to focus on including my relationships, exercising, and hobbies like my newfound addiction to comic books.

Even just writing this all out, I’m already anticipating total and utter burnout trying to spread my time across all of this – not to mention taking into account the status of my mental health.

Regardless, I’m using this as a starting point in order to see which I enjoy the most and want to devote more time to in order to refine this list.

Please check out my video if you haven’t watched it, where I talk about why I quit my job and what my thoughts are on what’s next – complete with clickbait thumbnail!

What I’m looking to do next on this website is to make more posts/more detailed pages describing each of my existing pursuits in order to better explain and track them – but until that comes, it’s good bye for now!

May your lives be full of happiness and fulfillment.