Irrational Intuition
Issue #33 · Thoughts on the super scientific approach of trusting your gut.
Hi there, I’m Emily! 🙋🏼♀️ For those who are new, here’s a quick catch-up:
Five years ago, I packed my life into a suitcase and hit the road, moving to a new city every few months. Now, I write stories about the quirks, chaos and realities of living abroad, intertwined with my attempt to design a happy, meaningful life.
If you enjoy this post, stick around — something big is coming later in 2025!
Irrational Intuition
June 10, 2024: I’d like to think of myself as a pretty level-headed person: I’m open-minded, a great problem solver, pretty resourceful and a clear communicator. Yet despite these rather sane characteristics, I also live out of a suitcase, don’t have a clear cut [10-, 5-, or even 1-year] life plan, and I just spent a week in the rural Guatemalan jungle — so I can imagine that there are a few people out there who might think otherwise.
The contradiction between my seemingly logical brain yet unorthodox lifestyle is something I reflect upon often. Rather than a devil tempting me to ignore the righteous wishes of his angelic counterpart, instead, perched on my shoulders is an imaginative spirit that dreams wildly, alongside a regulating voice of reason always reeling her back in.
🌟 My passion for solopreneurship is unstoppable, my next idea will be the one!
🚨 You have bills to pay, let’s try to find a real job that you can tolerate for once.
🌟 My soul yearns to travel to every untouched nook of this awe-inspiring world!
🚨 Pick the one city you like best and settle the f*ck down, Em.
On paper, I’d agree it’s pretty remarkable that I haven’t had a recurring paycheck from a traditional job in over six years, yet I’ve managed to travel and live in over thirty different countries. My secret has mostly been the highly scientific strategy of just winging it — new freelance projects always seem to fall in my lap at the right time, I’ve worked my ass off networking and I’m constantly teaching myself new marketable skills. “Hey, do you know how to edit videos in Adobe Premiere?” — I do now! Told you I was resourceful.
Now, it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, nor five-star resorts and first class1 plane tickets. Whenever I feel the pinch of my freelance budget or have the realization that this 400th attempt at a side project isn’t going to work out either, I reluctantly resort back to browsing salaried job listings on LinkedIn (of course, only those highly-coveted remote roles). Yet each time without fail, a formidable and unignorable voice appears, ominously warning me that this is not the path that I am meant to follow. Sure, it might provide a temporary band-aid to my bank account or a more concrete reply to the awfully boring question of “so what do you do?” But in the long-run, I know that retreating back to the corporate world would be a massive step in the completely wrong direction. Instead, I return to my repertoire of passion projects with a renewed sense of motivation and without ever submitting a single job application.
The optimistic folks out there might call this manifestation. Others might call it (at best) stubbornness or (at worst) a classic case of “these lazy millennials have no work ethic!” Some would probably even call it straight-up delusion. But if you ask me? I like to call it irrational intuition — it’s when our deeply entrenched instincts subconsciously urge us to pursue a path that defies logic, but which holds the potential for a more personally fulfilling outcome. Basically, it’s the feeling of “I know this doesn’t make sense on paper, but I feel involuntarily compelled to do it anyway.”
Because when you feel from within the depths of your soul so undeniably called to pursue something, isn’t it worth carving out some time to give it a shot, rational or not? I’ve had countless absurd ideas for side projects and small businesses: Some linger a few days, others have held on for a few years, many evaporate within minutes. I always reinvest any small profit into future ideas, and I’ve yet to create anything even significantly successful from a financial standpoint. I struggle to explain what I do for a living, and I have a graveyard of abandoned project folders eating up a hefty chunk of my Dropbox annual plan’s real estate.
But successful or not, these side projects have become my greatest professional passion, in a way that sprinting on an endless 9 to 5 treadmill never could. In fact, this Substack is just my latest example of irrational intuition: Why dedicate hours of my life to something when there’s no direct or immediate benefit? How can I claim this to be a part of my career? Yes, writing can be cathartic and daily journaling certainly has its mental health benefits. But nobody has hired me to put these words down on paper, and still I spend hours vulnerably pouring my heart out, allowing my most private thoughts to enter the notoriously hostile internet battlefield. What’s even the point?
Because I feel unconditionally compelled to do it. Because I genuinely enjoy it. Because I think I’m pretty good at it. And because I know that when you combine all of those elements, plus add in enough consistency, effort, blind confidence and irrational intuition, it means that eventually one day, one of these absurd projects is bound to lead to something great. So feel free to remain skeptical, or even continue to call me delusional if you’d like. But by constantly living on the precipice of uncertainty over the past few years, I’ve learned to lean into my instincts — and right now, they’re telling me that sitting in a fluorescently-lit office cubicle is not where I’m meant to be.
Recommended related posts:
Writing is a Game — The backstory of why I’ve transitioned to putting a greater focus on writing.
Ten Years of Making Money on the Internet — Making the leap into the unknown of solopreneurship and side hustles.
Cue one of my favorite posts ever, from almost exactly one year ago: Schlepping It
One thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is finding the space between the two poles - my job is super stable and reliable, but I'm not sitting in a fluorescent cubicle. I'm not writing the next Great American Novel or teaching yoga beside a beach at sunset, but I am really intellectually stimulated by my work and have a blast with my coworkers. I technically work an endless 9 to 5, but also my boss lets me flex my hours and work from weird corners of the world (thanks, Tom!).
Have you seen the Ikigai diagram? (I only just learned this is what it's called). I think of my job as a good balance of the different poles. If I skew too far towards what I love (reading for 8 hours a day, if I could get paid for that), then I veer away from what I can get paid for. Maybe the things I'm absolute best at isn't necessarily what the world needs. But since I have a healthy dose of all four quadrants (love, compensation, talent, and need), I can find something that does make me happy every day (I genuinely like answering "what do you do?") and gives me life stability without feeling like I'm yoyo-ing between competing interests.
I think about this stuff alllll theeeeee timeeeeee in every sphere of my life - compromising some things to gain other things, but not swinging the dial 100% one way or the other. Having a more steady base in 2025 (going to sign a lease!!) but not ending nomading. Showing up for my family but not moving back home. Stopping drinking for a month but not quitting alcohol together. Etc, etc. My brain really likes to swing to the extremes and I have to coax it back into the middle sometimes!
I too have spent so many moments browsing those pages on Linkedin when work is slow! And the minute a new client appears I don't consider it for a second - a clear sign it's not the right thing long term.