So yesterday I revisited some videos of an old Youtube favourite of mine, Elliott Morgan who was one of the original hosts for the Youtube news site, SourceFed, and is now doing stand-up comedy in and around the United States.
I used to watch SourceFed religiously. They were so informative, concise and funny and I felt like I didn’t get that kind of quality content anywhere else. It even came to a point where I tried to put together a local SourceFed for Malaysians, but of course I don’t have that kind of money, expertise or kerajinan to do something as big as that.
Anyway, I stopped watching SourceFed when Elliott suddenly decided to leave the team in 2014. It was sad to see him go, and as a person who had been watching from the start in 2012, I didn’t feel like I had the heart to watch the show that was one short of its original cast members. I suppose I was invested more in the people on the screen than in the show itself, which goes to show just how strong their characters were, at least to me it did.
While clicking away my time, I chanced across a video he made on his personal Youtube channel explaining in brief his decision to leave SourceFed. He said something to the effect of “SourceFed had become a comfort zone, and sometimes comfort zones can be good, but sometimes can be bad.”
One could understand why SourceFed was seen as a comfort zone by him. SourceFed had a big and loyal following, him writing for and hosting the show was one of the daily routines, he had a steady stream of income by doing what he did on the show, there was no way SourceFed could fire him because he was one of the best at doing what he did, and some other things I’m not privy to, I imagine.
And even though comfort zones are great to rest at for a while, it can also cause one to stagnate and stop growing. One stops getting challenged by what one does every day, and the challenge (if one could even call it that) becomes a challenge of how to not get bored, since it has come to a point where it has become SO easy for one to get bored at their job. You’re not taking up new challenges, mainly because of a lack of opportunities to seek out new challenges as well as the lack of motivation in yourself to seek out new adventures since being where you are and doing what you have always done has become so much of a sure thing that ruffling the feathers really doesn’t seem appealing at all to you.
And so an appealing option for one to take is to exit their comfort zone to seek out new challenges and to have that thrill of being unsure again and to force yourself to learn new things in order to adapt and survive and hopefully come out of the process becoming an improved version of yourself, a version of yourself you could never have come to if you had decided to stay in your comfort zone. And I guess that’s what Elliott did, and I respect him very much for that.
And I suppose, with myself, school has become very much a comfort zone. And it’s great in that it gives me something to do everyday that I know how to do well (although this does change, sometimes I feel I’m alright and sometimes I feel I’m the worst teacher in the school), and new things to do arise every now and again for me to learn stuff (mostly in relation to filing and documenting purposes, but hey), and I get to see kids that I love almost every day, and on top of all of that, I have financial stability in the form of a monthly wage.
But having said that, it’s still a comfort zone. And I am wary of its dangers. And I have this undying urge to grow — as long as I can help it — on my own terms.
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