Somewhere in the last two years I stopped asking myself what I wanted. I had a pretty clear picture of what I was supposed to want, and I went and got it. Videos that did numbers. All the girls. A high-rise in Miami. A schedule built around whatever performed last month. From the outside it looked like a guy who had it figured out.
Then a few months ago I sat down and tried to answer one question. Not what gets views. Not what a 24-year-old is supposed to be doing. Just: what do I actually want? And I couldn't answer it. I had no idea. I'd been running on somebody else's answer for so long I couldn't find mine.
There's a name for this. It's a quarter-life crisis, and it has stages. First you're locked in, following a script into a life you didn't really pick. Then life looks good on paper, but something's missing and you can't name it. That's where most guys get stuck, and here's how. That empty feeling shows up and they try to kill it. Grind harder. Buy something. Get a new girl. Go back to whatever used to work. I did all of that. None of it worked, because the feeling isn't telling you to do more. It's telling you you're living a life you didn't pick, and you can't outwork that. The only thing that actually works is the thing nobody wants to do. Step away from the life that's making you feel it. Don't run back to it the second it gets uncomfortable. Don't jump into a new plan just to feel like you have one. Give yourself real time with no answer, and keep asking what you actually want until an answer shows up that's yours.
That's the real reason I'm leaving. Next week I get on a plane to Lisbon. One backpack, six months, no fixed route. And one question I'm taking with me: what do I actually want? In every country I'm asking myself a different piece of it. What drains me. What gives me energy. Who I am when nobody's filming.
I'm telling you this because I think a lot of you are in the same spot and don't know it yet. You picked a lane at 19 because it's what you're supposed to do. You're chasing a girl, a body, a career, a number in your bank account, and if I asked you why, the honest answer is "because that's what you're supposed to want." That feeling that something's off isn't a malfunction. It's your inner self telling you to wake the fuck up. The problem isn't that you don't have the answer. It's that you stopped asking the question.
Most people get this backwards. They spend their twenties and thirties getting secure so they can go figure themselves out later. By then there's a mortgage, a partner, kids, a career, a whole life that can't be paused. And every one of those commitments got built around a life they were never sure they wanted. They just thought they were supposed to want it. Now they're locked into it. Young and uncommitted is the only time the question is cheap to ask. So I'm asking it now.
I'm filming it. A series called "What Do I Actually Want?" The idea is an episode for each place I go, but I'm not promising a schedule. It's not advice. It's me figuring it out in public, and I'm going to be honest about the parts that don't go well.
— Noah Danenhower
P.S. What's one thing in your life you do because you're supposed to, not because you want to? Reply with it. One line. I read every one of these.