You’ve felt it. That weightless moment when the room is full, your phone is bright, and yet your chest is an empty cavern. I call that cavern the Dragon of Emptiness. It is a scaly beast that feeds on wasted hours, half‑hearted hobbies, and the nagging suspicion that life should feel richer than this. If you are here on Face Dragons, you are already brave enough to lift your eyes and look that monster in the face. It’s time to find purpose.
The weapons you need are not forged in a blacksmith’s furnace but in deliberate choices. After two decades of chasing disciplines across three continents like sparring in a Beijing gym where sweat froze in mid‑air, launching coding projects in Thai night markets, and standing on stage doing stand-up in Mandarin, I have boiled the antidote to meaninglessness down to three master arts:
- Get a Lifestyle – shape the arena in which your daily battles are fought.
- Get a Passion – hone the weapon you will master until it becomes an extension of your will.
- Get Perspective – polish the helm that lets you see the battlefield with clear sight.
Walk these three roads and your emptiness melts into momentum. This page is your map. Skim it like a scout, revisit it like a monk copying scripture, and follow the in‑text portals to deeper scrolls all over Face Dragons.
Get a Lifestyle: Forge the Arena
Lifestyle design, everyone dreams about a lifestyle they want, but few craft it. A lifestyle is not a prison of labels; it is a well‑lit dojo whose walls tell the story you have chosen. When friends hear that I once lived out of a carry‑on for eighteen months, they picture restriction. They miss the liberty of finishing a sunrise Muay Thai class in Phuket, showering, and writing 2,000 words for a client before the rest of the street even smelled coffee.
Why a Defined Lifestyle Destroys Emptiness
- Framework beats fog. When people know you are the musician or the scholar or the barefoot coder who finishes calls before surfing, they stop offering distractions that do not fit your mythos.
- Micro‑decisions vanish. Your clothes, workouts, and reading list align with the narrative. Decision fatigue – the Dragon’s favored poison – cannot take root.
- Find purpose through environment. Purpose blooms faster in soil whose pH you control.
Read more on building your arena in the post Get a Lifestyle. Pair it with Change Your Life Freelancing if income location freedom calls you, or What Is a Slomad if slow travel stirs your blood.
The Battle Plan – 5 Steps to Lifestyle Design
- Name the dragon you would slay. Is it cubicle claustrophobia, social expectation, or physical inertia?
- Draft a legend. One page, present tense, go! “I rise at dawn on a balcony overlooking…”
- Audit current terrain. Use How to Organize Your Life to clear cluttered battlements.
- Change a keystone habit this week. Perhaps adopt the Benefits of Waking Up Early.
- Commit publicly. Post your legend or at least tell a friend. The arena becomes real when onlookers gather.
No list can substitute daily repetition. Yet the arena you build will start giving meaning back on day one – just ask the reader who emailed last month to say he quoted his own new legend in a resignation letter and landed two remote offers in forty‑eight hours.
Get a Passion: Sharpen the Weapon
The internet loves quick tips. Passions scoff at quick. A passion is a forge that burns years. I spent 3,000 hours chasing Mandarin’s four tones before they granted me the fluency that unlocked friendships from Harbin to Shenzhen (and marriage in Tianjin.) Those conversations reshaped my worldview more than any TED talk could have.
- Opportunities – My obsession with language brought me clients and work, speaking gigs, and the in‑law who first handed me a Jian sword.
- Community – From Tai Chi circles in Bei Hai to GitHub contributors who refactored my passion projects.
- Economic armor – Expertise sells. See Perfect Your Craft.
Dig Deep, Not Wide
Scrolling tastes breed shallow trenches. A warrior digs one well until water gushes. Dive into the Hobbies for Men series or niche spinoffs like Hobbies for Men in Their 30s to sample skills that might ignite sparks, then commit.
The 4‑Stage Passion Process
- Spark – Curiosity flickers. Guard it from ridicule and over‑research.
- Structure – Buy the best starter gear you can afford, even if minimalist. Proper tools whisper practice.
- Schedule – Block non‑negotiable slots in your calendar. Use GTD tactics from How to Do a GTD Weekly Review to protect them.
- Showcase – Publish, perform, or compete. Feedback tempers steel.
I once coached a reader who felt lost after dropping out of college. He tested photography, coding, and karate. Karate stuck. Two years later he sent a broken plank in the mail – literal proof that his strike and his identity had both solidified.
Get Perspective: Polish the Helm
Perspective turns motion into navigation. Psychologists would call it metacognition; samurai called it zanshin – remaining mind. The Dragon of Emptiness despises self‑understanding because once you spot its tracks, ambush is impossible.
Start with personality mapping. Face Dragons houses entire bestiaries of archetypes: Male Personality Types or the perennial debate Omnivert vs Ambivert. Not because a label confines you, but because knowing your blade’s balance lets you swing smarter.
Three Helm Forging Techniques
- Journaling for pattern sight – Follow the blueprint in How to Journal Daily. A month of entries can spotlight thought loops that sabotage meaning.
- Knowledge Management – A second brain system such as the Zettelkasten Method turns scattered insights into a tactical library.
- Perspective Pilgrimages – Travel is optional; curiosity is not. Reflect on why a street vendor’s hustling ethic or a monk’s stillness triggers you. Consume moments like scrolls.
For deeper excavation, read Find Yourself and use its exercises to confront identity myths that feed emptiness.
Slay the Dragon of Emptiness: Your Battle Strategy
Emptiness looms when arena, weapon, and helm lie in dusty corners of the armory. Together, they form a tri‑force.
- A designed lifestyle without passion is a lavish gym with no workout plan.
- A passion without lifestyle alignment starves for time and money.
- Insight without action is clear vision on a motionless knight.
When the trio syncs, find purpose stops being a phrase and starts being a smell – the scent of iron on the wind before battle.
The Daily Triskelion Routine
After Waking – Arena Check
Review your lifestyle legend for sixty seconds to remember why today matters.
Morning – Weapon Work
Spend at least an hour on your passion project before doing anything else
Evening – Helm Polish
Use Midnight Monk Mode to leapfrog everyone
Repeat. Momentum compounds.
Stories from the Road
- Everest Base Camp 2015: It was the first time I had hiked, trekked or climbed anywhere. I came home and all the skin on my hands and feet fell off, but I had the most amazing images and a travel journal I still read for inspiration today.
- Dharamshala 2019: My last trip before the pandemic hit. I stayed in a Tibetan language school at the end of the Himalayas and spent my time with Tibetan refugees. Every direction was a view. I asked a farmer their why they stayed on such difficult land, she said “because meaning grows slowly and dies fast.”
- The Crumpet Man: During the pandemic, I turned a passion into a business that soothed the mental health of expats in China. I made crumpets in my kitchen and sent them out to hundreds of people living in almost every province in China.
Your road will differ, but Dragons stalk every map. Facing them is universal.
Frequently Asked Battle Cries
Is lifestyle design only for digital nomads or minimalists? No. A stay‑at‑home dad who schedules kettlebell sessions and language lessons between school runs practices lifestyle design as surely as a globe‑trotting coder does.
What if I cannot find a single passion? Then your passion is experimentation. Cycle one‑month sprints testing crafts from the Hobbies for Nerds list until a spark endures past 30 days.
Is personality typing reliable? Every map distorts the territory. Use types as signposts, not prisons.
Your Next Move
- Read one linked article that calls to you. Bookmark others for tomorrow.
- Write one paragraph of your lifestyle legend.
- Schedule one hour this week for passion practice. Put it on the calendar now.
Report back. Find Face Dragons on X. This citadel is guarded by seekers like you, not trolls or adverts.
Because when the Dragon of Emptiness rears its hollow head again – and it will – you will not be alone in the dark. You will hold a forged sword, stand in a chosen arena, and see with eyes that death and doubts cannot dim.
Welcome to the quest. Let us face emptiness together and roar back with purpose.