Involution Labs

Tag: personal-growth

  • Choosing to Live for Yourself

    At some point in life, many people confront a difficult question: why am I living the life I’m living?

    For some, the answer is simple. For others, the answer is less clear. Life can become a series of expectations — from family, society, culture, or circumstance. We follow paths that others believe are right for us: school, career, marriage, stability. Often these paths work well. But sometimes they leave people feeling that their life no longer belongs to them.

    When people feel powerless or trapped in roles that do not reflect who they are, despair can follow. Sociologists have long argued that weak social ties, isolation, and lack of belonging can deepen this sense of disconnection. When a person feels they have no control over their life, they may begin to question its meaning.

    Yet this crisis can also become a turning point.

    Confronting the limits of one’s life can force a deeper question: What do I actually want? The moment someone realises that they have the right to live differently can be the first step toward reclaiming their life.

    Living authentically does not mean rejecting others or abandoning responsibility. It means recognising that a meaningful life cannot be built entirely on the expectations of others. At some point, people must decide that their life is their own.

    Not everyone will follow the same path. Parenting is not for everyone. University is not for everyone. A traditional career is not for everyone. Some people find meaning through relationships and family; others find it through creativity, independence, or solitude.

    What matters is not the specific path but the freedom to choose it.

    Learning to listen to oneself,  to understand one’s own values, limits, and desires, is an important step toward living authentically. When people begin to see themselves as worthy of care and respect, they may find new reasons to live differently and more fully.

    Life does not always unfold according to the scripts society provides. But that does not make it meaningless. Sometimes meaning appears only when we take responsibility for our own lives and begin to shape them consciously.

    Choosing to live for yourself is not selfish.

    It is the beginning of an authentic life.

  • CURRICULUM VITAE — FAILURES EDITION

    Because the highlight reel doesn’t tell the whole story.

    Name: Tina Brescanu
    Objective: To keep showing up, learning and creating.

    Experience

    Job Seeker (since redundancy)
    • Applied for hundreds of jobs; secured a handful of interviews.
    • No offers yet — but learned the art of resilience and rewriting cover letters in my sleep.

    A Stint in the Corporate World
    • Failed to fit in, didn’t understand the jargon, and couldn’t appreciate the infantilisation of adults in the workplace.
    • Allergic to KPIs, buzzwords, performance reviews, “circle back,” “touch base,” and other corporate rituals.
    • Learned that pretend urgency and scheduled enthusiasm are not my natural habitat.
    • In hindsight, redundancy wasn’t failure — it was freedom.

    Author — 20+ Books (ongoing)
    • Wrote over twenty books, none of which became bestsellers.
    • Consistently failed at marketing because writing felt more meaningful than algorithms.
    • Created Involution Labs as a way to store all my far-out ideas — not a failure, but something that grew out of failure. It became a way of holding myself accountable, and now I’m designing courses from that ever-expanding creative ecosystem.

    Various Online Work (survival era)
    • Took on various online work during difficult periods, including emotional labour and boundary-testing roles that taught me more about human psychology than any textbook ever could.
    • Learned resilience, communication, and the courage to navigate unconventional spaces.

    Print Journalist Trainee
    • Trained for a world of ink and presses… just as the industry went digital.
    • Failed to build the professional network needed to pivot when everything changed.

    Full-Time Parent (career break)
    • Managed small humans with complex needs and strong opinions.
    • Gained skills in management, conflict resolution, diplomacy, advocacy, and negotiating with multiple authorities.
    • Failed to convince employers these were “real” workplace skills.

    Early Career Misstep (mid-90s, Ireland)
    • Posted a job ad titled “Swedish girl looking for work.”
    • Failed to anticipate the replies this would generate.
    • Learned the importance of precise wording.

    Early Education + Work Life Wanderer
    • Left school early, failed to get on the straight-and-narrow career path.
    • Moved from one job to the next — quirky, fun, physically demanding work like grave digging, baking and farming.
    • Moved from town to city, from Sweden to Finland, and eventually Ireland.
    • Didn’t get the posh job. Cleaned toilets in a caravan park in Wexford before starting in the home care business, where I failed to keep a “professional distance” and instead made friends with everyone I encountered.

    Education

    • Learned that success is never linear.
    • Learned that failure isn’t the opposite of success,  it’s part of it.

    References

    My children — they can vouch for my authentic parenting style, and will give both the positive and the negative, because authentic parenting is about being real.