Give Yourself a Mission to Live

There's a scene in the second season of The Terminal List that I can't get out of my head.

James Reece is in Mozambique. He's been floating at sea for months. Now, his list is done. Every name on it, crossed off. His wife, gone. His daughter, gone. His men, gone. And there's a tumor in his brain that's supposed to finish him.

He washes up at a game reserve run by Rich Hastings, the father of his old teammate Raife. He works with the rangers. Trains them. Helps them fight off poachers. For the first time in what feels like years, he looks like a man who belongs somewhere.

Then comes the conversation. Reece tells Hastings the truth. That he's been hallucinating. And the older man just tells him that he's dying. And because of that, he needs to give himself permission to live.

The word in the show is permission. The word that stuck in my head was mission. Probably because I was sleepy while I was binge watching this amazing show. I've been thinking about it all week.

Personally, I think a man in Reece's position needs both.

The man who finished his list

What makes that scene land is where Reece is standing when he hears it.

All through season one, we see that he had a purpose. A dark one, but it was a clear one. Find the people responsible. Cross them off. Keep moving. Heck, revenge is a terrible reason to live, but it is a reason mahn. And it got him out of bed every morning.

Then the list ran out.

Nobody talks about that part. Reece wasn't broken because he failed. He was broken because he finished. The thing that had organised his entire life was complete, and there was nothing behind it. So he got on a boat and drifted. Basically waiting for the tumor to do its job.

When you're in that place, dying stops being the scary option and becomes the easy one. You've already made peace with it. Living is the hard part, because living means you have to want something again.

That's why the word permission matters. Reece didn't need anyone to tell him he was dying (because he knew). What he needed was someone to tell him it was okay to start caring about tomorrow, even with a clock running. That it wasn't a betrayal of the people he lost. That a man who's been through all of that is still allowed to build something.

And the show gives you the answer before anyone says it out loud. The reserve is called a garden for a reason. Reece is a warrior in it and he's protecting animals instead of hunting men. Nobody hands him a new list. He finds a small, specific thing worth protecting, and he gives it everything he has.

That's the mission. Far from a grand vision but something real that's worth getting up for.

The drift

I recognised that feeling.

Not on a boat off the coast of Mozambique. Nothing that dramatic. But I know what it looks like when the structure you've been living inside quietly disappears and you realise there's nothing behind it pulling you forward. Just days. One after another. No list.

Today was my graduation day and I missed it. Don't get me wrong, I graduated, I just didn't make it to the ceremony. But that's beside the point, all my life has been building up to this point, and if I hadn't sought out freelancing earlier in my uni days, I would have felt more empty…but that's beside the point.

I think most people hit a version of Reece somewhere in their life. You finish the thing you were working toward, or the thing finishes you, and then you're standing in the clearing wondering what now.

The temptation is to sit down.

So this is me deciding not to sit down.

The mission

I'm 24 and my life is nothing remotely close to what Reece has gone through. But I've noticed you don't need a tumor to stop living. You just need enough days in a row where nothing pulls you forward.

So I'm giving myself a mission to live. Not a ten-year plan. A few real things that are worth getting up for.

The gym

This one comes first because it's the one that saved me. Again, story for another day.

I'm two months into a 26-week program (I'm not a beginner, though, I just like switching things every now and again). Five days a week. A lean bulk I actually take seriously, which mostly means eating far more than feels reasonable and showing up on the days I don't feel like it.

Nobody tells you what the gym does to the inside of your head. Somewhere in the last few weeks, I started walking differently. Started holding eye contact longer. Stopped shrinking in rooms. The confidence didn't come from how I look. It came from evidence. Every week, the bar tells me the truth. If I did the work, the number goes up. If I didn't, it doesn't.

The good thing? There's no algorithm, gatekeeper, or a recruiter deciding whether I'm worth a reply. That kind of honesty is rare, and I didn't realise how much I needed it.

Jiu jitsu

I want something that humbles me on purpose. Jiu jitsu is a room full of people who will choke you until you learn not to panic when you can't breathe. That sounds like exactly the skill I need for the next few years of my life.

I'll write about my first class when it happens. It will probably be embarrassing. But that's the whole point of starting. Stop fearing what makes you afraid. For me, it's 'what will people think'.

Something I'm building

I'm working on an app. That's all I'm going to say for now. Not because it's a big secret, but because I've learned that talking about things too early gives you the reward before you've done the work. When there's something to show, you'll see it here first. I'm just writing it here so that I can be accountable.

The data engineering project

On the career side, I'm going all in on data engineering. Starting properly from the foundations this time, instead of pretending I'm further along than I am.

The current project is a credit data platform for people who have little or no local credit history. Newcomers. Young people. Anyone a traditional bank would look at and see a blank page. I'm building it end to end with Python and PostgreSQL. dbt handles the transformations. Dagster runs the orchestration. FastAPI serves it at the end.

I picked it because it's a real problem. And because it's the kind of messy, complex project I actually want to spend my career on.

I'll be documenting the next parts in my Monday build logs. Here's a link to what I have already done.

Permission and mission

I think that's what Rich Hastings was really getting at. Reece had spent so long fighting for the dead that he forgot he was still alive. The permission was the first step. The mission was what he did with it.

For me, the permission is accepting that I'm allowed to want a good life even when things feel uncertain. I don't have to have it all figured out before I start moving.

The mission is the rest. Show up to the gym. Ship the next piece of the pipeline. Build the thing I'm building. Walk into a jiu jitsu gym and get humbled. Write it down here every week so I can look back and see that I didn't drift.

So friend, give yourself a mission to live.