The One Thing: On Focus, Showrooms, and the Geography of Home

I'm writing this on a Saturday morning in mid-December 2025, and I'll confess something straight away: I've been rather quiet these past several weeks. Not because nothing's been happening – quite the opposite, actually – but because too much has been happening all at once, and I've been caught in that peculiar state of motion where you're moving forward whilst simultaneously standing at a crossroads, uncertain which direction you're actually facing.

It's a disorienting feeling, being simultaneously in flux and frozen. Rather like being on a train that's stopped between stations – you know you're meant to be going somewhere, but you're temporarily suspended in the liminal space between departure and arrival.

But I've emerged from that fog with something approaching clarity, and I want to tell you about it. Because these past weeks have brought significant shifts in both my personal and professional life, and more importantly, they've crystallised around a single focal point that I'm calling my "One Thing."

First, though, let me catch you up properly.

The Unexpected Gift of Connection

After years – and I do mean years – of rather solitary existence on the personal front, I met someone. A woman, to be specific, with whom I share an almost alarming number of commonalities. We first met on 31st October 2025 (yes, Halloween, which feels appropriately dramatic for the beginning of something unexpected), and the friendship that formed did so with the sort of speed that takes you rather by surprise.

In the month and a half since, we've grown remarkably close. I've experienced things I hadn't experienced before – not in a grandiose, cinematic sense, but in those smaller, quieter ways that actually matter. The feeling of someone genuinely caring about your day. The comfort of shared interests and easy conversation. The pleasant surprise of looking forward to time spent with another person rather than viewing social interaction as something to be scheduled and endured.

She's a good friend. I'm learning a great deal from her. I genuinely enjoy spending time with her.

And I haven't the faintest idea where this friendship will lead or how long it will last.

That uncertainty used to bother me – the not knowing, the lack of clear trajectory. But I'm learning to simply be grateful for it as it exists now, in this moment, without demanding that it declare its long-term intentions. Good things, I'm discovering, often arrive precisely when you've stopped anxiously scanning the horizon for them.

It's been years since I felt someone care about me quite this much. That alone is worth acknowledging.

First Week at the New Mappin & Webb Showroom

Monday, 8th December 2025, marked another significant milestone: the opening of the new Mappin & Webb showroom in Birmingham, where I began my official duties as Sales Consultant after three months of training, preparation, and what felt like interminable waiting.

New beginnings typically arrive with a healthy dose of anxiety – worry about how the opening will proceed, whether the showroom will be busy, whether we're genuinely prepared to serve clients to the standard they expect from a luxury brand. I'd been carrying those nerves around like uncomfortable luggage for days.

Fortunately, everything went considerably better than I'd anticipated.

There's something profoundly different about working at the front of house after a decade behind the scenes. For ten years, I was the CAD Designer – the person in the back room, staring at monitors, manipulating digital models, solving technical problems in splendid isolation. Essential work, certainly, but fundamentally solitary.

Now, I'm speaking directly with clients. Having actual conversations. Helping people navigate significant purchases that mark important moments in their lives. And I'll be honest: talking with customers is infinitely more enjoyable than staring at a computer screen for hours on end, no matter how beautifully rendered the jewellery on that screen might be.

I don't know how long I'll remain on this particular path, or whether the novelty will eventually calcify into routine. But for now, in these early days, I'm committed to presenting my best self, learning everything I can, and growing into the role properly.

The work itself is teaching me things that ten years of technical expertise never could. But it's also, rather unexpectedly, clarified something important about what I actually want from my professional life.

The Crossroads: Geography, Family, and Belonging

For several years now, I've been circling around the same essential question: Do I want to remain in Britain, or do I want to return to Iran and spend more time with my family?

It's the sort of question that doesn't have a simple answer, because both options involve significant sacrifice. Stay in Britain, and I'm distant from family, missing birthdays and gatherings and the accumulation of small moments that constitute actual relationship. Return to Iran, and I'm leaving behind the life I've built here – the citizenship I worked years to obtain, the professional opportunities, the infrastructure of existence I've carefully constructed.

Interestingly, the question has become more pressing since I officially became a British citizen. You'd think citizenship would settle things, provide clarity, close the door on uncertainty. Instead, it's opened new possibilities precisely because I no longer worry about residence status. I can spend extended periods with my family now without jeopardising my right to return. The British passport in my drawer provides freedom I didn't have before.

But there's a practical constraint, and it's the most mundane one imaginable: money.

I need to find a way to be financially supported without requiring my physical presence in Britain. Financial freedom, I'm increasingly convinced, is the actual solution. Not choosing Britain over Iran or Iran over Britain, but creating circumstances where I can freely live wherever I want, whenever I want, moving between them as suits my needs and desires.

That's not a small ambition. But it's the one that matters most.

The One Thing: On Focus and Strategic Patience

Which brings me to what I'm calling my "One Thing" – the single focal point around which I'm now organising my efforts and attention.

Over the past several weeks, I've made a significant shift in my approach to goals and priorities. Instead of scattering my energy across multiple projects and possibilities, I've identified the one endeavour that could genuinely transform my life and deliver the freedom I'm seeking.

My YouTube channel.

Making my YouTube channel profitable is my first and last priority for 2026.

Not "one of my priorities." Not "something I'd like to achieve if circumstances permit." My priority. The thing I'm focusing on with the sort of single-minded attention that makes other goals temporarily subordinate.

Because this – this specific thing – is the key to financial freedom. The YouTube channel, if I can build it properly, becomes the mechanism by which I can earn money regardless of geographic location. It allows me to spend more time in Iran with my family. It creates space to focus on the work I genuinely love rather than the work that simply pays bills.

The cost of this focus is patience and postponement. Things I'd enjoy doing in the short term need to wait. Other projects need to be set aside temporarily. Immediate gratification needs to be sacrificed for longer-term transformation.

This is what strategic patience looks like: identifying what truly matters, committing fully to it, and accepting that the path to the life you want might require temporarily not living that life.

I'm reminded of something I read once about successful people – that they're not particularly better at time management or more talented than everyone else. They're simply more ruthless about identifying what actually matters and eliminating everything that doesn't directly serve that objective.

So that's what I'm doing. Every day, I'm working to make this goal real. Creating content. Improving quality. Building audience. Learning the platform's mechanics. Treating it not as a hobby but as the business that will eventually provide the freedom I'm seeking.

I will achieve this. Not because I'm particularly gifted or because success is guaranteed, but because I'm willing to do the consistent, unglamorous work required over whatever timeframe it demands.

The View from the Showroom

There's something slightly ironic about committing to YouTube whilst simultaneously starting a new job in luxury retail. On the surface, they seem to pull in different directions – one requiring my physical presence in a Birmingham showroom, the other offering geographic freedom.

But I'm learning to see them as complementary rather than contradictory. The showroom provides immediate income and teaches me invaluable skills about communication, sales, and human psychology. The YouTube channel builds toward longer-term freedom. Both serve the larger objective; they simply operate on different timescales.

And perhaps that's the actual lesson of these past weeks: life rarely presents clean, simple choices. You're not always choosing between Option A and Option B. Sometimes you're holding multiple threads simultaneously, trusting that they'll eventually weave into something coherent.

I'm 37 years old and I'm still figuring out fundamental questions about where I want to live and how I want to structure my life. That used to worry me, the sense that I should have settled these matters by now. But I'm increasingly convinced that the interesting lives are the unsettled ones – the ones that remain open to possibility and willing to make significant changes in pursuit of something better.

From Tehran to Birmingham, from CAD designer to Sales Consultant, from scattered focus to strategic concentration on my One Thing – the journey continues to surprise me with its turns and recalibrations.

Next year, if all goes according to plan, I'll be writing from different circumstances. The YouTube channel will be profitable. The freedom I'm seeking will be within reach. The crossroads will have resolved into a clear path forward.

But for now, I'm standing in a showroom in Birmingham, helping clients choose jewellery, whilst simultaneously building the thing that will eventually let me choose where I stand.

Time to get back to work.