| > Maybe it does not matter what you achieve, boxes you check, friends or relationships you make along the way. At the end if you are an unhappy person it will not be enough, and if you are naturally content it will all seem ok. Honestly, COIVD made me confront and explore that very subject incredibly deeply--month's long trains of thought about past experiences--, despite previously being in therapy and generally considering myself quite introspective; it also coincided with learning about how many founders in startups have many commonly found mental health issues (anxiety is almost always there) that lend themselves to enduring startup culture's grind. That anxiety and restlessness is fuel that gets you to keep pushing to the next milestone when everything else is failing all around and its an incredible source, but the question then becomes: at what cost? For me being unhappy was just the cost of admission to apply my skill set to an immense complex problem; seeing incredibly sad things like currency collapses and Society's wrecked by hyper-inflation fucking sucks but it became my norm, what came after in that journey was an even higher cost altogether. Failing to address that critical psychological factor is why I think burnout is also so common, you lose sight of the what and why you did something, which often starts as simple as thinking it was simply 'cool and interesting' thing to do with one's limited time and not simply testing how many times can you can endure going beyond your mental and psychological limits before it completely adversely affects your health in a way you that you may never actually recover from. Which I think is something that is never discussed in founder/startup culture until after someone like Tony Hsieh dies and most just scratch their heads and try to figure out 'why?' I can't say I'm completely over this either, as I think some ambition still lingers depending on the project ideas, but I've been forced to have to make sure I don't take on 'too much' and solely focus on one path now after being too many burnouts from doing 2-3 at any given time, but also realizing the value of the skill set you've gained as a result of your experiences. And having confidence in that instead of being obsessed with keeping up with every new update and knowing you can bring yourself up to date as needed. I've also started to take advice from the cautionary tales that I previously ignored or that I simply didn't feel apply to me. Everyone is susceptible to these consequences and the only waste of time is to not at least consider how it could occur to you and try to learn from their mistake(s) to avoid repeating the same. |