| Good stuff. I'm with you Zach. Except I'm 40, so I feel slightly different forms of terror than you do. And I don't have the beautiful, intelligent girlfriend. Or a motorcycle. To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job, buy a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match: When I was a young boy
They said you're only gettin' older
But how was I to know then
That they'd be cryin' on my shoulder
Put your money in a big house
Get yourself a pretty wife
She'll collect your life insurance
When she connects you with a knife [1]
Fuck you. It’s not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure.Yeah, absolutely. I've tolerated mediocrity for too much of my life, due to a misguided faith in the old saws "patience is a virtue" and "good things come to those who wait", etc. So now I'm on the cusp of "old", and have a startup that I have a lot of confidence in (but, then again, entrepreneurs almost have to have an irrational level of confidence and optimism!), but the terror of basically having to acknowledge "this is probably my last 'at bat'". If this doesn't succeed, by the time we fail, I think I'll be too old and too tired to bother trying again. That means I write off all hope of living the life I really want to live. At that point, I doubt I'll see much point in living, so I kinda expect that if it happens, I'll load my car up with booze, and head to Vegas to drink myself to death, ala Nick Cage's character in Leaving Las Vegas. Can we make it while living modest lifestyles? I think yes. It will be hard, but fuck… it’s going to be hard anyway. I think so, but, speaking as an "older guy", I'll just say this: be aggressive as fuck about pursuing your dreams. And if you're going to sacrifice a bit and do some element of the "entre-monk" thing, it's probably more tolerable in your 20's than in your 30's, or (worse) your 40's. I'm not saying you have to do the entre-monk thing, mind you. But I am saying that you probably can't afford to coast, and do too much playing around being patient. I am starting to truly understand why the people that seem to make the best entrepreneurs are empirically unstable. You can’t go into this shit with a sane disposition. Agreed. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUkqBRC1zUA |