a half-baked case for not hating your life trying to build something.

3 minute read time

Today’s issue: a half-baked case for not hating your life trying to build something.

Full transparency :I spent two days avoiding writing this newsletter because I had zero progress most of the week. I was scared you’d think I was lazy or incapable and so I procrastinated. I’m sorry, but also can’t promise it won’t happen again.

A few years ago, I thought it was dumb to follow your passions and have fun. Looked like future broke people who ended up beaten up by the world working dead-end jobs where they have to scroll memes about hating their jobs to feel alive.

That is a true American horror story to me.

I felt the same way about business even though I got out of living in a car working a job I loved.

But we aren’t here to talk about that. We are here to talk about last week, why I’m two days late, and my weak case for not doing things you hate.

Here’s a quick rundown of most of the week:

• I sent out emails with Loom videos of landing page edits to founders I like. aka finding email addresses using Hunter.io is no joke.

• Posted one of my landing page edits to subreddit to be roasted by anonymous people on the internet. They were all supportive. (Weird ok?)

• Two days down with food poisoning and beating myself up for not working because I didn’t earn any money and ‘health’.

Then realized I fucking hate it and literally forcing myself to do it because it’s something I don’t 100% suck at.

Now having a client sounds incredible — and my bank account could use it. But It also feels like I’m creating a prison.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not under some illusion everything will be fun — but I genuinely don’t care, there’s people in this space (@heyblake) who seem to enjoy it, and there’s other ways to make money that doesn’t involve weird homicidal pictures popping up in my head (not that I’ve found them yet).

Then on Tuesday I went on a boat for a T-Pain concert and ironically met a founder who was in business for 8 years until a company stole their idea and was able to market it with faster results.

He’s in a lawsuit battle and already sunk $100,000 into lawyers with 2+ years left in their case. Enough that he took the last few months doing nothing but mentally recovering and applied for a job on a pirate ship acting. My face must’ve looked confused because I didn’t understand what he was telling me.

Until he said he’s trying to learn how to have fun again and is even building a VR video game with another friend as the art-something.

Talking to him made me realize two things:

• I’m not financially stable enough to casually figure out what I’m doing and learn to have fun on his level.

• I have been letting my anxiety of not having a business, prolonged broke-ness, guilt of not living up the potential other people seem to think I have, and utter desperation literally control all of decisions.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘having fun’ and ‘being epically lost is awesome!’ are not the messages here.

I need money and I’m sick of having conversations where all I say is some variation of ‘I’m finding an idea’.

Pause for internal screaming.

But this can’t be the only way.

Then I stumbled onto Greg Isenbergs’ Guide to Unbundling Reddit that literally combined everything I’ve heard from successful founders at least 20x (but of course only this one stuck).

Now I’m not a Reddit person, but he made me think about what am I even passionate about — beyond making friends online since nobody seems to care.

Realized I had no fucking idea. No really. I have hobbies but not enough to talk about them for more than 3 minutes.

So I finally found 2 groups I can speak to from knowledge and in less than 2 days found a list of actual problems people have.

Of course now I’m trying to figure out how to avoid the tech skills most of them have… BUT I started a few convos that prove useful.

yes, I collect screenshots of validation because I’m not some pompous asshole. Also I have LOW self-confidence and need actual proof that someone gets value. Moving on.

And tomorrow (god-willing) I’m starting a small discord group for like 5 people to get a MVP moving in the next few days.

THIS IS ALL IN TWO-THREE-ISH DAYS! OKAY?

And I don’t hate* it.

Now yes, this probably sounds like yet another idea that may or may not pan out… but I’m forever a fucking optimist, OKAY?!

Plus it beats setting up a business that feels like hell before ‘impossible’ problems appear.

Question of the week: Where does passion end and stubbornness to not quit start for you? Do you even know your patterns?

cool stuff

1. A founder doing cool things, winning, and writing a newsletter that doesn’t suck.

2. Notion but better - especially if you’re an organization nut.

3. A lesson on ‘we make things harder than they need to be’

4. Apparently Airbnb is upping their game and bringing out my inner 10 year old.

   

5. Mini reminder on how I think writing your newsletter should be.

6. my coping mechanism is creating AI images of dogs in tailored suits. send help. also if you try it please send so we can geek out together.