The Dark Place – A story on startups, depression and coming back(alexpotrivaev.com)
alexpotrivaev.com
The Dark Place – A story on startups, depression and coming back
http://alexpotrivaev.com/writing/the-dark-place-or-there-and-back-again
http://alexpotrivaev.com/writing/the-dark-place-or-there-and-back-again
The sad thing is, we haven't even failed. In fact, in some regards things are going really well. We have a great opportunity to demo our products this week at the CED Tech Venture Conference, and we have some other cool stuff coming up[1]. But... like TFA says, it's the weight of your expectations that crush you. And while we have some good stuff going on, we're not where we want to be, and the road forward looks pretty bleak sometimes. And for me personally, being on the older'ish side (41), the pressure seems amplified, since I feel like I'm running out of time to achieve things I want to achieve.
Lately, I think the hardest part is how I've been starting to doubt myself. I've always been pretty confident and optimistic, but something lately has me starting to look around and go "Am I really good enough to do this?" and "why should I believe I can make this happen?", stuff like that.
I attribute most of it to overwork and burnout. Working full-time, plus slaving away on the startup by night and weekend, working 100+ hour weeks over and over and over and over and over again... and having the pressure of getting ready for this demo thing, and these upcoming talks, etc., it just wears you a bit thin.
I think if I make it to the end of October, I'll be able to ease off a bit in Nov and Dec., and recover a bit. Maybe take a brief vacation to let the batteries recharge, and then get back at it.
[1]: http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2014/09/come-meet-fogbeam-labs.h...