You are not alone.
Right now I’m living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the weather is beautiful, and I look outside (over our attractive park) and feel nothing about it but, “Meh.”
I know I should try to enjoy it before we leave — for 2.5 months — but I can’t. I can’t bring myself to leave the sofa, much less the apartment.
I’m looking at the brand spanking new version of Charm that we deployed to our beta customers yesterday, and I want to love it. I want to feel proud of all the work and suffering that’s paid off.
But I don’t. I don’t love it, and I don’t feel proud.
Today, all I can see is what’s wrong with it. Bugs. Awkwardness. Missing features. Frustration. I want to punch it.
I’m scared that we’ll miss our August launch. (There’s no reason to worry about that, but I won’t let that stop me.) I’m deeply anxious that after all this, after all the work — we’ve been building it for a year now — and the reworking, and the research, that I’ll turn out to be wrong.
That people won’t want it.
That my “revolutionary” interface designs, that I struggled with for months, are so much gilding on a self-indulgent pile of crap.
And that very thought, of course, leads straight to another nauseating tug on my heart: that Charm won’t cover its own monthly costs any time soon. That we won’t make back our investment. That it may turn out to be nothing but a giant sink of time and money, and we’ll struggle, and I’ll be incredibly embarrassed because hey, here I go trying to teach other people how to duplicate my success. What would I do with such an obvious flop?
That alone be enough to ruin anyone’s day, but I never do anything by half-measures. There’s something else.
A sickly, whispering little doubt that maybe all this growth is a mistake.
Bigger, more involved projects, renting an office, hiring a team… today, it’s making me feel trapped. With a team, with more important products, comes responsibility. I can’t just skip out whenever I want or work whatever hours I want. Straightjacketed. Stuck. Doomed.
Maybe, that nasty little doubt whispers, we have doomed ourselves to a workaday existence by our own hand.
But wait, there’s more.
We had a bug in our (human) email workflow last week. Some people’s emails slipped thru the cracks. Then they thought we were ignoring them and got angry. On a good day, I can handle this with no problem, soothing bruised egos with expert skill.
This is not a good day.
I’m antsy with guilt and shame. It makes my fingers curl. I want to hide under a rock, or maybe a pillow, and not come out.
And the money situation. We did too much too fast. I have gotten too used to having a large padding that hand-waving “of course we can” has become my modus operandi.
Now I am paying the price in muscle twitches.
And fat checks I have to write to certain government agencies.
I know, intellectually, that our financials are not dire. I have a plan for fixing it — and, because we have assets in the form of existing products, I can fix it. But not by tomorrow or next week.
So I’ve had to write one email after another, asking the freelancers we work with to hold off on doing new work. Juggling. Canceling stuff we were gonna do. And today I had to nix plans to hire a certain consultant. He would have started today.
Not only am I bummed out by the fact that we have to grind these projects to a halt, but oh, the guilt.
So yeah. Today? Not so great.
I suppose I “know” that it will pass. It has every other time. But it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. It feels like the weight will never lift and that this, the way I’m seeing things now, is truth.
There’s nothing useful in this post. No action steps for you to take. No suggestions on how you, too, can avoid feeling like this. This is just the way it is sometimes. As far as I can tell, it happens no matter how awesome my circumstances may be, no matter how much I love my work. Like the weather. Maybe it doesn’t “mean” anything, but that’s cold comfort when it sure as hell feels like it.
But if any of this sounds familiar, at least you know you’re not alone.
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Read this science backed book: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
(here is a link attempt) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400078393/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0671019112&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1FNYF36F5RE15DGED6D8
There’s no book, and no thing a person could possibly do, that will make them feel good all the time. That’s simply a lie.
+1 and thinking anything else might actually drive you insane because you think something is wrong with you while at the same time everybody else is doing fine or at least appears to be. ups and downs are part of life and if we wouldn’t have those it would be utterly boring!
cheers!
Glad to know that I’m not alone. Thanks a lot for the insight.
Thank you for the honesty and transparency in this post.
We need more leaders who can admit that being a leader can be, well, lonely. When you’re out front, developing and launching a new product, there are many times when no one else can help you. Ultimately you’re responsible, and that responsibility can feel crushing.
Thankfully, these moments (and feelings) do pass. But it’s important for any would-be entrepreneur to understand that these feelings happen.
Thanks for this post. I thing many entrepreneurs, including myself, get this feeling regularly. Honesty with oneself is the first step to making decisions that will have the desired outcomes.
Keep your chin up, reset your emotions and go enjoy that beautiful park! It will be worth it!
Hi Amy,
I’m feeling a bit like this too today! I just try to go with the flow and let myself have a down day because I’ve had enough of them to know that tomorrow I might feel on top of the world again.
Going for a swim or a walk, doing yoga or cuddling a cute puppy might help to distract you from the things you’re feeling bad about.
I would recommend a book called SuperCoach. No, it won’t solve all of your problems all of the time, but it has helped me to feel more happy more of the time
Tara
Hi Amy, I just started following your blog from my Google desktop no less! That’s a first for me. It’s so refreshing to have found somebody to learn from who I can actually relate to. I don’t mean that to be some cheesy back pat. I mean I’m totally refreshed by your approach and personality and that can be really nice for those of us who feel more than a bit alienated from the suited up guru types who take themselves so seriously. I hope my little bit of hero worship
goes someway towards making your day a little better.
Thanks for sharing that.
I’ve definitely been there in that emotional black hole of “oh crap”.
As I get older, I’ve realized more and more that without the constant contrast of bad days and scary moments, the good days wouldn’t mean as much, or be as fulfilling.
As much as I hate the cycle of feelings of struggle, pain, and fear, followed by excitement, joy, and invincibility, it’s part of the process of creation and self determination, a.k.a life. And in that sense, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Oh crap.
We’re there now too. In exactly that place. Went all in. Not going to be fixed overnight. Have to cut back.
Hang in there girl.
I just referred a post of yours to a new blogger yesterday.
Hang in there. And we’re hanging in there with you too.
Oh, Honey, I am so there. This is one of those times to keep pushing on. It wont be fun, but when it’s over you’ll remember it’s times like these that make you who you are. Oh, and take a long, hot bath/get a massage. xxx
I feel like that often. I usually try to ignore it and rationalize it, and i’ve come around to accept it as a natural feeling.
Thank you for sharing and inspiring us.
Thank you for openly voicing your fear and doubts. A lot of what you wrote feels very familiar. And hearing this from someone who’s much more successful from a monetary perspective than myself, it actually encourages me to push forward with my own endeavors. So your bad day made my bad day a bit better.
Hi Amy,
I can’t tell you how helpful this is. It’s immensely reassuring to hear that these thoughts and feelings are par for the course and happen to the best of us, and that when I have them it isn’t because I suck. I already knew this intellectually, but sometimes that isn’t enough, and hearing it from someone else makes it sink it in in a way it hadn’t for awhile. Hang in there, you’ve got a lot of people rooting for you. It takes a lot of courage to do a post like this, and just wanted to let you know how appreciated it was, at least by this developer/entrepeneur.
When I became financially independent in 2008, I didn’t expect to feel bad about it. Specifically, I entered a phase of my life where even when I didn’t get out of bed, we paid our bills on time. I learned the risk I had taken by defining myself by my ability to provide for my family. I still haven’t entirely recovered from that.
I don’t think we can ever entirely eliminate the vague feeling of dissatisfaction. I wish I knew why; or maybe that wouldn’t even help.
Thanks for the honest post Amy. It’s rare to hear someone open up like this, but I think it is important for all of us to understand both sides of this stuff… and to know that none of us is alone.
It’s rainy and gross here in NYC, but the sun is coming soon!
You are always so motivational to me because of your positive attitude and the success you’ve had so far by working your @#$% off. When I’m feeling down and not motivated to code or work on my project, I often think about your success and how I could do the same thing by following in your steps. That may make it seem ironic now that I find your post even more motivational, because even you, with the success you’ve seen so far, sometimes get down even when you’re already doing what you love.
Thanks for the honest and heartfelt post. It really helps those of us who are hopefully on the same path as you, but not as far along yet.
hey!!! get up and take a walk, if the city you’re right now is as beautiful as you say, then forget, for a moment, about your job, your project, the bills, freelancers, forget about the world, probably all you need is to take a deep breath and remember how great is your life, how beautiful and amazing is your own project and how far you’ve walked.
This post IS useful. If it had action steps to take, it wouldn’t be.
Today I too am feeling miserable and came to your site looking for some inspiration. I mean, you are amazing and doing it yourself, and I wanted to bask in the glow of your wondrousness while everything feels like its falling apart around me.
But you know what? This is better. Because what I really needed to hear is that even people who are amazing and incredibly successful sometimes feel like everything is falling apart and going to hell in a handbasket.
Amy, I so appreciate your candidness and your stubborness and your zeal to do it yourself without external capital and suffer through the all the ups and downs that that entails.
I can’t wait for Charm to come out of beta.
Do your yoga..
Right there with you. Want to bang my head on the wall – cause it might make it feel better.
New practice that gives some relief – and it sounds a little polly-annish. Every morning name one or two things you are thankful for – seriously. It isn’t always easy, but helps. A bit.
Go forth and don’t give up.
Been there. Felt that.
But take solace in the fact that there’s nothing you can do differently that would make you feel better. If you quit, you’d always wonder. Your course of action, as doubtful as you might be about it now, carries the least risk of you doubting yourself later; for the rest of your life.
So, once you submit to inevitability of it all, all that’s left is to enjoy the ride.
Brendon
I suspected from watching your twitter that you might suffer from aberrant mood swings. Have you seen a doctor or tried any medicines/supplements to help?
I still think you rock, so just keep rockin.
Jethro, nope, I don’t have abberant mood swings. What I do have is a lot of reasons to feel upset once in a while: a disabling illness, a life in a country I grew to hate (and the work of moving), social isolation in that same country — despite my best efforts, the stress of being unable to work and then when I had energy, having to only play “catchup” because I only had a few good hours of work in me, major surgery, people I paid good money to help me letting me down entirely, etc.
Feeling miserable once in a while doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your mind or your body.
Into every life a little rain must fall, you know.